POLICE STORY: REQUIEM FOR AN INFORMER
Police Story: Requiem for an Informer
Season 1 Episode 3 / October 9, 1973
Written by Sy Salkowitz
Directed by Marvin J. Chomsky
In 1973, former police detective turned best-selling author Joseph Wambaugh was incontestably at the height of his newfound popularity. In the parlance of today, his works were fast becoming a “brand.” And, naturally, Hollywood came calling in a big, big way.
The New Centurions (1971) and The Blue Knight (1972) were both works of fiction, widely read crackerjack crowd-pleasers with verisimilitude bursting from their plump Dell paperbacks. Studios were salivating for these tales of the inner workings of the Los Angeles Police Department and the hard-headed desk cops, beat patrolmen, and seasoned detectives working inside the specialized units. Richard Fleischer ably adapted The New Centurions during a particularly fecund period of his, for Chartoff-Winkler Productions in 1972. It stars a haggard George C. Scott as world-weary, senses-dulled (and probably bi-polar) veteran officer Andy Kilvinski and Stacy Keach as rookie upstart Roy Fehler, his protege. William Holden deigned to do TV for the first time, top-lining the November 1973 premiere of The Blue Knight, one of the first in the ‘70s mini-series trend and one that paid off with multiple Emmys. The Onion Field (1973), Wambaugh’s first work of non-fiction, surely proved too harrowing for studios at the time. It would take until 1979, with Wambaugh’s own financial backing and the prowess of director Harold Becker, to see it through to cinema screens. But all in all, it was a bounteous first wave of material primed for translation to visual mediums.
So, fresh out of material, and working on the novel that would become The Choirboys (released in 1975), Wambaugh teamed with producer David Gerber for Police Story, an innovative anthology series. The Pilot, scripted by E. Jack Neumann, airs on NBC in March 1973, with a series order to be readied for October of that year. Wambaugh would vet the scripts with the story editors to retain some semblance of informed realism.
Unusually incisive and captivating in its narrow-focus view of the emotionally tumultuous lives of police officers and detectives and undercover agents, Police Story’s scope is, more often than not, limited to strong character studies. Thanks to a constant changing of Special Guest Stars, unfussy direction from traditional journeymen directors, and pleasurable Los Angeles location shooting (a particular catnip for retro cinephiles), each entry has the potential to be an undiscovered and rich ‘70s crime drama one-off. Or, at least, that’s the stance I’m taking here.
Police Story lies in wait for when you’ve seen - countless times - The French Connection and its sequel and The Seven-Ups and Dirty Harry and Magnum Force and Serpico and, yes, The New Centurions, but also Freebie and the Bean and Badge 373 and Busting and Across 110th Street and The Laughing Policeman and The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three. The series is less gritty, more proper, and “respectable” as it adheres to strict television censorship, but still surprisingly potent in depicting how the job eats away at the public and private lives of the LAPD.
Police Story ran for five seasons on NBC from September 25, 1973, through May 28, 1978. There were further tele-films made in 1979, 1980 and 1987.
Requiem for an Informer opens with very little subtlety as Robbery Homicide-Division’s Tony Calabrese (Tony Lo Bianco) experiences some recreational downtime with his family, including wife Ellen (Claudette Nevins). The soundtrack is expunged of any the lighthearted playground fun we see on the screen. Instead, the audio is replaced with the static-heavy voices emitting from Motorola radios, a police unit’s dispatch relaying crimes in progress via the numerical 500 series code numbers. Despite this rather obvious but potent metaphor, Requiem for an Informer thankfully becomes less overt.
There’s a robbery at the Western Consolidated Bank, a guard is shot, and the culprits have escaped scot-free thanks to their regular practice of employing rubber gloves and spray paint on security cameras. In the aftermath, the FBI’s Norm Peters (Tom Stewart) informs Calabrese that the bank robbers have a penchant for hiring prostitutes for 3-day binges following a job. It’s the first clue of many.
