Joseph Wambaugh‘s cop and crime books were all the rage from the early to late ’70s. Drawing from his 14 years of service with the Los Angeles police force, Wambaugh’s novels portrayed cops as complex, glum-hearted fellows coping with stress, heartache and constant anxiety. In the early ’70s gritty, semi-sympathetic portraits of angst-ridden beat cops felt like something new, or so it seemed. Out of that came Hill Street Blues (’81) and I don’t know how many other in-depth cop dramas on broadcast, cable and streaming.
The most substantial film to emerge from the Wambaugh canon was Harold Becker‘s The Onion Field (’79, in which James Woods and John Savage arguably gave their career-best performances. (Wambaugh’s book was published in ’73.) At the same time I’ve only seen The Onion Field once, and have no interest in going there again. Based on a real-life cop killing, it’s a relentlessly grim and haunted thing. Which is what makes it good, but also why I’d rather not revisit.
I was never a fan of Robert Aldrich‘s The Choirboys (’77), nor of Wambaugh’s 1975 source novel. I’ve always found alcoholism and lushy behavior to be terminally boring, and both properties were soaked with smelly booze.
My two favorite Wambaughs are Richard Fleischer‘s The New Centurions (’72), a mezzo-mezzo episodic which costarred Stacy Keach and George C. Scott, and the four-hour NBC TV movie of The Blue Knight (’73), which starred William Holden as crusty beat cop “Bumper” Morgan on the verge of retirement.
There’s a relatively new Twilight Time Bluray of The New Centurions available, and a Blue Knight Bluray popped a couple of years ago.
I could never understand why George C. Scott’s Andy Kilvinski put a gun in his mouth after hanging up his badge. He felt that his life was over, I realize, but he could have gone into business as a private detective. He could have had a whole new life.