Producers of Boston Legal plan to use footage from a 1957 Studio One drama, "The Defenders," featuring William Shatner, for an April 3 episode. In the old-time episode Shatner's character Denny Crane comes face-to-face with a hostage taker, who has nursed a grudge against him stemming from a court case 50 years earlier. (The original drama also featured a then unknown actor credited as "Steven McQueen." No word whether the McQueen footage will also make it into the Boston Legal episode.) "The Defenders" video was recently found in storage at the former Westinghouse Corporation, which sponsored Studio One, and is available on DVD.

That sounds neat, I like Boston Legal and enjoy seeing the crazy things that Denny does.

...were rescued from an abandoned Westinghouse (they sponsored the series on CBS for ten years) warehouse in Pennsylvania quite a few years ago. There were three volumes of selected "STUDIO ONE" released on DVD about five years ago- one of them being the two-part episode "The Defender" [2/25-3/4/57], which starred William Shatner and Ralph Bellamy as the father-and-son legal team in a story by Reginald Rose that became the basis for the 1961-'65 series "THE DEFENDERS", produced by Herbert Brodkin {who also produced the "STUDIO ONE" version} for CBS. Shatner later starred in another Brodkin legal drama, "FOR THE PEOPLE" (1965), which lasted 13 episodes on CBS.

David Kelley obviously thought it would be "neat" to interpolate footage of Bellamy and Shatner arguing the legal tactics of the case they were trying (from "The Defender"), and wrap that into the situation 'Denny' was facing in "Son of The Defender". Okay, but that footage was shown quite briefly.


It only goes to prove that Reginald Rose was a better writer than Kelley is.

:tv:

That was a great episode, I really enjoyed watching the show. Similiar was done on Falcon Crest, they used footage of one of Jane Wyman's movies and incorporated it into an episode of the shows storyline.