In 1978, ABC was looking at a script for a TV movie about a very different Man of Bronze.
With the on-again/off-again possibility of a new movie or TV series based on the Doc Savage pulps seemingly always in the Hollywood news, it’s worth looking back at a Doc Savage movie that never was.
In summer 1978, the television network ABC was looking at a script for a TV movie based on the Man of Bronze’s adventures. The script, titled Doc Savage: The Mind Assassins, was being offered to the network by Universal Studios.
This script might have been lost forever had it not been for one Leon Manuel Jr. “I’ve had this script since 1978. Someone who knew I collected scripts found it in the trash and gave it to me,” Manuel said in a note.
Fanzine flashback
This article originally appeared in The Pulpster (#19) for PulpFest 2010. It has been slightly edited and expanded as it appears here.
Editor’s note
Barry Oringer died Jan. 10, 2021, at 85.
That rescued script was written at the behest of producer Allan Balter by journeyman television writer Barry Oringer, who had scripted scores of episodes for classic TV series such as Ben Casey, The Virginian, The Fugitive, The Invaders, I Spy, Mannix, Medical Center, and Barnaby Jones.
Balter, who died in 1981, had written or produced for, among other TV programs, Mission: Impossible, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Six Million Dollar Man, and a pair of made-for-TV Captain America movies.
The Mind Assassins reads like what it is supposed to be: a 1970s action-adventure movie of the week.
“A lot of the experience (producer Allan Balter) had on Mission: Impossible he brought into the construction of this script,” Oringer recalled during a phone interview in 2010. “There was a certain formula that Mission: Impossible went by: the notion of taking a case, creating a plan — an adventurous plan — and then at a certain point, the plan disintegrates because of some unforeseen element that enters into it. Then they have to get out of that jam before they can even get back into the original plan.”
That’s very similar to the formula that Lester Dent used in writing his Doc Savage novels in the 1930s and ’40s. His “Master Fiction Plot” traces a similar, though longer, path for the hero’s struggles.
“I recall Allan bringing a lot of that kind of creative thinking into the formulation of the story for Doc Savage,” Oringer said.
It’s easy to see the strong influence of Mission: Impossible in the script.
‘Mission: Impossible’ influence
The 125-page screenplay opens in the subways of contemporary 1970s Manhattan. A beautiful woman flees from a team of masked, but shapely female assassins. The woman, called Darla, swipes a magnetic-striped card to access a secret hatch in the subway beneath the World Trade Center.
Doc and three of his aides — Long Tom, Littlejohn, and Monk — have been watching the pursuit on closed-circuit television from their headquarters in Tower One of the trade center. As Darla enters Doc’s private subway station, Doc and the three intercept her and her pursuers there.
A battle with laser guns and force-shields ensues, but Darla is killed by the assassins. Doc discovers that Darla was trying to deliver a mysterious jewel to him.
When they return to their headquarters upstairs, the jewel “awakens” and over the course of several pages, reveals in cryptic phrases (yes, the jewel can speak and also change shape) that a close friend of Doc’s has been kidnapped and forced to build a mind-control device for meglomaniac George Metastasio, known simply as M.
The jewel explains that M is building the mind-control ray at a hideout beneath Fairytaleland, an amusement park. After completing its mission, the jewel self-destructs.
Meanwhile, M begins testing the device by bouncing it off satellites to target cities around the world: A minister delivering a sermon from the pulpit suddenly pauses, then admonishes his congregation: “What the good book says is, every man for himself! It’s all a ripoff, so enjoy it while you can, rape, pillage, and plunder…”, to which the congregation cheers then rushes out the door to follow his instructions; elsewhere, a defense attorney suddenly stops his closing summary and charges the jury to send his client to the electric chair.
Not Your Grandfather’s Doc Savage
Had Universal Studios’ screenplay Doc Savage: The Mind Assassins been produced and picked up as a TV series, 1970s viewers would have come to know a Doc Savage and pals quite different than the ones most pulp readers are familiar with.
