Originally Published May 8th, 2009

Hugh O’Brian, Tony Franciosa and Doug McClure starred in this drama as agents working for World Securities, a sophisticated, technologically advanced company well-versed in recovering anything from anywhere for anyone. It ran for one season on NBC from 1972 to 1973. The agents were wired with tiny transmitters that connected them to Probe Control where Burgess Meredith oversaw every mission.

The series that would eventually become SEARCH began as an NBC World Premiere movie called Probe. Production on the telefilm, from Warner Bros. Television and Leslie Stevens Productions, began in November of 1971 for an early 1972 broadcast [1]. On November 19th, 1971 Norma Lee Browning reported in her “Hollywood Today” column in The Chicago Tribune that Hugh O’Brian, who had starred in The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp from 1955 to 1961, would headline Probe [2].

In January of 1972, Bob Wiedrich revealed that O’Brian would be playing “an ex-astronaut James Bond type equipped with a nickel-sized radar scanner for super sleuth work” [3]. Also appearing in Probe would be Sir John Gielgud, in a rare television role, Burgess Meredith, Elke Sommer, Lilia Skala and Angel Tompkins. In a minor role was A Martinez, one of the winners of the Hugh O’Brian Acting Awards in 1969 (held annually at UCLA).

Said O’Brian of his character: “He’s not just another cop; he’s a kind of ultra James Bond, if that’s not redundant. But he’s no Superman. What he does is not for mother and country but for bread and broads” [4]. Probe had its “world premiere” on Monday, February 21st, 1972, running from 9-11PM on NBC. The plot revolved around a set of gems stolen by the Germans during World War II.

Hugh Lockwood, played by Hugh O’Brian, was charged with finding the gems. Helping him were V.C.R. Cameron (Burgess Meredith) and Gloria Harding (Angel Tompkins), working behind the scenes at Probe Control, keeping track of Lockwood’s vitals and directing his movements. Cameron was director of Probe Control, part of the Probe Division of World Securities Corporation, a global investigative service. Gloria was one a specialist at Probe Control charged with tracking the health and well-being of operatives (known as probes).

Cecil Smith of The Los Angeles Times was critical of Probe, writing that the “script was so dependent on wild gimmicks that the occasional human contacts seemed false” [5]. He continued:

O’Brian does not feel his character is a robot but it’s about as close to a mechanical James Bond as you can get with Burgess Meredith at control directing his every move by electronic impulses. Sir John Gielgud wandered bewildered through this electronic jungle and Elke Sommer offered a bit of warm flesh to the stew. Impressive was a jealous wench at headquarters played winningly by Angel Tompkins who measured O’Brian’s blood pressure everytime he met a sexy lass, angrily reporting his reaction to the loudspeaker in his ear [6]

The telefilm performed well enough in the Nielsen ratings and otherwise impressed NBC executives to land a spot on NBC’s “tentative” schedule for the 1972-1973 season, released in late March. It would air from 10-11PM on Wednesdays following Adam-12 and The NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie [7].

After all three networks had revealed their fall schedules, Clarence Petersen analyzed a variety of extremely competitive time slots where two or more programs would fight it out for a share of the Nielsen ratings. One such battleground was the Wednesday 10-11PM time slot between Cannon on CBS, Probe on NBC and The Julie Andrews Hour on ABC (also new). Petersen suggested that the three shows would force viewers to make “some difficult choices” [8].

In May, in an interview with Joyce Haber of The Los Angeles Times, creator/producer Leslie Stevens explained that Probe would have three rotating stars: Hugh O’Brian, Doug McClure and Tony Franciosa. “The concept was there from the beginning. The network requested the three-star idea, which was always an alternative in the project” [9]. The plan was for O’Brian to star in about half the episodes with McClure and Franciosa trading off the remaining half.

Hugh O’Brian, Tony Franciosa and Doug McClure in SEARCH – September 9th, 1972
Copyright © TV Guide/Triangle Publications, Inc., 1972 [1]

Discussing the high tech gadgetry to be used in Probe, Stevens suggested they weren’t just make believe. “We’re applying methods used with astronauts to earthbound agents. If these devices can measure blood pressure and heartbeats and provide information more than 200,000 miles to the moon, they should be able to do the same across 3,000 miles of earth [10].

The name of the series was changed from Probe to SEARCH during in June or July of 1972; The Los Angeles Times reported the new name on July 25th [11]. Later, Norma Lee Browning revealed that “a local news commentator somewhere had a program called Probe” and thus a new name was necessary [12].

At the start of September, with the premiere of SEARCH just weeks away, Clarence Petersen laid out a key difference between the pilot telefilm and the weekly television series. In Probe, O’Brian’s character “was moved around like a chess pawn, remote controlled by the brains back at Probe Control” [13]. Petersen referred to this as “a rather interesting flaw,” explaining that “a TV hero, if he is to appeal to viewers, cannot be a pawn. To have him under external control, sapped of responsibility and initiative, is to render him impotent” [14].

