In the 1970s and '80s, it seemed as if
nothing Aaron Spelling produced for television could fail (though
there were the occasional bombs along the way.) He produced The Mod
Squad (1968-1973), The Rookies (1972-1976), Starsky and Hutch
(1975-1979), Family (1976-1980), Charlie's Angels (1976-1981), The
Love Boat (1977-1987), Fantasy Island (1978-1984), Hart to Hart
(1979-1984) and Dynasty (1981-1989) to hit only the highlights!
In 1982, while the machine was still
chugging along powerfully, he put forth a detective series meant to
capitalize on the success of Magnum, P.I. (1980-1988), seen here at left, which starred charismatic, mustached, 6' 3-1/2” Tom Selleck.
To this end, he cast 6' 3” Lee Horsley as Matt Houston, a
Texas-born multi-millionaire transplanted to L.A. who solved crimes
in his spare time.
Horsley was a stage actor who'd
recently made his television debut on the short-lived William Conrad
detective show Nero Wolfe (1981.) He played the handsome right-hand
man to the overweight Conrad, a brilliant crime solver who preferred
to let someone else, in this case Horsley, take care of the physical
end of things while he tended to his greenhouse (located within a
well-appointed brownstone.)
The series was a disappointing
adaptation of a series of beloved Rex Stout novels and was cancelled
after only fourteen episodes had been shot. Horsley then went on to
film the campy, but later beloved, fantasy film The Sword and the
Sorcerer (1982.) That film's initial failure meant that he was free
to portray Mattlock Houston, the kindhearted cowboy millionaire with
a gorgeous ranch located only a helicopter ride away from his
high-rise office in Los Angeles, California.
Horsley was often shown at the start of
episodes tending to his horses (and sporting a pair of jeans that
provided an eye-popping crotch shot, one which was used as the first
scene in the credits sequence before being edited out later!) A
couple of grizzled ranch hands were on site to provide “comic
relief” until Horsley's pretty assistant and all-around Girl Friday
Pamela Hensley would show up in order to whisk Horsley away to the
city.
Once atop the Houston, Inc. skyscraper,
viewers would see the “only in the '80s” office complex. The
main room sported a full service bar, a small dining table and a hot
tub! (Yes!) Then an arc-shaped couch with a green velvet coffee
table would suddenly convert into a computer workstation.
The middle seats would creep forward
electronically, the table would flip up to reveal an Apple III
computer (cornily nicknamed "Baby") and the vertical blinds on the windows would flip shut to
provide a viewscreen!
(This part was quite illogical as the
dark wooden slats couldn't possibly provide the proper backdrop for
the projected images, which were in reality superimposed on the
screen in post-production.)
The outer office, near the elevator
door, had stations for three different secretaries who were always
pursuing Horsley's signature on important documents, usually to no
avail. Then a side office off the main room was Hensley's domain.
Finally, an elaborate rock wall with foliage and a fountain housed a
staircase that took Horsley down to (again, you gotta love the '80s!)
a sizeable private gym, complete with two glass-enclosed showers, and
a closet/changing area.
As seen above, the showers had completely
clear glass doors which meant that anyone in the gym could see
through perfectly. (Only a perv like me would pick up on this.)
However, in one episode that had Hensley relaying information to
Horsley (how odd that their last names are so similar!), there was
allofasudden a frost on the glass which made the shower door opaque
from the collarbone down! Boo!
Other cast members included a handsome
Italian police detective played by John Aprea, who would either
assist Horsley or accept assistance from him during the
investigations. Penny Santon (over)played his mama mia restaurant
proprietress, meaning that once per episode, someone was likely going
to be eating at her establishment. This sort of set-up hamstrung the
storytelling somewhat since a scene always had to be scripted that
would include her, even if only for a walk-on.
One regular, who was actually billed as
a guest star, was George Wyner as Horsley's put-upon
accountant/financial advisor who was forever jumbling papers and
chasing after Horsley for either his okay or his signature on
something. Wyner had appeared in nearly all of the Nero Wolfe
episodes with Horsley and was likely hired based on their previous
familiarity with one another.
As was the case for many Spelling
productions, the costuming was handled by Nolan Miller, famous for
all those elaborate and sometimes over-the-top Dynasty creations.