Here’s a look at the proposed TV characters:
Doc Savage: His full name, as shown briefly in the screenplay, is James Clarke Savage. Described as “ ‘Tomorrow’s Man in Today’s World,’ Doc is a handsome, engaging, totally fearless man in his 30s, a multi-millionaire, an adventurer, warrior, and surgeon, the master of a variety of spectacular combat arts and inventor of a stunning array of futuristic weapons and gadgets as part of his continual war against the forces of evil.” And “he is a man who enjoys the good life, a sexual and romantic figure, like his British friend James Bond.”
Littlejohn: The youngest member of Doc’s team at 19, “Littlejohn is a cute and lovable guy, irresistible to teenage girls, and to more than a few ‘older’ women willing to assist in his growing-up process. A bundle of appealing, sometimes wacky contradictions, Littlejohn is a true child of our time.” He’s an avid fast-food fan (often with a taco-burger in hand), much to the chagrin of Monk.
Long Tom: He’s 29 and “a character in the heroic O.J. Simpson mold: likable and bright, a former Olympic decathlon star who spent six glorious years as All-Pro wide receiver for the Miami Dolphins.” He is a human fly, acrobat, underwater daredevil, and “an expert in ancient weapons modified to accommodate Doc Savage’s most modern gadgetry.” Long Tom “is as much at home in the glamorous world of movie stars and celebrities as he is on the streets, switching with ease from champagne and caviar … to sweet-potato pie and down-home talk with his soul brothers on both sides of the law.”
Rennie: Rennie is “23, slim, almost frail in appearance.” He’s known as “The Magician,” who is “a shyly engaging young man whose sex appeal is recognized most sharply by more sensitive and perceptive females.” Likened to magician Doug Henning, Rennie is “a master illusionist, ventriloquist, mime, and expert in voices and disguises … and despite his slight build (is) an astonishingly swift and agile warrior.”
Monk: Quite the opposite of his pulp self, this Monk “is the oldest member of Doc’s team, a sophisticated, elegantly dressed, superbly educated, and brainy man of 45. … Blessed with eidetic (‘trick memory’) powers, Monk is a walking catalogue of exotic information. … Beneath the sometimes foppish exterior, he is a man of formidable mental and combat skills, … a thinking man’s hero.”
Ham: As expected, Ham is the opposite of Monk (but also the opposite of his pulp version): “A powerful and beloved giant in his late 30s, Ham is the strong man of the team. … A former longshoreman and oil field roustabout, Ham is also a flame artist. … In moments of relaxation, he will occasionally betray himself as something of an Archie Bunker, taking delight in putting down his colleague Monk for the latter’s snobbery… while Monk, as we will see, will pay him back with devastating effect for Ham’s alleged buffoonery.”
Pat Savage: “Doc’s distant cousin, Pat is a heartachingly lovely creature of 25, who the good guys will fall in love with and the bad guys will want to ravish and molest. … Pat is blessed with wit, sophistication, guile, and ingenuity; and, as her adversaries will frequently discover to their shock, she is every bit as skilled in combat arts and in Doc’s array of ingenious modernistic weapons as the other members of Doc’s team.”
In another instance, M targets the area around Yankee Stadium and prevents game seven of the World Series from being played because no one shows up. (M was traumatized after his mother took him to the park to play baseball with the other boys: “I didn’t have fun. I was humiliated. I was 10-years-old, and I could play the complete sonatas of Vivaldi on the harpsichord and recite whole passages of Virgil in the original Latin. But I couldn’t field a grounder. The other children laughed me off he field.”)
In Washington, D.C., Doc meets with his friend and CIA contact Sam Higgins, who explains that M wants world leaders to turn over all of their power to him. Doc asks Higgins to give his team 36 hours before the CIA sends in a special forces team.
Doc develops a very convoluted Mission: Impossible-style plan to stop M: Cousin Pat Savage goes undercover as one of M’s sexy assassins; Rennie takes a job as a roving magician at Fairytaleland; Littlejohn, Monk, Long Tom, and Ham employ other disguises to infiltrate the park; and Doc monitors everything by closed-circuit TV from a nearby van — until he is surprised and captured by M’s female assassins using laser paralyzers, stun guns, and anesthetic bullets.
