Car 54 Where Are You?
 Nat Hiken followed up the hugely successful Phil Silvers
Show with this NBC show featuring the antics of two NYPD
patrol vehicle officers as they cruised the streets of the 53rd
precinct, the Bronx.
Fred Gwynne played the tall and sombre Francis Muldoon, and his
hopelessly dim-witted partner, Gunther Toody, was played by Joe E.
Ross who had previously been seen as Bilko's regular foil, Rupert
Ritzik.
Hiken even retained some of the old Bilko chemistry by
employing actress Beatrice Pons to appear as Ross's wife, as she
had done back at Fort Baxter.
To complete the comic connection Al
Lewis appeared as Officer Leo Schauser, before teaming up again
with Gwynne in The Munsters, at the end of Car 54's
two-season run.
Officers Toody and Muldoon were among the most unlikely
patrol-car partners ever seen on a police force. Toody was short,
stocky, friendly, and just a bit nosy, a marked contrast to the
tall, quiet Muldoon. Although they were assigned to New York's
53rd precinct - a run down area in the Bronx - they always seemed
to encounter more comedy than crime.
Much of the series was shot on location on the streets of New
York. To avoid confusion, their car was painted bright red so it
would not be mistaken for an authentic police vehicle. This
obviously did not show in the black and white film)
As the 1990s dawned, and Hollywood movie producers began to
look back fondly and with covetous eyes at their childhood TV
favourites, so Car 54 was updated for the big screen. It
could have worked, had it been done well, but it was not.
The Car 54, Where Are You? movie was a crass, insulting
shambles, made without regard to the qualities of the original and
an ill-judged wholesale embrace of the 'rap' culture that heaps
embarrassment upon the production.
David Johansen starred as the gravel-voiced Toody, John C
McGinley was cast as Muldoon and Rosie O'Donnell as Lucille. One
nice touch was that two veterans of the TV series were employed:
Al Lewis as the about-to-retire Leo Schnauzer (clearly, no regard
was paid to spelling either) and Nipsey Russell appeared again as
Anderson, now promoted to the rank of station captain.
When completed, the best possible thing happened to this
travesty of a movie: Orion Pictures, the production company, went
into bankruptcy and it never came out. It has however aired on
television.
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