THE MYSTERIES OF ROY HUGGINS AND THE DEPORTATION OF HARRY CARLISLE

A biography of the creator of 77 Sunset Strip, The Fugitive, and The Rockford Files explores why he testified before the HUAC during the Red Scare.

Cantrell’s exhaustively researched biography of mystery author and television writer, producer, and creator Roy Huggins describes his fruitful career in Hollywood in impressive detail, focusing on the shadow over his legacy. While at UCLA during the Depression, Huggins was affiliated with campus groups that led him to intermittently become a member of the Communist Party. He left that all behind him by the late 1940s and turned his success as a mystery scribe into a career in Hollywood as television was booming. (“Huggins had exited the movie industry just as ticket sales were declining, for television with its rapidly rising viewership.”) Though sought after for his acumen as a writer, he was briefly blacklisted in 1952 and became a cooperative witness in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee. He named names (Huggins claimed the government already knew them) and quickly reestablished his career. After leaving Warner Brothers, buoyed by the successes of the television series 77 Sunset Strip (the first one-hour detective show), Maverick, and The Fugitive, Huggins was made vice president of TV production at 20th Century Fox. Cantrell’s research has left no stone unturned in his effort to explore Huggins’s remarkable career, which spanned decades and laid the groundwork for what are now standard dramatic TV formulas. The author looks in depth at Huggins’ decision to be a friendly witness before the HUAC and his participation in the immigration hearings of Harry Carlisle, a communist agent; stories of the those affected by the blacklist paint a vivid and troubling picture of the period. (A fascinating section about student activism at UCLA in the 1930s has striking parallels to some things seen today.) Unfortunately, this biography can bog down in the details, as multitudes of books, films, and television episodes are listed with production credits but not much narrative.

A comprehensive if sometimes clunky account of a giant in entertainment with an asterisk by his name.