The Rockford Files "The Dark and Bloody Ground" 9/24/1974

[Adam H. Kerman]

First episode written by Juanita Bartlett from a story by John Thomas
James (that's Roy Huggins). She was a long-time associate of both Garner
and Huggins, who really wanted to be a writer. She contributed a number
of scripts to Nichols, then got hired by Huggins as a script editor
(with "creative consultant" listed as her production title), and asked
HIM if she could write a script. Huggins had written the story
treatments for two-thirds of season 1's episodes. Huggins felt she was
one of the few writers to improve upon his ideas.

She'd be the second most prolific writer for the series. Generally, I
liked her scripts.

Introduces the gorgeous Gretchen Corbett as Beth. Unfortunately she was
one of the very last actors with a studio contract, borrowed from
another studio for this series, that raised its lend-out fee to
unaffordable levels. Each season she'd appear in fewer and fewer
episodes, till just 5 times in season 4, and dropped. No, she isn't the
one who got the money.

Jim and Beth are established as occasional lovers, but there is an
awkward scene in which Jim doesn't want to get dressed in front of her!

Beth suckers Jim into working for one of her loser clients, arrested
and charged with the murder of her husband. It's Patricia Smith,
ubiquitous tv actress. Nancy Malone is also in this whom you'll
recognize, not quite as prolific.

This episode was well remembered for very long driving sequences into
desert and Rockford getting chased by truck cab bobtailing, which plenty
of people have found to be reminiscent of Duel. Rocky has a longer scene
this time, analyzing whether the villain was trying to kill Jim or just
scare him off. Jim crosses a bridge to get away that's too narrow for
the truck to cross.

The driving sequences from this episode were edited into the syndicated
version of "This Case Is Closed" to turn a 90-minute episode into a two
part episode.

Investigating the dead man's background, Jim learns that his identity
doesn't go back more than two years, when the two married. He learns
about his earlier life. He'd written a potboiler novel (which the
episode is named for) that's currently being adapted as a Major Motion
Production.

Beth figures out about a shady copyright attorney who gave up his law
license (which Beth insists never happens voluntarily short of a major
ethical lapse), and says there's a quirk in the pre-1976 Copyright Act
that, if the author dies, the current owner of the copyright rights does
not have the ability to renew for the second 28 year period. Renewal
rights are inherited. I have no idea if this is true but maybe this
happened to Roy Huggins in real life.

Rockford ends up not getting paid at all, ending with Beth trying to
sucker him into helping yet another loser client.