Trivia / Barney Miller

• Advertising Campaigns: ABC ordered the 1982 series The New Odd Couple starring Ron Glass as Felix as a last minute attempt to have a new show during an upcoming writer's strike, remaking scripts from the Tony Randall/Jack Klugman version. As a result, no footage of the new show was available for Fall Preview Specials, so ABC used footage of Glass as Harris suffering from a cold to approximate Felix, as well as footage of Demond Wilson from a One Season Wonder show called Baby, I'm Back to approximate Oscar.
• Board Game: In 1977 Parker Brothers released a card/ board game featuring the gang at the Ol' One Two.
• The Cast Show Off: Steve Landesberg (Dietrich) occasionally used his talent for doing impressions, most notably in his character's debut appearance when he imitates Gregory Peck after being asked to answer the phone in a "strong, manly voice."
• The Character Died with Him: On January 11, 1979, midway through the show's run, Jack Soo, who portrayed Yemana, passed away. In response, a special memorial episode was aired in which the actors appeared as themselves, out of character, and recalled their favorite Yemana scenes. The episode ended with entire cast raising their coffee cups in tribute. Although there was never an in-continuity explanation for Yemana's death, the wistful way in which characters referred to him for the rest of the series made it clear that he had died rather than Put on a Bus.
• Corpsing:
  • The early episode "Bureaucrat" has a terrific example. David Wayne's brilliant comic drunk performance has Jack Soo covering his mouth to keep his laughter hidden, as well as Hal Linden grinning, and Milt Kogan smiling and looking away to keep his laughter from ruining the take.
  • Jack Soo was most prone to this. In the retrospective, the cast remembers how he would often be in the background of a scene, sitting at his desk, shaking silently with laughter. When Nick (Jack Soo) is flirting with Dorothy Murakami (Nobu McCarthy), she closes the last mug book and says "Are there any other pictures you want me to see?" Nick replies "There's a double feature playin' at the Toho^note The Toho Theater on 45th St. — [cracks up] oh my God." He sets off Nobu McCarthy too, she can barely get through her next line. And they Threw It In!
  • It's not uncommon to see one of the other actors giggling in the background after a particularly funny interchange. One notable instance is in "Smog" after Wojo's "they lost Fish"^note not dead, just lost after Fish left the ambulance gaffe. Barney collapses into a chair and hides his face as though recovering from the moment of horror, but a closer look shows that Hal Linden is hiding his laughter.
• The Danza: Ron Glass as Sgt. Ron Harris.
• Dawson Casting:
  • Yemana claims in one episode that he will be 46 on his next birthday; however, Jack Soo, who played Yemana, was over 60 when the series premiered.
  • Unwittingly played straight with Steve Landesberg as Dietrich; in his first appearance, Dietrich claims to be 28, and for many years, Landesberg was believed to have been born in 1945, which would have made him 30 years old at the time. However, he was actually born in 1936, making him over a decade older than Dietrich; self-consciousness about starting acting relatively late in life prompted him to lie about his age. (Even at his death in 2010, Landesberg's IMDB page listed his birth year as 1945.)
• Directed by Cast Member:
  • Hal Linden directed the fourth season episode "Corporation".
  • Somewhat fittingly Max Gail directed the fourth season episode "Wojo's Problem".
• Hostility on the Set: Hal Linden has admitted that he and Gregory Sierra (Chano) did not get along.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Although it has been proved moderately successful with the audiences, the show hardly shown in reruns until TV Land started airing it in late 1990s; they stopped showing it in 2003 or 2004. In recent years (recently as mid-2010s), fetv and Sundance TV started to airing the show which continues to this day. Some other streaming services have two to four seasons; nobody has the whole thing. It can be viewed (almost) entirely on YouTube uploaded by fans; these episodes are routinely removed per The U.S. Copyright Laws, but there are always some available.
  • As for DVDs, somehow for some strange reason, some DVDs with "best of" episodes, each focusing on a particular character^note leading fans to wonder how you could choose the "best of" an excellent show like this were released in the '90s; the first 3 seasons were released by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment in the 2000s; and that was it until 2011 when Shout! Factory decided to release all the remaining five seasons and now offer a box set with all eight seasons.
