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Another problem never encountered by Poe, Conan Doyle or Chandler lies in TV's special taboos. "Any professional writer," says Professional Writer Carr, "learns all about them fast. We had to be careful on one of our Eye shows because it involved dope, and one of the sponsors was tied in with Pharmaceuticals. On Staccato, Johnny was not allowed to ask the heavy for a cigarette. An executive reminded us that the sponsor (Salem) sells cigarettes, and that even the heavy would never be without them. Ask him for matches."
Most TV writers bat out their Private Eye scripts in two or three days. Not long ago one producer tried to persuade a writer to take more time for real quality work, offered an above-average $2,250 per script. "He did some figuring on a piece of paper and said, 'I'm sorry. I have to make $50,000 for the year, and I couldn't afford to take that much time with one script.' " Concludes 45-year-old Writer-Producer Roy (Maverick) Huggins, whose novel The Double Take was the model for Sunset Strip: "Television is for younger men—about 14 years of age —and I'm getting out."
Most Private Eye writers (all above the age of 14) are either too busy or too contemptuous of their subject matter to get into the guts of their characters. With too few exceptions, the type they have created is a cardboard clotheshorse carrying a schtick. But there are some hopeful signs that future TV sleuths will be cut to more varied patterns. M-G-M-TV is getting ready with a video version of Agatha Christie's little Belgian cerebrater, Hercule Poirot. Writer Frank Gruber, who has already turned out more westerns than he cares to count, is dusting off an Eye named Johnny Fletcher, a slick spieler who never won a fistfight in his life. Herb (Have Gun) Meadows has tried to combine the oater and the peeper; his Man from Blackhawk is a 19th century investigator operating in the old West.
Even in his most stereotyped form, the TV Eye occasionally manages to shoot his way through to an evening of satisfactory recreation. And he is collecting such rewards that his bosses may yet do him justice; they may treat him with respect and turn him into a man. If that happens he will be closer to Chandler's hero: "A relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all ... He will take no man's money dishonestly and no man's insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge . . . He talks as a man of his age talks—that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham and a contempt for pettiness." He will also be closer to the real Private Eye, who earns his living on the streets—the keyhole peeker, the credit investigator, the man at the other end of the telephone tap. Between those two extremes, the TV Eye may yet make a few more hours of television worth watching.
* Of 28 Private Eyes once on radio, only one remains: Johnny Dollar (CBS).