My magnum opus on Magnum, P.I.
05/10/2016
Guest stars
Legendary 80s TV actor Lance LeGault pops up in Missing in Action (S1 E8), the first of a total of 10 guest appearances in Magnum, although after this episode he would instead play the reoccurring role of Colonel Buck Greene. If the name doesn’t ring a bell, his voice will almost certainly. LeGault appeared in virtually every TV series through the 80s, from Airwolf to Automan and Dallas to Dynasty and even Battlestar Galactica to Buck Rogers. He was also well known for playing Colonel Decker, the man hell-bent on recapturing the A-Team and always arriving just one minute too late to catch them at the end of every episode.
Magnum was innovative television for a number of reasons, one of which was the often excellent casting of guest stars. An early example of this was Lest We Forget (S1, E9) where both June Lockhart and Jose Ferrer play characters in the present day, and their actor offspring – June’s daughter Anne Lockhart, and Jose’s son Miguel Ferrer – play the same characters in 1941. A similar method is used in Let Me Hear The Music (S5, E16) where Dennis Weaver and his son Rustin play the same character, present day and 45 years previously. Anne Lockhart also turns up in Flashback (S3, E6).
A young Ted Danson meets his hilarious unfortunate demise in Don’t Say Goodbye (S1, E14) as he’s inadvertently diced by the propeller of a reversing boat. The mind-bogglingly gorgeous Erin Gray appears in J “Digger” Doyle (S1, E16) in her natural brunette coloring. During the first season of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century she’d been blonde. A native to Honolulu, Gray played the no-nonsense security consultant of the episode’s title and despite being able to repel the advances of our dashing detective to begin with, she couldn’t possibly resist forever.
Eighties TV tough-type, Tyne Daly, pops up in The Jororo Kill (S2, E11) having carved out a name for herself in Cagney & Lacey, this time she’s playing a former combat correspondent-turned-big-scoop reporter. Dick “Who?” Butkus and Pat Morita crop up in One More Summer (S2, E16), the former – if you really know your 80s TV – was in the ill-fated and not-that-good-anyway TV adaptation of Blue Thunder (1983). He also pops up briefly in Any Given Sunday (1999) and The Last Boy Scout (1991). Pat Morita, we all know, was Mr Miyagi in The Karate Kid (1984) – the original, not the pointless remake with that twat Smith kid.
Jean Bruce Scott, who is also the often-resented addition to the regular crew of Airwolf in season 2, appears up in the season three opening two-parter Did You See the Sun Rise? Semi-regular Ian McShane makes another attempt at the Emmy Award for Overacting in Black on White (S3, E6) after first showing up in Skin Deep (S1, E5). Nicholas Hammond, another 80s bit-part actor pops up in Foiled Again (S3, E7). However, he did make a little-known but still significant contribution to modern pop-culture playing Peter Parker in the first serious attempt to bring Spider-Man to the screen in The Amazing Spider-Man in the late 70s. Another Airwolf alumni, Ernest Borgnine, pops up in an emotional aging-father-lost-son episode Mr White Death (S3, E8).
Star Trek‘s James Doohan makes an appearance in The Big Blow (S3, E19) and Orson Welles provides the voice for Robin Masters. He pops up again in Squeeze Play (S4, E7) in his third visit to the estate and Eddie Deezen, best known for playing Eugene in Grease and Malvin in WarGames (1983), makes a guest appearance – he basically plays the same character in this episode. John Saxon guest stars in Jororo Farewell (S4, E11) and while Rembrandt’s Girl (S4, E14) is a mostly painful affair, it does feature two interesting guest stars; TC’s girlfriend Gloria played by Deborah Pratt was – at the time – married to Donald P. Bellisario. She also popped up from time to time in Airwolf. And the token party girl with the horrendously awful English accent was an uncredited Jillie Mack, Tom Selleck’s wife from 1987 to the present day.
The legendary Patrick Macnee guest stars up in the wonderful, slightly off-beat Sherlock Holmes-themed episode Holmes Is Where the Heart Is (S4, E18), which is another great Higgins-centric story. Warwickshire-born June Chadwick pops up in Echoes of the Mind (S5, E1 parts 1 & 2) right before her big TV break as the other half of the leading-lizard power struggle in V, opposite Jane Badler. Cliff from Cheers, otherwise known as John Ratzenberger, pops up as a reluctant kidnapper in The Legacy of Garwood Huddle (S5, E3) and the surprising country singing talents of Dennis Weaver are showcased in Let Me Hear the Music (S5, E16). The under-valued and enchanting Lee Purcell plays a slightly potty but passionate animal rights campaigner in Old Acquaintance (S6, E2). Probably best known for playing Jan-Michael Vincent’s long-term partner, Peggy Gordon in Big Wednesday – certainly his finest moment – she popped up from time to time in other 80s TV series including, MacGyver, Simon & Simon and Murder, She Wrote. Annie Potts appears before and after her appearance in Ghostbusters (1984) first in Legacy From a Friend (S3, E18) which aired in October 1983 and later in AAPI (S7, E4) which aired in October 1986. In the penultimate episode of season 7, The People vs. Orville Wright (S7, E20) we get to see Ferris Bueller’s father (Lyman Ward) running around, shooting an UZI, which is little strange to say the least.
