Trivia / Dan August

• Actor-Shared Background: Dan August was a college football star who became a homicide cop. Burt Reynolds was a college football star who became an actor.
• Directed by Cast Member: Burt Reynolds did some second-unit directing on the series.
• The Pete Best: Christopher George as Dan, Keenan Wynn as Sgt. Wilentz and Barry Sullivan as Untermeyer were replaced for the series by Burt Reynolds, Norman Fell and Richard Anderson, respectively.
• Production Posse:
  • Burt managed to get his buddies James Best and Mike Henry guest-starring roles in "In the Eyes of God" and "When the Shouting Dies", respectively. Both men would often make appearances in some of Reynolds' movies over the years, and even when he couldn't find a part for them, he'd see to it they were part of the crew, usually as an Associate Producer.
  • Being a friend of Burt Reynolds worked in a couple of other folks' favors. Fernando Lamas was cast in the episode "The Worst Crime" thanks to Burt, and he also got Robert Totten, a frequent guest star and director that Burt knew from his Gunsmoke days, a job directing the episode "When the Shouting Dies".
    • Having a lot of Burt's friends around didn't work out for some directors of the series. Gerald Mayer, who directed the episode "The Worst Crime", claimed that Reynolds' buddies who were in the episode wouldn't listen to him. They'd look at Reynolds first, as if to get his approval, then do whatever the director wanted. Mayer couldn't work like that and thusly, it was the only episode he directed.
• Real-Life Relative: Chris and Lynda Day George appeared together in the pilot film. They enjoyed working together when they could, and it certainly showed.
• Similarly Named Works: The episode "Trackdown" is in no way, shape or form related to the Robert Culp Western series.
• You Look Familiar: Several cast members from the series' pilot film returned for different roles in the series:
  • Burr DeBenning in "Murder By Proxy".
  • Tim O'Connor in "Invitation to Murder".
  • Walter Pidgeon in "The Law".
  • Barry Sullivan in "The Titan".
    • There's an interesting scene in "The Titan" with Sullivan, Burt Reynolds and Richard Anderson, where he mentions that his character in the episode, Pete Killian, once served on the Santa Anita police force with Chief Untermeyer. Sullivan played Untermeyer in the series' pilot, The House on Greenapple Road!

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