In Search of Buz and Tod on Route 66

Driving down the main street of Kingman, Arizona, it was impossible not to notice a theme: almost every other business in town had a sign that was based on theme of the former highway U.S. 66, which once ran from Chicago to Los Angeles, and became emblematic of the westward migration of Americans to California in the 1930's and afterward.

Of course the reason was that the street through town was once part of the highway before it was decommissioned, having been largely replaced along its route by various parts of the Interstate system. 

But from Kingman eastward to Williams, a stretch of the old route remained, renamed as Arizona State Highway 66 officially, but adorned conspicuously with "U.S. 66" signs, with the added monicker "historic" at the top of the sign. 

At the Route 66 museum in Kingman, where I rested for a half hour, the nostalgia was on full display in the gift shop: key chains, t-shirts, posters, and other paraphernalia adorned with the famous highway sign, as well as other icons of the Great American Road. 

It was about more than road itself, of course. It was about a feeling of freedom of movement and travel, without guilt or worry, and the endless ribbon of asphalt that always brought newness, and allowed one to reinvent oneself over and over.

Seeing all of this gave me a warm feeling, but not so much about the road itself. Rather I thought immediately of my all-time favorite television show, Route 66, which aired on CBS from 1960 to 1964.

Up until three years ago, I had not seen one single episode of the show. But I had heard my friends Agnes and Thor talking about it. They had seen episodes of it, and always had wanted to see more.

So in fall 2009, after returning to Fort Collins from a year-long trip to the East Coast, I proposed to them that we begin watching the series from its beginnings, episode-by-episode (this kind of thoroughness appeals to Thor especially). 

Thus we began a series of weekly dates at their house. The routine was always the same: I would bring over the Netflix disk with the next episodes in sequence, as well as a bottle or two of wine of my choosing. Agnes would cook dinner. Thor would load up the disk in the machine and take car of the viewing experience.

As I said, I knew nothing about the series itself. For example, I thought it was a half-hour situation comedy! To my surprise, as we watched the first episode (which aired in September 1960), I discovered it was an hour-long drama.

In the weeks and months that followed, as we worked out way through season one (1960-1961) and then into season two (1961-1962), I quickly came up to speed as an expert on the series. 

In case you've never seen it, the premise of Route 66 is this: two young men, both from New York City, travel the country together in the late model Corvette convertible owned by one of them. The owner of the Corvette is Tod Styles (Martin Milner), a straight-laced clean-cut blond Yale-educated rich kid who was left with only the car as his inheritance after his father passed away, right as the family business failed.  

His partner is Buz Murdock (George Maharis), a swarthy rough-hewn ethnic-of-some-kind streetwise orphan who grew up on the tough streets of Hell's Kitchen in Manhattan. They are the only two regular characters* in the series (after the mid third season, for reasons that are still controversial, Buz was replaced by Linc Case by played by Glen Corbett).

Together the two of them travel rather aimlessly around the country, their bags tied to the back of the car. In each week's episode, they arrive (or have arrived) in a new location. Somehow they get involved in some kind of drama involving the locals (often played by various guest stars), one that is resolved somehow by their participation. At times they are the main characters in the week's story. At times they are peripheral, almost like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Hamlet.

That the show debuted in 1960 is no accident of timing. Something about the show seems to utterly capture the New Frontier of the Kennedy era, and the way that Sixties themselves were so revolutionary. In various episodes, one can see almost the birth of the Sixties itself, and of the hippie movement, and the counterculture. Even the name of the show doubles up on the concept of the Sixties, as if to reinforce the theme.

I once remarked to Agnes and Thor that seeing the Corvette roll into a town at the beginning of an episode (with the iconic Nelson Riddle theme playing) felt like seeing a spaceship landing on a new alien planet (as in Star Trek), as if Buz and Tod were bringing the ultra-modern Space Age Sixties with them wherever they went in America.

And of course there is the freedom implied in the main characters' movements---no matter how deep the drama of an any particular episode, it will of course be resolved at the end of the hour, and the  Buz and Tod will take to the road again, and the air rushing through the convertible will sweep it all behind them into the past. Their future is reinvented each week. It is the epitome of the freedom of the road, over and over each week. 

From a television history standpoint, perhaps the most wonderfully revolutionary aspect of the show was the use of shooting locales. The creator of the show, Stirling Silliphant,  had previously broken new artistic ground with the television version of The Naked City (1958-1963), which featured crime-driven stories about New York City shot entirely on location in Gotham, using real streets and gritty neighborhoods, instead of back lots and sound stages.

For Route 66, Silliphant continued the use of real locales, but took the idea out of New York City into the country at large.  Settings for the episodes range from Alabama, Texas, California, Oregon, Ohio, Massachusetts, Montana Utah, Pennsylvania, and Florida. Buz and Tod seem to get around all over the country.

The episode location---be it Cleveland, or Austin, or Butte, Montana, Oregon City, Oregon---is the actual real place it is supposed to be.  The production was "on the road" during much of the year in a way that no television series before had ever been. Thus many episodes capture amazing black-and-white cinematography of American towns and cities from the early 1960's, under direction of some of the great directors of that era, who took their turns at the helm of the most cutting-edge series of its day.

Yet one of the great ironies of the show is that it has almost nothing to do with the actual highway U.S. 66! Only three episodes of the series take place at locales along the road, and the highway is mentioned explicitly only once in the series. Instead the name "Route 66" is used as a more general reference, a state-of-mind that includes freedom of travel on the highway system as-a-whole, and the unique Americanness of it all, especially at that instant in our history.

But you wouldn't know that from the iconography in Kingman, and  along the old route as it threads across the Mojave in northern Arizona. Although explicit references to the series and the characters are rare, pictures of red Corvettes seem to be everywhere along the way.  Somehow the car from the series has embedded itself into the mythology of that once-great road.

Yet as anyone who is a deep fan of television series knows, the actual Corvette wasn't red.  For one thing, the car was different every season, as Chevrolet (a sponsor of the show) donated a new Corvette with each new model year. According to George Maharis, the car they drove was actually green or blue.

But who cares, really. That's like saying Norma Jeane Baker was really a natural brunette (plenty of images of her along the road as well). Sometimes the image is better than the reality.

*One might propose that Vicki, played by Julie Newmar, was a recurring character. By "one," I mean yours truly. But that's caused me enough problems already...