Here, we see two ladies from the Matt Houston pilot, Jill St. John
and Barbara Carrera, in examples of some of the era's get-ups.
Elegant, sleek Carrera always seemed to pull off these dramatic,
potentially overwhelming outfits the way some lesser mortals could
not.
From the beginning of the series,
episodes centered on a killing or an attempted killing, drawing
together a collection of performers that was sometimes mind-boggling.
Just as The Love Boat, Fantasy Island and, later, Hotel would
resurrect once-popular stars who were now past their best “sell-by”
date, Matt Houston employed a large selection of Aaron Spelling's
pals from Tinseltown as the victims and the suspects. (Visible here are Forrest Tucker in the middle and Scott Brady on the right.)
In this respect, the show was similar
to one of Spelling's early hits Burke's Law (1963-1966), which
starred Gene Barry as the wealthy chief of Los Angeles detectives,
riding around in a Rolls Royce and interviewing an assortment of
glamorous suspects. (As an example, that show once featured Mary
Astor, Zsa Zsa Gabor, John Saxon, Lizabeth Scott and Paul Lynde all
within ONE single episode! The mind reels! Another one had Arlene
Dahl, Sammy Davis Jr, Diana Dors, John Ireland, Burgess Meredith,
Suzy Parker and Jan Sterling in it! Reruns, please!!!) Shown here
is Barry with guest Jayne Mansfield (and in the inset, his hunky
assistant, Mr. Gary Conway!)
While Houston wasn't nearly as
star-laden as Burke's Law, the actor combinations were no less
amusing. Where else do you think you were going to see Troy Donahue
and David Cassidy enacting a scene together? How about Vic Tayback
and Britt Ekland? (Seen here.) Werner Kleperer leaving behind four
ex-wives: Janis Paige, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Patricia Crowley and Barbi
Benton?! Debonair Cesar Romero (below) guest-starred in one episode
(with his name misspelled as “Caesar” in the credits!)
Mamas and the Papas
vocalist-turned-actress Michelle Phillips turned up (with
uncharacteristically brown hair.)
Spelling's good luck charm Heather
Locklear also somehow found time to appear as a guest even though she
was already part of the cast of Dynasty and was costarring on T.J.
Hooker as well! Later, she would help save his prime-time soap
Melrose Place from oblivion from 1993-1999 by becoming one of its key
vixens after a dismal first season.
For someone like me who loved seeing
the parades of stars on Spelling's aforementioned series and (the
non-Spelling show)
Murder, She Wrote, this first season of
Matt
Houston is camp heaven! There was a tendency to unearth a star who'd
been off the radar for a time to play the murder victim, such as the
aforementioned Troy Donahue, Brett Halsey (seen here in brownface with a luscious Stella Stevens!) or Miss Diane
McBain (whose on-screen love interest was Dennis Cole.)
Any given episode contained at least
four or five familiar faces. (A selection below-not all from the
same episode-includes: Hope Lange, Sid Casear, David Hedison, Dorothy
Malone, Anne Jeffreys, Robert Goulet and George Chakiris.)
Here, we see Jayne Meadows and Don
Defore, Natalie Schaefer, Bo Hopkins, Donahue and Cassidy, Jessica
Walter and Norman Fell. These are but a few of the stars who showed
up.
No matter who the guest stars were,
though, Horsley was the main attraction. Handsome as all get out,
with thick, golden brown hair and a friendly drawl that more than a little recalled that of James
Garner on The Rockford Files (1974-1980), he was never a tougher-than-tough
macho man.
Instead, he often could be found undercutting that
approach by reacting bug-eyed at the things that were happening to
him. He also would have trouble bursting down doors, found himself
on the receiving end of some burly antagonists and even one tore the
seat out of his slacks (revealing a flash of white bikini underwear) while scaling a fence during a chase!
He also didn't regularly pack a gun,
though could be coerced into doing so if pushed to the limit (such as
when Hensley was kidnapped by a deranged psychopath – played by
Chuck Connors -- in an uncharacteristically downbeat season-one
episode.)