• One-Hit Wonder: Played with; in 1965, Jack Soo claimed to be the first male non-African American artist to record "For Once in My Life" for Motown records; Jean DuShon, Connie Haines, and Barbara McNair released versions of it in 1966 and 1965. Soo's recording was never released and shelved in the Motown archives. The Four Tops and The Temptations recorded versions of it, and Stevie Wonder recorded his version at about the same time as the Temptations' version. Berry Gordy initially refused to release the recording until Billie Jean Brown persuaded Gordy to release it in 1968
• The Other Darrin:
  • Abby Dalton played Barney's wife Liz in the pilot, while Barbara Barrie took over the role for the series.
  • Florence Stanley played Bernice Gruber Fish in seasons 1 and 3. In Bernice's only appearance in season 2, she was played by Doris Belack.
• Prop Recycling: The familiar boxing poster regularly seen on the hallway wall opposite the squad room's door first appeared in Chano's apartment in the first season's "The Hero".
• Science Marches On: In "Bones", a Native American activist says that Earth is the only planet to have liquid water. Thirty-three years later, liquid water was discovered on Mars.
• Troubled Production: A mild example because the show's unusual production schedule didn't cause too much friction on set. Danny Arnold, the show's creator, would obsessively rewrite and re-stage scenes even as shows were being shot, meaning that shooting days regularly ended in the early hours of the morning as the cast struggled to learn new lines and the crew scrambled to rearrange the set. It got to the point where the show stopped using a studio audience and switched to a laugh track because recording sessions ran so long and because everyone realized that the moments that made the show special were so understated that the audience reactions were so inaudible that having one almost pointless.
• You Look Familiar:
  • Pretty frequent, as the series took almost a rep company approach to casting. A mugging victim in one episode might reappear as an armed robbery suspect the next season. Several later cast additions originally played criminals hauled in for questioning, before being cast in a permanent role.
    • Steve Landesberg appeared as accused fake priest "Father" Paul in the Series 2 episode "Doomsday" before being cast as Dietrich later in the season.
    • Ron Carey played bank robber Angelo "the Mole" Molinari in the Series 2 episode "The Mole", and began appearing as Officer Levitt starting in Series 3.
    • Between his first and second appearances as recurring character Lt. Scanlon, George Murdock appeared as an Army master sergeant reporting a bomb threat to an Army recruiting station in the Series 3 episode "Group Home".
    • In "The Architect", Paul Lieber played one of the gunmen; he returned a few episodes later as Detective Sgt. Eric Dorsey for several episodes.
    • Recurring character Bruno Binder has a wife whom he's implied to beat. The same actress who played his wife previously showed up as a new detective sent to replace Chano (the request had been sent two years previously), while Binder is in the squad room looking at mugshots to identify the man who robbed his store.
    • Character actor Kenneth Tigar appeared in six episodes, playing five different characters (apart from his first appearance as a mugging victim, they all had some kind of supernatural complaint, usually Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane). Actor Arny Freeman did five characters in six episodes as well.
    • John Dullaghan appeared as four different suspects before settling into recurring character Ray Brewer.
    • Many, many actors showed up several times playing different suspects, victims, bystanders or officials in each appearance. Members in good standing of the Barney Miller rep company (4 or more appearances in different roles) include: Don Calfa (7 episodes), Rod Colbin (7), Phil Leeds (7), Oliver Clark (6), Arny Freeman (6), Peggy Pope (6), Fred Sadoff (6), Philip Sterling (6), Kenneth Tigar (6), Martin Garner (5), Walter Janowitz (5), Howard Platt (5), Leonard Stone (5), Ivor Francis (4), Jay Gerber (4), Larry Gelman (4), Michael Lombard (4), Edwin Malave (4), Rosanna De Soto (4), Todd Susman (4), Michael Tucci (4), Sal Viscuso (4), James Cromwell (4).

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