To make a convoluted story shorter: Doc and his pals thwart M’s dastardly plan, with M apparently dying in the resulting explosion of the mind-control device.
The screenplay ends with Doc and the gang “seated around a lavish banquet table, being served a sumptuous dinner … by Monk, serving as proud chef and maitre d’ (with) the camera panning across the diners as they feast on ris de veau, crepes Lorraine, pheasant a la estragon, and Chateau Lafite ’61”:
PAT
Not bad, Monk. This’ll get us right in shape for the next bunch of bad guys.
MONK
Assuming, of course, that we don’t run into Metastasio again.
LONG TOM
No way he could have gotten out alive.
They all look up at Doc, who has been silent, and Ham asks:
HAM
What do you think, Doc?
DOC
I think… this was an excellent year for Bordeaux.
‘It was a hard sale to begin with’
“Allan Balter had a great deal to do with developing the plot for Doc Savage,” Oringer recalled. “We worked together so closely on the story line that it’s impossible for me, especially at this distance in time, to separate our respective contributions.”
“Most of the details that followed tended to be my own; things like the ‘magic’ gem. As I recall, Allan was something of a genius regarding story construction.”
“You know, we took a lot of liberties,” Oringer said. “It was based, generally speaking, on the original character.”
But, “vaguely, as a kid I seem to recall he was a comic-book character. I think… I go back to the radio days,” he said. “He may have been a radio character.
“I was kind of briefed on (the books). There may have been one book I looked at. But, you know, we took a lot of liberties with everything. And we certainly would have done that with this.”
The script went through two drafts dated June 8 and 12, 1978, then was sent over the ABC. “It would be normal procedure for a second draft to be sent over to the network. I’m not sure if the first draft was,” Oringer said. “I don’t recall if I did any polishing after that.”
On Aug. 10, 1978, it landed on the desk of Tony Thomopoulos, who was president of the network at the time. He scribbled a note on the cover — “Cliff — What are your feelings? (signed) TT, cc. Stoddard” — a week later. (It appears “Cliff” was Clifford Alsberg, a dramatic development executive at ABC, while “Stoddard” was probably Brandon Stoddard, vice president of dramatic programming for the network.)
“I think (the script) generated some interest” at ABC, Oringer said. “If Thomopoulos was going to send it to Alsberg, I think some interest was generated there, but ultimately they decided that’s not the kind of show they wanted to do.”
Had the movie been produced, it would have been a very different Doc Savage than the one preceding it in the pulps. Though its enjoyability is debatable, the George Pal movie, Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze, in 1974 put a more familiar group of adventurers on the screen than The Mind Assassins would have. (See sidebar.)
But, screenwriter Oringer doubted it would have become an ongoing series.
“You know, I think it was a hard sale to begin with,” he said, “because I don’t really think it was what the networks were really looking for at that time. That’s my vague sense. The project just came to life again, briefly enough to bring interest in a script. But the era of that kind of show, I think, was fading out, Mission: Impossible was fading out or had faded out at that time.”
He continued, “I think (there) was a transition away from violent, action shows to more character-based shows, more police dramas. There was a lot of industry pressure at that time to reduce the level of violence in television in general. And the networks were feeling the heat. …
“The Mission: Impossible-type show, the comic-book-hero format show were really on the periphery of television. They were not really the heart of what television was doing.”
Despite being passed around ABC, there was no talk of who might have played Doc or his aides, Oringer said.
“Unless somebody had been attached to the project from the start, those decisions are pretty much made once a network decides to go with a pilot film,” he said. “Certainly with this project, you did not get the notion of constructing a movie around a preconceived actor. We never got into those discussions.”
About the author
William Lampkin is editor of ThePulp.Net. He is editor and designer of The Pulpster. And, he writes the Yellowed Perils blog.