Best of all was when he shucked down to
take a swim in some black Speedos or took a (implied) nude dip in the
hot tub. During the pilot, he was caught one morning by Hensley and
another employee as guest star Barbara Carrera was leaving his
office.
Clearly, the two had made love the
night before and he was left naked in the tub with a bevy of female
onlookers peering away. He used his hat to shield himself before
giving up and submerging (even though it's clear to prying eyes like
mine that he was wearing some flesh-toned briefs throughout.)
He and Hensley, while not a couple on
or off the show, played their roles as if it was no big deal for her
to be in the room with him “naked.” She was all business no
matter what he was (or was not) wearing, though my prying eyes were
able to detect that in this ostensibly nude scene, Mr. H. had on some
white briefs.
By far the most horrifying hot tub
moment came when the two grizzled cowboys Dennis Fimple and Paul
Brinegar got in fully dressed and decided to make the whole thing
into one large margarita! They poured in tequila, lime, salt, etc...
and Horsley and Hensley even tried a sip!!
More entertaining were the workouts
that Horsley and Apprea would take together. In their velour track
suits, they'd discuss cases over a few weights or exercise machines.
Then in one unforgettable episode, they took side-by-side showers in
that glass-enclosed area I referred to earlier! True there was a
divider of sorts (made more private by towel placement), but yowza!
In real life, Horsley had married in
1980 (the couple is still together now, thirty-three years and two
children later.) This may account for why so little of him ever
appeared in gossip rags and the like. He seemed to be quite a
stable, ordinary person. As Matt Houston, though, he was called upon
to not only show off his physique at times, but also to occasionally
be surrounded by a bevy of beauties such as in this shot from when he
briefly went undercover as a football quarterback.
...or this one when seven Playboy
Playmates showed up on the series. (Is it me or are a few of these
rather, um, “flat” for centerfold models??)
The budget of the show, while moderate,
sometimes showed some fraying around the edges. Take the
aforementioned football episode. The fictional team, The California
Bearcats, had a mascot that was inexplicably in the form of a tall
brown bear! The costume couldn't possibly have been more cheap,
cheesy or lame. In the climax, the killer dons the costume and tries
to do in Horsley.
Then just an episode or two later,
Horsley is investigating a case on a (fictional) movie studio lot and
winds up falling into a huge dumpster. Upon exiting, he comes upon
the bear again (this time dressed up like Smokey the Bear) who is for
reasons unknown walking down the street with a very unlikely
ballerina! (Why did so many TV series with scenes on studio lots
ALWAYS try to pepper the location with all sorts of idiotic costumed
people when no one was making movies with anyone of the sort in
them?!)
There were many cheesy moments,
including David Cassidy devising a preposterous life-size video game,
but perhaps the nadir came when Horsley was slipped a drug and wound
up encountering little green space men out in the desert!! (Aaron
Spelling would later return to this bizarre scenario when it came
time to wrap up The Colbys, 1985-1987.)
At least Horsley had a truly
distinctive and glamorous car to drive, though it always seemed to
escape danger without a scratch while other characters' cars were
often crashed and/or totaled! Oddly enough, the car used in the
pilot (and subsequently in the opening credits) was not the same car
used in the series. The pilot car was white and the series car was
cream with tan detailing.
As the first season drew to a close, a
decided (and unwelcome) change in tone began to emerge. Where the
show was once a breezy, deliberately campy murder mystery, it started
to inject more serious violence and a far stronger feeling of menace.
Where there had once been little or no blood, we now saw plenty.
This made the inclusion of the bumpkin characters and Santon's
Italian mama oddly incongruous and in fact the cowpokes were dropped
before the year was out.
When the show returned for season two
(1983-1984), everyone but Horsley and Hensley was let go. Horsley,
naturally, was still the star and Hensley was soon to be the wife of producer E.
Duke Vincent, so clearly she wasn't going anywhere, though her
obvious chemistry with Horsley and her own visual appeal made the
decision to keep her an easy one.
The appealing Aprea was dumped
along with his mother. Wyner, who'd occasionally been replaced by
John Moschitta Jr (the fast-talking Federal Express spokeperson, seen here!) due
to his juggling of Houston and Hill St. Blues, was also out, but
would return a half-dozen times in the future.
