Emergency!
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Emergency! is an American television series which ran from January 1972 to 1977. It was produced by Jack Webb and co-produced and created by Robert A. Cinader.
The series follows the Paramedic Program of the Los Angeles County Fire Department with the focus on the personnel of Fire Station 51, in particular paramedics Johnny Gage (played by Randolph Mantooth) and Roy DeSoto (played by Kevin Tighe). The paramedics coordinated with the staff of Rampart General Hospital: Dr. Kelly Brackett (Robert Fuller), Dr. Joe Early (Bobby Troup, the bandleader who wrote "Route 66"), and chief nurse Dixie McCall (Julie London). While Troup and London were married in real life, the character of McCall was written to be a love interest for Brackett.
The show highlighted the adventures of the still fledgling paramedic program and its popularity caused phenomenal growth in emergency care throughout North America. The show was also credited for demonstrating first aid techniques that enabled some viewers to save lives in real emergencies.
The series spun-off an animated version called Emergency +4 (featuring four teenagers who participated in adventures with the paramedics) which ran from 1973 to 1976. The series itself was considered a spin-off of an earlier Jack Webb series, Adam-12. Strangely, the characters in Adam-12 appear in one episode, while another episode had a subplot in which one of the paramedics watched Adam-12 as a television show. Further complicating things, is the fact that the Los Angeles County Fire Department does not serve the City of Los Angeles, it makes the spinoff somewhat factually dubious, which is not typical of Jack Webb productions.
Charlton Comics published several issues of an Emergency! comic book in the mid-1970s.
When the program was first syndicated it went by the title Emergency One. Renaming programs for syndication was commonplace until the 1980s.
Trivia
The station used in the series is actually Los Angeles County Station 127 in Carson, CA. The fire station is located off the San Diego Freeway near Alameda Street. It was chosen for its natural lighting and was later named in honor of Robert A. Cinader.
In 1994, the L.A. County Fire Department officially changed the designation of the fire station located on the grounds of Universal Studios to Station 51. It houses a three-person engine, and a two-person paramedic unit. And yes, the radio call sign of the paramedic unit is....Squad 51.
Rampart General Hospital is actually Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, located in Carson, CA at the intersection of Vermont Ave. and Carson Street.
Gage and DeSoto, the main characters used in this series, are actual names of two Los Angeles streets: Gage Ave is located in South Los Angeles, and DeSoto Ave is a street in the San Fernando Valley.
External links
- IMDB Entry (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068067/)
- emergencyFans.com (http://www.emergencyfans.com/)
- The Emergency TV Show (http://www.crazyabouttv.com/emergency.html) page at Crazy About TV contains trivia, a plot summary, cast list, and an episodes titles for the series.