US
Producer
Born Martin Cohn. Born in New
York City, New York,
U.S.A., 22 May 1922.
Died, in Rancho Santa Fe,
California, 6 September 1987.
Quinn
Martin, among the most prolific
and consistent television producers, helped to create and
control some of television's
most successful and popular series
from the 1950s through the
1970s. At various times in the
1960s and 1970s, Martin simultaneously had as many as
four series on various networks.
Martin's early television career
consisted of writing and
producing for many shows at Ziv Studios
and at Desilu where he was given
the production chores for the
Desilu Playhouse production of
the two-hour television movie,
"The Untouchables,"
which served as the basis for
the series. Under Martin, The
Untouchables became a huge hit
for ABC. Martin left after the
first two seasons to form his
own production company, QM
Productions. The first series
from QM, The New Breed, was
unusual in that it was
unsuccessful. But during the
years at Desilu and during the
first years of QM, Martin
surrounded himself with a cadre
of writers, directors, and
producers who would later ably
serve him when he was juggling
the production schedules of
several series. Alan Armer,
George Eckstein, Walter Grauman,
and John Conwell are but a few
of the names to appear again and
again in the credits of QM
productions.
QM and Martin entered into an
era of considerable success
during the 1960s. Among the
shows to come from QM during
this period was The Fugitive,
Twelve O'Clock High, The F.B.I.,
and The Invaders, all broadcast
on ABC. Indeed, the relationship
between QM and ABC was
enormously beneficial to both,
despite repeated charges that
both the production company and
the network rode to their mutual
successes upon a wave of violent
programming begun with The
Untouchables and continuing as a
central stylistic feature in QM
programs.
It was also during this period
that two aspects of Quinn
Martin's
approach to television
production emerged. First was
the QM
segmented program format: a
teaser; an expository
introduction which often
employed the convention of a
narrator; a body broken into
Acts I, II, III, and IV; and an
epilogue, again using an
off-screen narrator to explain
or offer insight into the
preceding action. So
recognizable did this convention
become that it was parodied in
the 1982 sitcom, Police Squad.
Second, Martin compartmentalized
his productions.
This was done
not only out of necessity
resulting from the volume of
television being produced by the
company but also because of the
trusted individuals with whom
Martin populated QM. At QM, the
writers, producers, and
post-production supervisors had
very well-defined tasks and
would rarely stray beyond the
parameters established by
Martin. John Conwell, casting
director and assistant to Martin
for years, often referred to
Martin as "Big Daddy"
because of his paternalistic
approach to production.
Additionally, as Cooper reports,
Alan Armer credited Martin with changing the face of the
telefilm by moving from the
soundstage to the outdoors
and by ensuring authenticity by
employing night-for-night shooting, as
described in, The Fugitive. Too
often producers would save a few
dollars by simply darkening film
footage shot during the day to
simulate night time. Not Quinn
Martin. He made money and he
spent money. In 1965, Television
Magazine, quoted Martin as
saying that the 10% he would
have paid an agent (if he had
retained one) was simply rolled
back into production.
The success of QM and of Martin
continued well into the 1970s. Preeminent and longest running
among the QM shows of this era
were The Streets of San
Francisco, Cannon, and Barnaby
Jones, itself a spin-off of
Cannon. Martin had at least a
half dozen other series in prime
time during the 1970s. During
this period virtually every QM
show dealt with law enforcement
and crime.
Since the first days of The
Untouchables Martin had been
criticized for using excessive
violence in his productions. A
new criticism was now mounted
against Martin's work because of
the subject matter.
Critics claimed that Martin's
shows enforced the dominant
ideology of the inherent value
of law and order. They suggested
that the bulk of Martin's work
legitimized a right-wing,
conservative agenda. As Newcomb
and Alley indicated in The
Producer's Medium, Martin openly
acknowledged his fondness for
authority and his positive
presentation of institutions of
police powers--individual,
state, and federal.
Martin sold QM Productions to
Taft Broadcasting around 1978.
Part of the agreement was for
Martin to leave television
production for five years and
not to compete with Taft. Martin
became an adjunct professor at
Warren College of the University
of California, San Diego. In the
late 1980s Martin headed QM
Communications in order to
develop motion pictures for
Warner Bros. He died in 1987
leaving behind a production
legacy of 17 network series, 20 made-for-television movies, and
a feature film, The Mephisto
Waltz. No one has yet surpassed
his streak of 21 years with a
show in prime time.
-John Cooper
