6 Things You Didn’t Know About ‘Car 54, Where Are You?’
Sing it with us now: “There’s a holdup in the Bronx, Brooklyn’s broken out in fights, there’s a traffic jam in Harlem that’s backed up to Jackson Heights, there’s a Scout troop short a child, Khrushchev’s due at Idlewild — Car 54, Where Are You?”
Created by Nat Hiken, Car 54 starred Joe E. Ross as Gunther Toody and Fred Gwynne as Francis Muldoon, two New York City Police Department officers from the Bronx’s fictional 53rd precinct. As unlikely patrol partners — one sharp, one not so much — Toody and Muldoon got into all sorts of hilarious trouble, and though the show only ran for two seasons on NBC between 1961 and 1963, it spent decades in re-runs, and even inspired a feature film in 1994. Read on for trivia about the police comedy.
1 Joe E. Ross and Fred Gwynne’s patrol car was actually painted red
Everett Collection
The Plymouth Savoy that Ross and Gwynne drove on the show and all the other prop cars for the 53rd precinct were painted red to differentiate them from actual NYPD vehicles, as the show filmed on location in the Bronx, according to MeTV. When photographed on Car 54’s black-and-white film, however, the red color matched the dark paint job of the NYPD cruisers found on the streets at the time.
2 Ross reportedly had an ego problem on set
Everett Collection
In the book King of the Half Hour: Nat Hiken and the Golden Age of TV Comedy (via WFMU’s Beware of the Blog), David Everitt reports that Ross showed bad behavior on set.
“Ross let celebrity go to his head, leading him to believe that Car 54 revolved around him, that the tail was actually wagging the dog,” Everitt wrote. “Stardom, as Ross understood it, meant not bothering to learn his lines … believed that preparing for the scene was beneath him … Ross would often turn nasty. He was fond of lording it over extras and other people at the lowest rungs of the production.”
3 Al Lewis played more than one character on the show
Keighley Ross/Everett Collection
Car 54 fans know Al Lewis as Officer Leo Schnauser, a character that joined the show midway through its first season. Earlier in the season, though, Lewis guest starred in two episodes, playing Al Spencer both times. As TV Tropes notes, however, it’s not clear whether the two Al Spencers are the same character, since he’s a city employee in one episode and an auto shop operator in the other.
In a 2002 Television Academy Foundation interview, Lewis said he didn’t think there was any series “that was as well-written and comedic as Car 54.”
4 Lewis and Gwynne went on to star in The Munsters together
Everett Collection
After Car 54, Gwynne starred in The Munsters as Herman Munster, one of Frankenstein’s monsters, while Lewis costarred on the show as Herman’s father-in-law, the vampire Grandpa.
In the aforementioned 2002 interview, Lewis said he was glad to work more closely with Gwynne, whom he called a close friend, in The Munsters.
“I was very fortunate, both in Car 54 — which I believe was better written than The Munsters, much better — and in The Munsters. In Car 54, I did a great deal of work with Charlotte Rae, and in The Munsters, I did a great deal of work with Fred Gwynne.”
5 Car 54 was a vehicle for many famous or soon-to-be-famous actors
Paramount Television/Courtesy: Everett Collection
If you rewatch Car 54 now, you’ll likely recognize many of the show’s guest stars. Famous faces who appeared on the series included The Wizard of Oz’s Margaret Hamilton, Barney Miller’s Hal Linden, Happy Days’ Tom Bosley, All in the Family’s Jean Stapleton, Cheers’ Nicholas Colasanto, The Dukes of Hazzard‘s Sorrell Booke Match Game’s Charles Nelson Reilly, Lamb Chop’s Play-Along’s Shari Lewis, and Broadway star Maureen Stapleton.
6 The show spawned a 1994 big-screen adaptation
Orion Pictures/courtesy Everett Collection
Considering it only grossed $1.2 million worldwide, (against an estimated budget of $10.7 million), you likely haven’t seen the 1994 movie Car 54, Where Are You?, in which David Johansen and John C. McGinley played Officers Toody and Muldoon, with Rosie O’Donnell and Fran Drescher in supporting parts. Lewis and costar Nipsey Russell were the only actors who reprised their roles from the TV show.
McGinley told The AV Club in 2013 that he has “mixed feelings” about Car 54, since studio bosses left most of the movie’s musical numbers on the cutting room floor. “I wouldn’t pretend to know what happened, what the decision-making process was, but we busted our humps on those numbers, and then the film came out, and I didn’t understand what I was watching.”
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