Michael Ansara portrays the disagreeable but colorfully named Baldy. He’s the lynchpin of the bank-robbing quintet. And it’s his nickname tied with his use of a $200 wig that unveils his criminal identity to consistently drugged-up cop informer Stan (former boy preacher Marjoe Gortner). Baldy has shacked up with Bobbie (Sharon Farrell), a manic prostitute who coincidentally has befriended and informally hired Stan as an errand boy. Delivering some Chinese food for the quirky duo, he puts it together enough to suggest Baldy to Detective Calabrese during the next squeeze for on-the-street information.
(Another member of the bank-robbing gang is played by Rex Holman, recognizable to viewers today for an unlikely reason: He “co-stars” with Leonardo DiCaprio in that episode of The F.B.I. featured in Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood.)
Calabrese (Lo Bianco) and partner Bert Jameson (Don Meredith) periodically question Stan, the strung-out junkie. The two cops have their system turned into a well-oiled machine, wearing him down with a (now-cliched) form of good-cop/bad-cop, the give-take of goodwill vs. dismissive backtalk. And Marjoe Gortner excels as the snitch, a shaggy hophead who can’t sit still. Lo Bianco offers Stan tough love - “You don’t even look human” - in an attempt to get through to him. With a larger cast of characters than usual, the simple through-line for Requiem for an Informer becomes Calabrese’s unusual kinship with Stan, despite knowing better. There’s sympathy for this sad case, despite the protestations of Jameson, his partner. Calabrese lends Stan sixty bucks after he’s detailed a sob story of his mother being ill. Calabrese and Jameson make a bet as to whether he’ll ever see that money again, but Stan comes back, clean this time, and with enough to pay him back.
But the new leaf can’t last, not in this narrative. Through some story machinations (Calabrese literally doesn’t hop on an elevator fast enough), Calabrese ends up inside Bobbie’s apartment, and they find Stan on the floor. An overdose. It’s a medium shot that doesn’t move for at least a couple of minutes, with Sharon Farrell pacing frantically on a drug-jag while Calabrese contends with the gravity of the situation. He’s a cop; he shouldn’t be feeling this way. He takes Stan to his partner’s apartment and keeps plying him with coffee while “The Saints Go Marching In” warbles loudly on a hi-fi. Another day, another robbery, this time at Horton Savings and Loan. The cops get the men, but the story efficiently recalibrates to its central purpose: Stan’s Oded again. This time it’s fatal. The only elements predictable to the detectives are more convictions and more funerals.
As Calabrese cradles Stan’s dead body, Jameson gets a bright idea - they’ll need another informant. Not wasting time, he begins to work on Sharon Farrell with their carefully chosen word games - but Calabrese’s giving a lackluster performance. “She’s gonna be trouble; I got no time to spend on her” - repeating and rephrasing the mantra heard earlier, the one he had hoped would keep Stan in line.
Requiem for an Informer isn’t the best Police Story has to offer, but has its incidental pleasures, including some shots of Los Angeles landmarks such as Pink’s Hot Dogs, an antiquated Maps to the Stars booth, and a marquee that just so happens to be showing Peter Locke’s x-rated romp It Happened in Hollywood - a picture edited by Wes Craven.
Tony Lo Bianco and Don Meredith appeared a couple of times as Robbery Homicide-Division partners Tony Calabrese and Bert Jameson as did Scott Brady - Vinnie, a former cop - who runs the bar that the on-screen LAPD frequent. John Larch (The Amityville Horror) appears briefly as Calabrese/Jameson’s lieutenant, and Marya Smalls (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) shows up as Jameson’s date. She has no lines.
Director Marvin Chomsky - a cousin of Noam’s - was a television regular at the time, and would soon move over to well-remembered prestige mini-series like Roots (1977), Holocaust (1978), and Attica (1980). Meanwhile, writer Sy Salkowitz (Richard Rush’s Thunder Alley, from 1967) earned himself an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for this episode.