Petersen also explained the reasoning behind NBC’s Wednesday line-up (Adam-12, The NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie and SEARCH): “NBC hopes that viewers will not be sated with mysteries after the 90-minute show preceding and that the space age gimmick–and lots of sexy girls–will keep them from switching to Cannon on CBS” [15].

TV Guide Ad – September 9th, 1972
Copyright © TV Guide/Triangle Publications, Inc., 1972 [2]

SEARCH premiered on Wednesday, September 13th, 1972 with an episode titled “The Murrow Disappearances,” in which Hugh O’Brian’s character searches for a missing diplomat whose marriage may be on the rocks. Don Page of The Los Angeles Times gave the series a very negative review:

Unquestionably, there is a lot to say for Search, which arrived Wednesday night on NBC. Like contrived, ludicrous, gimmickey [sic] and dull.

[...]

Search looks like something aborted by Star Trek, taking on the appearance of the latter’s control center in comic-book posture.

In the debut, O’Brian, equipped with a television-scanner ring, hidden earphone, microphone medallion and everything but a Capt. Midnight decoder, is assigned to find a government official who is missing in a cloud of mystery.

[...]

Meanwhile, back at the mission control center, Burgess Meredith (How did HE get in here?), sticks out like Pinky Lee in his cartoonish surroundings, while directing the operations. And Angel Tompkins, glued to her TV monitor, is given a string of deadly one-liners to feed to O’Brian on the outside. [16]

Writing in The New York Times, John J. O’Connor was only slightly less negative, stating that “credibility is more ignored than strained” in the series:

Carefully wired for remote-control monitoring and wearing a ring that contains a TV camera, the heroes venture forth on their appointed rounds. A car chase, a fist fight or two, a thoroughly impressed and glamorous woman–and the formula begins to take ona depressingly familiar shape.

For all of the flash electronics, the plots are drably standard. The core of last week’s episode, as Mr. O’Brian employed his fashion-page brand of virility to subdue an international black-mailing operation, provided a rigged poker game. Tonight Mr. Franciosa goes after a hundred-dollar-bill racket that is “threatening the world’s economy.” [17]

Unlike his fellow reviewers, Clarence Petersen didn’t dwell on the negative, writing that in the premiere Hugh O’Brian’s character carried out his assignment “in less than an hour, with time out for wiseacre dialog, space-age gee-whizzery, interesting closeups of blonde Angel Tompkins at the Probe control board, and some very amusing shots of O’Brian seemingly talking to walls, tables and potted palms” [18].

The premiere episode ranked a 39th for the week, out of 65 programs, The Julie Andrews Hour tied for 34th [19]. Not a spectacular outing but not devastating either.

In the second episode of SEARCH (broadcast September 20th) Tony Franciosa’s character, Nick Bianco, made his debut. The third episode (broadcast September 27th) saw the introduction of Doug McClure’s character, C.R. Grover. Early episodes involved a missing “probe” (an agent), a stolen moon rock, a mysterious assassin and a scientist trying to defect. The Nielsen ratings, which didn’t start off that high, sank. The fourth episode ranked 53rd out of 64 programs [20]; the fifth episode 49th out of 63 programs [21].

Hugh O’Brian in SEARCH

On October 1st, Bob Wiedrich reported that SEARCH would soon be dropping “some of the way-out stuff like two-way radio implants in the noggin in favor of more believable fare” [22]. According to Hugh O’Brian, the November 1st episode was “his best one yet” as well as “the beginning of ‘a new look and direction’ for the series” [23]. The new look wasn’t reflected in the ratings: the November 1st episode ranked 54th out of 66 programs and for the most part the series continued to hover around that point [24].

Nevertheless, NBC renewed SEARCH for the remainder of the 1972-1973 season in early November [25]. By mid-January of 1973, however, NBC had soured on the series. According to Norma Lee Browning, “Warner [Bros. Television] has brought in producer Tony Spinner to see if he can save [the show]. He is revamping the format and changing the heroes from Supermen to more believable human beings” [26].

Again, the changes did little to help the Nielsen ratings. On February 23rd, SEARCH was reported to be one of the shows most likely to be cancelled by NBC by The Los Angeles Times; on April 3rd, when NBC officially announced its 1973-1974 schedule, SEARCH was gone, replaced by Love Story [27, 28]. The final new episode was broadcast on April 8th, 1973.

During its one season on the air SEARCH broadcast a total of 23 episodes. Guest stars included Mel Ferrer, Julie Adams, Wally Cox, Barbara Feldon, Ann Prentiss, Larry Linville, Mary Ann Mobley and Stefanie Powers. Hugh O’Brian and Tony Franciosa each appeared in eight episodes while Doug McClure starred in seven. Reportedly, some unknown reason SEARCH hasn’t been syndicated in the United States since its original network run.

Control Panel

Some memorabilia was released while the series was on the air: a pair of novelizations, a set of Viewmaster reels and film trims/clips cut from actual 16mm film. Also, the pilot telefilm was released on VHS. To this day, like many television shows that only ran for a single season, SEARCH has its fans. They wait patiently, hopeful that one day it will be issued on DVD.

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Last Updated May 9th, 2009