40 Fun Facts About Highway Patrol (TV Series)

Which Family Feud host was named after Broderick Crawford, gruff star of TV's Highway Patrol?

Steve Harvey was born Broderick Stephen Harvey in 1957, while the series was still in its first run. He revealed the tribute himself on an episode of the game show.

Which police radio code, meaning 'acknowledged', rings out constantly over Highway Patrol's car radios?

10-4 was so central to the show that its reruns were sold to stations under the title Ten-Four. The ten-codes themselves were devised for the Illinois State Police in the late 1930s.

Which Los Angeles policeman turned writer penned Highway Patrol scripts under the name Robert Wesley?

Gene Roddenberry wrote five episodes and left the LAPD in 1956 to write full time. A decade later he created Star Trek.

Which future Oscar-winning director played a motorcycle gang member in a 1956 episode of Highway Patrol?

Clint Eastwood was still scraping by on bit parts, two years before the Western series Rawhide gave him his breakthrough. That same year he also played a hot-tempered army officer on ABC.

Which 1949 political drama won Broderick Crawford the Best Actor Oscar, years before Highway Patrol?

All the King's Men won him the Oscar over John Wayne, who was nominated for Sands of Iwo Jima. The film also took Best Picture.

In which 1977 film does an Alabama patrolman invoke Broderick Crawford's name while confronting a sheriff?

Smokey and the Bandit has the trooper cut off Jackie Gleason's Sheriff Buford T. Justice, whose wrecked car horn will not stop blaring.

Which style of hat did Highway Patrol's plain-clothes chief wear in place of a uniform cap?

Fedora and business suit set the chief apart from his uniformed officers. Broderick Crawford put the same outfit back on in 1977 to send up the role on television.

In which Stephen King novel does young Ben Hanscom idolise Broderick Crawford's Highway Patrol chief?

It follows seven outcast children in Derry, Maine, in the late 1950s, the very years when the series was on the air.

Which basic fact about the police force in Highway Patrol is never revealed in any of its episodes?

The state it serves is described only as a western one bordering Mexico, and the scripts drew on patrol files from across the country.

Which gruff chief, forever barking orders into a car radio, did Broderick Crawford play in Highway Patrol?

Dan Mathews was given no precise title beyond chief; the actor said he was simply the boss. He is the only regular character across all four seasons.

Which car maker built the Century sedans that the real California Highway Patrol loaned to TV's Highway Patrol?

Buick built 270 of the two-door cars for the real force in 1955, a body style the public could not buy. Later seasons used four-door models that were not police cars.

Which 1970s police series gave Broderick Crawford a cameo as himself, joking about Highway Patrol?

CHiPs followed two California Highway Patrol motorcycle officers, which made the old chief a fitting guest. His cameo came in the 1977 episode Hustle.

Which comedy show did Broderick Crawford host in 1977, appearing in a spoof of Highway Patrol?

Saturday Night Live had him host in March 1977, with Levon Helm, Dr. John and The Meters as the musical guests.

Which university did Broderick Crawford drop out of soon after enrolling, to work on the New York docks?

Harvard lost him to a job as a stevedore, and he soon went back to the stage and radio, the world his performer parents had raised him in.

Which John Steinbeck drama made Broderick Crawford a Broadway name, playing the gentle giant Lennie?

Of Mice and Men opened on Broadway while the novel was still a bestseller, but he lost the part in the film version to Lon Chaney Jr.

Which real-life lawman did Highway Patrol's Broderick Crawford play in a 1977 film biography?

J. Edgar Hoover was his title role in Larry Cohen's film, which ends by suggesting that the FBI director's secret files helped bring down Richard Nixon.

Highway Patrol did much of its location shooting in which then-rural valley just north of Hollywood?

San Fernando was still mostly open country, as was neighbouring Simi Valley, so the crew found quiet roads a short drive from the studio.

Which future Star Trek regular took small roles in both Highway Patrol and Sea Hunt before finding fame?

Leonard Nimoy played more than 50 small parts in those years, including a Martian named Narab in the 1952 serial Zombies of the Stratosphere.

From 2004, an October parade of classic police cars stopped at which Hollywood tribute to Broderick Crawford?

His Walk of Fame star for films is one of two he has on Hollywood Boulevard; the other honours his television work. The Highway Patrol tribute parade began in 2004.

