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Ironside is an American television crime drama that aired on NBC over eight seasons from 1967 to 1975. The show starred Raymond Burr as Robert T. Ironside (usually addressed by the title "Chief Ironside"), a consultant for the San Francisco police department (formerly chief of detectives), who was paralyzed from the waist down after being shot while on vacation. The character debuted on March 28, 1967, in a TV movie entitled Ironside. When the series was broadcast in the United Kingdom, from late 1967 onward, it was broadcast as A Man Called Ironside. The show earned Burr six Emmy and two Golden Globe nominations. Ironside was a production of Burr's Harbour Productions Unlimited in association with Universal Television. Plot The series revolves around former San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) Chief of Detectives Robert T. Ironside (Raymond Burr), a Navy veteran, widower, a veteran of 25 years of police service, forced to retire from the department after a sniper's bullet to the spine paralyzed him from the waist down, resulting in his reliance on a wheelchair. In the pilot episode, a television movie, Ironside shows his strength of character and gets himself appointed a peculiar and unprecedented job; a "special department consultant", by his good friend, Police Commissioner Dennis Randall. He does this by calling a press conference and then tricking Commissioner Randall into meeting his terms. In the pilot, Ironside eventually solves the mystery of the ambush. He requests Ed Brown and Eve Whitfield be assigned to him as his own private law enforcement squad. Supporting characters on Ironside included Det. Sgt. Edward "Ed" Brown (Don Galloway) and a young socialite-turned-plainclothes officer, Eve Whitfield (Barbara Anderson). In addition, delinquent-turned assistant Mark Sanger (Don Mitchell), who subsequently attends and graduates from law school (night classes were mentioned from early on), joins the San Francisco police force himself in the sixth season, then marries late in the run of the series. Commissioner Randall was played by Gene Lyons. After the program's fourth season, Anderson left for personal reasons, and her character was then replaced by another young policewoman, Fran Belding (Elizabeth Baur), who filled much the same role for four more years. Ironside uses a fourth-floor room (for living and office space) in the old San Francisco Hall of Justice building, which housed the city's police headquarters. He recruits Mark Sanger to be his personal assistant after Sanger is brought in as a suspect who wanted to kill Ironside. Ironside acquires a specially equipped, former fleet-modified 1940 1+1⁄2-ton Ford police patrol wagon, with bulletproof glass and a specially modified high-performance supercharged and fuel-injected V-8 engine. This is replaced in the episode titled "Poole's Paradise" after the van is destroyed by Sergeant Brown as part of a plan to trick a corrupt sheriff. At the end of the episode, the patrol wagon is replaced by a one-off fully custom modified 1969 1-ton Ford Econoline Window Van. The show became a success as Ironside depended on brains and initiative in solving cases. Although Ironside is portrayed as good-hearted and honest, he maintains a gruff persona. The series enjoyed a seven-and-a-half-season run on NBC, drawing respectable, if not always high ratings. As the shortened eighth and final season began (only 16 of 19 episodes produced were aired by NBC), Universal released a syndicated rerun package of episodes from earlier seasons under the title The Raymond Burr Show, reflecting the practice of that time to differentiate original network episodes from syndicated reruns whenever possible. After NBC's midseason cancellation, however, the syndicated episodes reverted to the Ironside title. Cast Raymond Burr as Chief Robert T. Ironside Don Galloway as Detective Sergeant Ed Brown Barbara Anderson as Officer Eve Whitfield Don Mitchell as (later Officer) Mark Sanger Elizabeth Baur as Officer Fran Belding Gene Lyons as Commissioner Dennis Randall (recurring role) Production Locations The show was filmed in a mixture of locations, sometimes in San Francisco, but also with a large number of studio scenes (including scenes with conversations in a moving vehicle, where a traffic backdrop is used). The shows contained stock footage of San Francisco, with pan shots of Coit Tower or clips of traffic scenes. Ironside and his team used a rather large open space on the fourth floor of the Old Hall of Justice in San Francisco at 750 Kearny Street between Washington and Merchant Streets. The Old Hall had already been demolished while Ironside was still in production. It had been abandoned in 1961 and demolished in late 1967. The SFPD had begun using their new home by January 1962. In December 1967, demolition finally began. Wrecking balls and bulldozers took 5 months to raze the building. Music The opening theme music was composed by Quincy Jones, and was the first synthesizer-based television theme song. In 1971, Jones recorded a fuller four-minute band version for the album Smackwater Jack. This recording was then edited and used for the opening credits of the fifth through eighth seasons (1971–1975). (The entire album track can be heard in the fifth-season episode "Unreasonable Facsimile" as Ironside and team track a suspect on the streets of San Francisco.) The iconic theme music has since been sampled in numerous recordings and soundtracks to recent television commercials and shows, including "All Caps" by the hip-hop duo Madvillain. In addition to the opening theme music, Quincy Jones composed the entire score for the first eight episodes. Oliver Nelson took over those duties up to the end of the winter to spring 1972 episodes. Nelson was then replaced by Marty Paich for nearly all of the episodes from the beginning of the fall of that year until the last episode that was produced, in late 1974. The song "Even When You Cry", with music composed by Jones and lyrics written by Alan and Marilyn Bergman, was performed by James Farentino in the episode "Something for Nothing", while Marcia Strassman had already sung it off-screen in the earlier episode "The Man Who Believed"; both installments were originally broadcast during season one. Personnel Freddie Hubbard − trumpet Frank Rosolino − trombone Hubert Laws − flute Anthony Ortega, Jerome Richardson, Dan Higgins − reeds Howard Roberts, Bill Pitman − guitar Carol Kaye − electric bass Shelly Manne, Earl Palmer − drums Episodes Episode list * The pilot episode was titled A Man Called Ironside. ** The last three episodes of the series were not broadcast on NBC, but were later seen in syndication, as well as released on DVD. TV reunion movie Burr and the main cast reunited for a made-for-TV movie in 1993, The Return of Ironside, which aired on May 4, 1993, on NBC, not long before Burr's death. At the time, Burr was starring in a series of telefilms for NBC playing his most famo.... Discover the Amy Belding Brown popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Amy Belding Brown books.