Ironside (TV series)

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Ironside
Raymond Burr as Ironside
Genre	Drama
Creator(s)	Collier Young
Starring	Raymond Burr as Robert Ironside Don Galloway as Det. Sgt. Ed Brown Don Mitchell as Mark Sanger
Theme music composer	Quincy Jones
Country of origin	United States
No. of episodes	195
Production
Running time	60 to 90 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	NBC
Original run	March 28, 1967 – January 16, 1975

Ironside (originally broadcast under the name A Man Called Ironside in the United Kingdom) was a Universal television series which ran on NBC from March 28, 1967 to January 16, 1975. The character's debut was in a TV-movie in early 1967.

The show starred Raymond Burr (formerly of the hit 1960s legal show Perry Mason) as former San Francisco Police Department Chief of Detectives Robert T. Ironside, who was forced to retire from the department after a sniper's bullet paralyzed him from the waist down and confined him to a wheelchair. As a "special department consultant," Ironside retained a floor (for living and office space) at police headquarters and made use of a specially modified and equipped police van to accommodate his wheelchair. The show became a success as Ironside depended on brains and initiative in handling his cases.

The supporting characters who helped Ironside out through this difficult time included Police Commissioner Dennis Randall (Gene Lyons), rookie detective Sgt. Ed Brown (Don Galloway) and young plainclothes officer Eve Whitfield (Barbara Anderson), who were all cracking some amazing and serious cases. There was also delinquent-turned-bodyguard Mark Sanger (Don Mitchell), who subsequently graduated from law school to become a lawyer late in the run of the series. By the show's fourth season, Eve Whitfield was replaced by another young policewoman, Fran Belding (Elizabeth Baur), who filled much the same role for four more years. (Anderson left show business to marry and start a family.)

One of the longer-running police dramas of the day, the series featured appearances by a number of actors who would go on to become stars, such as Harrison Ford, Joan Van Ark, Susan Sullivan, Bill Bixby, David Hartman, Kent McCord, John Rubinstein, Jack Lord, Norman Fell, Gavin MacLeod, Gary Collins, William Shatner and Martin Sheen among many others. Music legend Quincy Jones, who wrote the Ironside theme song, made a guest appearance as well.

Burr and the rest of the cast reunited for a made-for-TV movie in 1993 which aired not long before Burr's death. Burr was starring in an ongoing series of Perry Mason TV movies at the time, so in order to make himself look less like the other character, he dyed his hair red and modified his full beard to a goatee for the Ironside movie. Unlike the original series, which took place in San Francisco, California, the reunion took place in Denver, Colorado, which was also where the last few of Burr's Perry Mason films were produced. According to amazon.com the first season is scheduled for release on April 24, 2007.