August 29, 1967: "The Fugitive" Finale

TV Guide that week: Barry Morse as Lt. Gerard (left),

and David Janssen as Dr. Kimble

August 29, 1967, 50 years ago: The final episode of The Fugitive airs on ABC. It becomes the most-watched program in the history of American series television.

The Fugitive premiered on September 17, 1963. The premise was delivered in the series' opening narration:

The Fugitive, a QM Production. Starring David Janssen as Dr. Richard Kimble, an innocent victim of blind justice. Falsely convicted for the murder of his wife, reprieved by fate when a train wreck freed him en route to the death house.

Freed him to hide in lonely desperation, to change his identity, to toil at many jobs. Freed him to search for a one-armed man he saw leave the scene of the crime. Freed him to run before the relentless pursuit of the police lieutenant obsessed with his capture.

This narration was read by William Conrad. "QM" was Quinn Martin, who specialized in crime dramas. In the 1970s, he created and produced The Streets of San Francisco, Barnaby Jones, and Cannon, starring Conrad.

"Dick" Kimble was a pediatrician in Stafford, Indiana. The town is fictional, but in the series finale, it is suggested that it is near South Bend, home of the University of Notre Dame. His story was based on the case of Dr. Sam Sheppard, a neurosurgeon in the suburbs of Cleveland, whose wife Marilyn was murdered in 1954. He was convicted, but insisted on his innocence all the way. He never escaped, but got a 2nd trial, and was exonerated in 1966, while The Fugitive was still on the air. 

The show's creator, Roy Huggins, always insisted that the show was not based on the Sheppard case, but that claim wouldn't have held up in court.

In 1960, Route 66 had pioneered the theme of a TV show without a single set location, with a protagonist (or, in that show's case, two) going all over the country, helping people when they could, and then, when the job was done, moving on. The Fugitive added the man-on-the-run angle, which would be copied by many shows, most notably the 1977-82 CBS version of The Incredible Hulk.

Barry Morse played Lieutenant Philip Gerard, who was accompanying Kimble to the prison where he was to be executed, and thus "lost" him. It's a matter of honor for him to bring Kimble back to justice. He doesn't care that Kimble says he's innocent: Gerard is upholding the decision of the people in accordance with the law. This made him the 1st TV show antagonist who wasn't a stereotypical bad guy: He was fighting for justice in an official way, just as Kimble was in an unofficial way.

A few times, Gerard almost caught Kimble. On some occasions, they even saved each other's life, at which point Gerard's sense of honor let him give Kimble a head start on the next phase of his run.

At first, Gerard has no doubt as to Kimble's guilt. He attended the trial, and was witness to the evidence. But as the series went on, doubt crept in. At one point, when someone asked him if Kimble killed his wife, he said, "The law said he did," but he said it without conviction -- if you'll pardon my choice of words.

This fascinating dynamic made the show one of the most popular of the 1960s. And so, in what was a rarity at the time -- but not unprecedented: The Dick Van Dyke Show had already done it -- a definitive final episode was written for the show, without the network canceling it outright. Huggins knew that people wanted "the one-armed man" to be caught, and for Kimble to be vindicated.

The actual killer was played by Bill Raisch, and he was a hero in real life: He lost his right arm when he was badly burned while serving in the U.S. Merchant Marine in World War II. Before, he had been a dancer, hard to believe because of his large, bulky frame. He took to acting, and had a good career of it until his death in 1984.

And so, on Tuesday night, August 22, 1967, "The Judgment, Part I" aired. At the end, Kimble, having tracked "the one-armed man," whose name he now knows is Fred Johnson, to Los Angeles, having made contact with a relative living there, and having even found love again after 6 years on the run (an origin story, not the pilot episode, established that timeline), is about to get into a taxi, when Gerard catches him. He takes no pleasure in the arrest: "I'm sorry. You just ran out of time."

Seven nights later, "The Judgment, Part II" begins the way the pilot began, with Kimble and Gerard handcuffed together, sitting on a train. Kimble now knows that Gerard has doubts as to his guilt, suggests that Johnson is also going back to Stafford, and begs Gerard to allow him 24 more hours to prove his innocence. Gerard goes for it.

Spoiler alert for a half-century-old TV episode: At an abandoned amusement park, there is a final confrontation. Johnson shoots Gerard in the leg, and runs up a tower. Kimble chases him, they fight -- the stub of Johnson's missing right arm being a more effective weapon than you might think -- and Kimble beats a confession out of Johnson. But Johnson regains the advantage, and is about to shoot Kimble, when Gerard picks up a rifle and shoots him.

Coming down from the tower, Kimble knows that Johnson's confession is now useless. But Kimble's detective work had forced a friend who had witnessed the original murder, afraid to come forward at the time because it would suggest that he and Helen Kimble were having an affair, to admit what he saw.

The episode ends with Kimble and his new girlfriend walking out of the courthouse. He sees Gerard, and shakes his hand. Both men got what they wanted: The law upheld, and justice done. A police car pulls up. Kimble stops, but the policemen walk right past him, having no reason to pursue him. Conrad's closing narration: "Tuesday, August 29: The day the running stopped."

According to the Nielsen Ratings, over 78 million people watched, breaking the record of the February 9, 1964 edition of The Ed Sullivan Show, when The Beatles made their American debut. The Fugitive finale held the record until 1980, surpassed by "Who Done It," the episode of Dallas where it was revealed who shot J.R. Ewing. That record lasted until 1983, the finale of M*A*S*H. Although several Super Bowls have had more viewers, these remain the 3 highest-rated episodes of American TV shows.

David Janssen had previously starred on Richard Diamond, Private Detective. He would later star on O'Hara: U.S. Treasury, and as another private detective on Harry O. He did not live long enough to see Dallas break The Fugitive's record, or even to see J.R. get shot: He died on February 13, 1980, only 48 years old, of a heart attack while filming the movie Father Damien. (Ken Howard of The White Shadow was cast as his replacement.) Barry Morse had called Janssen "one of the hardest-working actors in the U.S.A.," and it appears he worked himself to death.

My generation was too young to have seen The Fugitive -- to this day, it doesn't seem to be in regular syndication -- but we did know Barry Morse, as Dr. Victor Bergman on the 1975-77 science fiction series Space: 1999. He continued acting almost up to his death in 2008.

The Fugitive has lived on: A 1993 film starring Harrison Ford, and Tommy Lee Jones as U.S. Marshal Samuel Gerard, and, this time, the one-armed man does not act alone, but is a hitman for an enemy of Kimble's; the 1998 film Wrongfully Accused, a spoof film starring Leslie Nielsen; a 2000-01 CBS series, starring Tim Daly as Kimble and Mykelti Williamson as a black Gerard; and a 2020 Quibi series, which rewrites the premise by having Boyd Holbrook play a completely different character, accused of a completely different crime, and Kiefer Sutherland as a detective who immediately finds evidence that the accusers have the wrong man, and pursues both man and angle.