Word: kojak
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...Petrocelli dreamed of being a musician. He took up the trumpet and migrated to California to major in music at UCLA. Gelblum, who was a theater major at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, worked as an actor in New York City. He once played a killer on the television series Kojak. Both men realized the financial restrictions of their chosen fields and went to law school. They joined Mitchell, Silberberg, a 100-lawyer West Los Angeles law firm, where Petrocelli at first specialized in entertainment law and later focused on civil litigation. Gelblum began doing real estate and especially probate litigation...
...much at home around prostitutes.") Rarely has TV portrayed casual racial stereotyping with as much humor or human understanding. Cop-show stereotypes come in for even more satire. The police in this California backwater are a far cry from the cool, macho professionals who have populated TV dramas from Kojak to NYPD Blue. Mostly they are wimpy, neurotic, overemotional misfits, more obsessed with interpersonal trivia than the demands of police work. Not that the police work is very demanding. The morning roll call in Bakersfield P.D. is like Hill Street Blues on happy juice: "We've got two officers down...
Though hardly as romanticized as Kojak or Miami Vice, TV's current reality- based picture of cops is a highly favorable one. To be sure, real cops are a grittier bunch; their jobs are less glamorous, and their human frailties more apparent. All the more reason, these shows say, to admire the tough work they do -- and their openness to scrutiny. "As long as police allow us to film them," says Cops executive producer John Langley, "I feel good about this country...
...Oklahoma Senator has been dared by Virginia Jenner, an underdog Democratic primary challenger, to grin and bare it: "If Kojak, Ike and Gorbachev can face the world without a hairpiece, why can't David Boren...
Meanwhile, Olmos had been getting a reputation for inflexibility, an actor who tended to ruffle feathers on the set. During a Kojak appearance, his reluctance to say a line he did not think believable prompted Telly Savalas to call him a "prima donna." This intractability came to the fore when Producer Michael Mann called Olmos in 1984 and asked him to take the role of Lieut. Martin Castillo on a new show called Miami Vice. "I told him I couldn't do it," recalls Olmos. "It wasn't that I didn't need it. As it was, my wife...