Technicalities
The production values obviously increased as the series gained popularity and, for the most part, they were reasonable from the outset. Thankfully there was no need to reshow the same explosion from multiple angles throughout the same episode. Magnum’s Vietnam background played heavily in the pilot episode and continues intermittently through the entire series. We see from his uniform that he was awarded the Purple Heart and the Navy Cross and we later learn that he resigned his commission in 1979.
Variations of Navy special forces can be traced back to underwater demolition teams in WWII, but SEALs as we know them today were officially born in 1961. Small numbers of SEALs were deployed as advisors to the South Vietnamese Army in 1962, but they would not engage in combat until 1966. Magnum graduated from the Naval Academy in 1967 and then served three tours. Known to the Viet Cong as ‘the men with green faces’, SEAL teams were typically used in guerrilla-style operations and as such were free to chose whatever weapons and equipment they wanted. Magnum is seen using a M16-A1 assault rifle with the larger, slightly curved, 30 round magazine that was introduced in 1969. This met with a mixed response from troops and many preferred the existing, smaller 20 round clip that is more commonly seen in movies, although the larger variation is used in Apocalypse Now (1979).
In a Vietnam flashback in the pilot episode Magnum is seen being extracted from a hot LZ by a Bell 206 JetRanger with Marine Corp markings flown by TC and with Rick providing a lame attempt at suppressing fire. The JetRanger helicopter popped up almost everywhere in TV shows of the 80s and despite actually being in service during the Vietnam War, it was never used in combat missions. At a stretch, they could’ve shown a Sikorsky H-34 Choctaw as seen in Full Metal Jacket (1987) and used by the USMC until it was replaced by the iconic UH-1, which would’ve been the most likely helicopter used. Budget restraints probably prevented this, for the pilot episode at least, since a few episodes later in Thicker Than Blood (S1, E11) the production department utilized a US Coast Guard C-130, a Sikorsky HH-52A and most impressively, a Bell AH-1 Cobra.
Interestingly, the Vietnam-set second half of Full Metal Jacket begins in Da Nang Air Base, which is where the Marine Observation Squadron 2 (VMO-2) unit was based for most of the Vietnam War. Magnum and TC are regularly seen wearing caps with “VMO-2 Da Nang” embroidered on them. The connection is never fully explained, however it’s assumed that TC and Rick both served in the VMO-2, since they were in the USMC. Moreover, that unit flew UH-1s as you’d expect and AH-1G Cobras. In Thicker Than Blood we learn than the reason TC is hellbent on helping heroin-head Joey Santino is that he saved TC’s life in Vietnam by pulling him out of the burning wreckage of a downed Cobra. Definitely no JetRangers though. Incidentally, TC flying a “busted up old Cobra” is also mentioned in passing in Did You See the Sun Rise? (S3, E1, parts 1 & 2), so clearly there is some attempt at consistency.
Since Magnum was a Navy SEAL, we can only assume that he, TC, Rick – and Felipe etc from the pilot episode– served in some kind of unique unit, made of handpicked men since it included members from multiple branches of the US military. And they all wore red berets. Then at some point this team adopted the Cross of Lorraine as a unifying emblem.
Every technical detail until now is just about hanging onto believability with its fingernails and The Last Page (S2, E19) is no exception. In another Vietnam flashback we see TC flying a UH-1 with very obvious Air Cavalry markings, Rick is the door gunner and during an exchange on the radio, the Da Nang airbase is mentioned and we even hear Magnum’s voice confirming their rendezvous time with him. However, we know this flashback is 1971 by way of a grave headstone seen a little later and that the UH-1 is actually full of US Marines, this and the fact that much of the Air Cavalry had withdrawn from South East Asia by the early 70s makes it possible, just about, with a leap of faith, that perhaps, maybe the redundant UH-1 was being borrowed by the VMO-2 unit.
It does seem weird though, that effort would’ve been made to paint that UH-1 with Air Cavalry markings and then show TC and Rick flying it. So you have to wonder whether such a specific detail was perhaps based on one of the writers or producers own experiences. Donald P. Bellisario did indeed serve in the USMC, but not during the Vietnam War. He was discharged as a Sergeant in 1959 after four years of service. Co-creator Glen A. Larson had no combat experience.
Season two
Congratulations to Magnum, by making it to a second season it had already surpassed other (now cult) one-season wonders of the 80s, including Automan, Manimal, Blue Thunder, The Highwayman and Street Hawk. Bless.