Now the more conventional detective
series would focus more on the two leads and a new police detective
associate played by Lincoln Kilpatrick. While, just like any other
TV series, there might be an occasional guest star or two of note, it
wasn't long at all before the camptastic guest casting fell to the
side during this format change.
As the third season rolled out
(1984-1985), the decision was made to bring on Matt Houston's Uncle
Roy, played by the seemingly ancient Buddy Ebsen! Ebsen's own
successful detective series Barnaby Jones had run from 1973-1980 and
along the way Mark Shera had been added in order to provide some
youth appeal. No clue what the strategy was in bringing Ebsen to
this show...! In any case, Matt Houston was cancelled and off the
air by March of 1985.
Chief interest in the show for me is
season one, as amply demonstrated above. I was always right in front
of the set (still am!) any time a show came along that paired up a
gaggle of unusual stars. Other short-lived shows that featured
clumps of careworn celebrities were the infamous Supertrain (1979),
cancelled after five episodes, Aloha Paradise (1981), which starred
Debbie Reynolds, and Finder of Lost Loves (1984-1985), starring
Anthony Franciosa. Then there was the update of Burke's Law (1994),
which still starred Gene Barry, but this time with a son played by
Peter Barton. Unsurprisingly, it couldn't gather an audience (I
can't keep this stuff going alone, people!! Ha!)
After Matt Houston left the air,
Horsley kept busy in various TV movies and miniseries (which were
incredibly popular at the time.) There was Crossings (1986) in which
he costarred with Jane Seymour, Cheryl Ladd and Christopher Plummer.
Then there was North and South, Book II
(1986), which paired with with luscious Lesley-Anne Down.
These projects afforded him the chance
to meet up with even bigger stars than he'd rubbed shoulders with
during Matt Houston. He's seen here with North's James Stewart and
Crossings' Joan Fontaine!
From here, he proceeded to work in
several more series including Paradise (later retitled Guns of
Paradise,1988-1990), a western in which he was the
uncle-turned-makeshift father to a group of kids.
Then came the short-lived crime solving
drama Bodies of Evidence (1992-1993), which placed him next to a then
unknown actor who would soon become a worldwide sensation.
Nobody was much interested in watching
George Clooney back then, however...
In 1994, he and Lynda Carter starred in
a syndicated show called Hawkeye, based on the then-hot character
from Last of the Mohicans (1992), though Horsley was no Daniel Day
Lewis! That series ended after one season.
Things slowed down considerably after
that, though he continued to work. He even had a small part in
2012's Djanjo Unchained. Today he is fifty-eight and continues his
interests in ranching and even penning the occasional novel. (And, no, this isn't a recent photo!) Below are shots of him from more recent years.
Hensley has a tribute
here in The
Underworld already so I won't go on too much more about her. I can
see how her overstated facial expressions and reactions on
Matt
Houston might annoy some folks, but to me she was always so pretty
and so enthusiastic, not to mention engaging, that it doesn't bother
me much at all. I thought she and Horsley were wonderful together.
Despite his being unfairly kicked to
the curb, Aprea (who'd been working in movies since the late-'60s
from Bullit, 1968, to The Godfather: Part II, 1974) went on to a
long, busy career. He guested on countless TV shows and worked
semi-regularly on both Falcon Crest and Knots Landing along with a three-year stint on Another World. Today a very
handsome silver daddy at seventy-two, he is as busy as ever in TV and independent
film projects.
Both Fimple and Brinegar continued
their long careers as character performers pretty much right up until
their deaths. Fimple, the younger of the two, died in 2002 at age
sixty-one, while Brinegar had passed away in 1995 at age
seventy-seven.
Santon, who'd been on TV since the early-1950s died
in 1999 at age eighty-two and had also worked until just a couple of
years prior to that.
No one is going to receive a wealth of
knowledge watching Matt Houston. It's pure escapism and
feather-light entertainment. However, if you are like me and enjoy
seeing a lot of actors getting the chance to keep their benefits
current and their SAG dues paid up, it's worth a look! Even so, one
can't go wrong admiring the amiable, handsome Horsley for the better
part of an hour either! (I came very close to naming this post
“Wanna Ride a Horsley?”)