Which production company, also behind Sea Hunt and The Cisco Kid, made Highway Patrol fast and cheaply?

Ziv Television was run by Frederick Ziv of Cincinnati, and the police drama became the most profitable show his company ever made.

Which TV producer first agreed to make a California Highway Patrol drama, then dropped out?

Jack Webb, whose Dragnet was the model the force wanted, pulled out when his jazz drama Pete Kelly's Blues was picked up.

Which radio call sign did Broderick Crawford's chief use to identify himself on the air in Highway Patrol?

21-50 followed a real California rule: officers added 2000 to their badge number on the air, and the chief's badge was number 150.

Willie Stark, Broderick Crawford's Oscar-winning role, was closely modelled on which Louisiana politician?

Huey Long, the governor and senator nicknamed the Kingfish, was assassinated in the state capitol in 1935 while planning a run for president.

As a wartime sergeant, Broderick Crawford announced the weekly radio show of which bandleader?

Glenn Miller's Army Air Forces band used him as an announcer on its wartime broadcasts, and he was sent to Britain as a sergeant in 1944.

In which poker game is one starting hand nicknamed a 'Broderick Crawford', after the Highway Patrol star?

Texas hold 'em players also call the same two cards a Convoy, a nod to the CB radio craze that kept the old chief's favourite code alive in the 1970s.

Which humour magazine spoofed Highway Patrol in 1960, with caricatures drawn by Mort Drucker?

Mad ran the parody in its October 1960 issue, early in Drucker's five decades of drawing the magazine's film and television satires.

Which animal, taken from a real police force's emblem, appeared on shoulder patches in early Highway Patrol?

Bear and all, the patch was the California Highway Patrol's own design with its lettering taken off, a look kept for three seasons.

From 1963, Highway Patrol was shown by public broadcaster ZDF in which European country?

West Germany's second public channel picked the show up, and it was also seen in France and across most of Latin America.

How did Highway Patrol reach viewers from 1955 to 1959, without a slot on ABC, CBS or NBC?

Syndication meant each episode was sold directly to local stations, and in some cities the show drew bigger audiences than network programmes.

Which announcer, also the voice of countless film trailers, narrated all 156 episodes of Highway Patrol?

Art Gilmore gave the show its documentary feel, and he had earlier supplied the voice of President Roosevelt in the film Yankee Doodle Dandy.

Which Highway Patrol regular, Sergeant Ken Williams, later played Sergeant MacDonald throughout Adam-12?

William Boyett played lawmen so often that he also wore a badge in Sea Hunt, Batman and Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Which later Oscar nominee for The Mark played Sergeant Walters in sixteen episodes of Highway Patrol?

Stuart Whitman was working part-time in a slaughterhouse when he was cast, and he struck up a lasting friendship with the show's star.

Which future producer of The Fugitive worked on Highway Patrol as its sound supervisor?

Quinn Martin carried the show's brisk, documentary style into his own hits, which also included The F.B.I. and The Streets of San Francisco.

Which 1961 series reunited Broderick Crawford with Highway Patrol's makers, as a roving security chief?

King of Diamonds cast him as John King, who chased gem smugglers and thieves around the world, but it lasted only one season.

Which Italian director cast Broderick Crawford as a swindler in Il bidone, just as Highway Patrol began?

Federico Fellini had Humphrey Bogart in mind for the ageing con man, by one account, before he settled on Crawford.

Which former quarry, a Highway Patrol location, later served as the Batcave entrance in TV's Batman?

Bronson Canyon's cave mouths are tunnels left by a quarry that closed in the late 1920s, a ready-made wilderness for Westerns and science fiction.

Which Hollywood studio bought Highway Patrol's production company in 1960, a year after the series ended?

United Artists folded the firm into its own television arm within two years, and the rights to all 156 episodes later passed to MGM.

How was one three-minute Highway Patrol scene, packing in a robbery, a murder and an escape, filmed?

In a single take, the crew captured the lot, typical of a show its makers kept fast and cheap at two episodes a week.

Broderick Crawford's parents, Helen Broderick and Lester Crawford, were a double act in which kind of show?

Vaudeville was the family trade, his grandparents included, and his mother later played wisecracking friends in Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals.

Which Los Angeles landmark, home to a famous hilltop observatory, was a regular Highway Patrol location?

Griffith Park gave the crew wild-looking hills only minutes from their Hollywood studio, which suited a show made at speed.