MovieChat Forums > The Fugitive (1963) Discussion > Amusing things I've noticed about the sh...

Amusing things I've noticed about the show


This series was a bit before my time but I started watching it on PBS in the late 1980s (kept me company at midnight while I was doing term papers for college). My interest was lately revived with the reruns on MeTV. One thing I've noticed that I find amusing is that Kimble is very often featured wearing a suit, even when running. Is this how they would have dressed characters on 1960s TV or is this particular to the series? It just seems to be very impractical clothing for running from the law!

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Men dressed more formally back when The Fugitive was in production. Even an itinerant like Richard Kimble, riding around the country in buses and trains, even hitching rides, might wear if not a suit, a sports jacket and tie. After all, he was often looking for work, and even if the job was manual labor he'd want to look good for the interview. It's worth noting, thought, that while Kimble looks reasonably well dressed and always well groomed he doesn't really look particularly in fashion or affluent. Shoe clerks and office workers often wore jackets and ties back then, as did professional drivers, such as private chauffeurs. Kimble looks good most of the time, but like a doctor? Could be, but his more formal clothes look rather off the rack to me.

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Men dressed more formally back when The Fugitive was in production ... Shoe clerks and office workers often wore jackets and ties back then

Those sure were the days! Customs of dress really sure have declined since then. Personally I do appreciate not having to wear a tie and sport jacket except on formal occasions. But it's gone too far the opposite extreme today.

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You can go all the way back to the depression era of the 1930's, and men standing in soup lines were wearing suits. They might be soiled and perhaps frayed, but they still wore suits. This really didn't change until the 1970's, and has been increasingly going downhill since.

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I recall that in the '60s I wouldn't have dreamed of flying without wearing a suit and tie. Now, it's quite a bit more casual, to say the least.

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The Fugitive was actually being run on PBS at one time? Interesting that they would consider a comercial network entertainment show as fitting their programming model. I watch PBS quite a bit now but hadn't really watched it much in the 80's. I've only recently discovered Fugitive through the MeTV channel.

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I too didn't know PBS aired "The Fugitive" at one time. I first discovered it in the early '90 on A&E.

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Ha, I remember the A&E days. Good run. They would run them twice every weekday, with the later viewing rerunning the following morning in case you missed it or wanted to see it again (more likely!) - remember, pre-dvr days.

Not knocking MeTV, bless them for bringing Kimble & Co. back, but only once a week? My ONLY complaint to that network.

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I know what you mean about the once a week airtime. I sometimes wish it was on all week but this way I can stretch out my Fugitive viewing and really enjoy it, especially since the DVD's are so damned expensive. Less is more I guess.

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If he escaped on horseback every episode they would run it daily.

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I recall the gd days on A&E now it's a junk station as is BRAVO

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This is off on a bit of a tangent, but at least one public TV station ran "Star Trek." I'm sure many other commercial TV shows have been run, too. Locally, our station runs decades-old British comedy shows. "Red Green" runs, too. I don't find anything particularly erudite about these shows, although I enjoy some of them. I just think the programming is out of character for a public station.

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Individual stations have the option of picking up off-network shows. The PBS affiliate in St Louis has shown reruns of "The Man From UNCLE", "The Outer Limits", and "Jack Benny" from time to time, as well as the Tom Baker run of "Doctor Who", "The Prisoner", and "Ernie Kovacs". The PBS affiliate out of Southern Illinois University is where I got to see "The Defenders" in the early 70s.

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Individual stations have the option of picking up off-network shows. The PBS affiliate in St Louis has shown reruns of "The Man From UNCLE", "The Outer Limits", and "Jack Benny" from time to time, as well as the Tom Baker run of "Doctor Who", "The Prisoner", and "Ernie Kovacs". The PBS affiliate out of Southern Illinois University is where I got to see "The Defenders" in the early 70s.

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Related to his suits, I remember reading somewhere that when the series switched to color (I wish they hadn't), Kimble's clothing became more of a priority. They typically put him in brown sport coats to emphasize the fact that he was trying to blend in unnoticed. Obviously bright colors would have drawn attention & not something a real fugitive would likely do.

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What I noticed is that the jacket is always a bit too small, the sleeves a little short, in keeping with his character as someone buying clothes at the thrift store.

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Here's another thing: why is it that Kimble when captured is always telling people he's going to try and escape on them? I guess the idea is that he's so honest and aboveboard he feels the need to warn people, but still! Makes me laugh every time.

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It wasn't really PBS. Not in New York anyway. Here it was I believe WNJW. Definitely it was channel 50, but not positive about the letters. It was the same channel that showed Allo Allo. I used to watch that and The Fugitive back to back in the late 80's and early 90's when I was a kid.

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Yes it was run on the New Jersey Network, a public TV outlet in New Jersey that ran only SOME PBS shows. Mostly they tried not to overlap the more famous PBS outlets in New York and Philly - and yes - they ran THE FUGITIVE - and DARK SHADOWS!

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Hey What About The Hairdo on Barry Morse???...It Looks Like Some Lopsided Perverse Beehive, Without The Bee's! I Mean I Know it Wasn't Cool Back in The Day to be Bald, But Jeez...


"I do my Drinking Lying Down, it Doesn't Hurt so Bad when You Hit Rock Bottom"...

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In that era, men in all walks of life wore suits, unless they had a dirty job of some sorts. Even then, after work, they would wear suits for social activities. It was a sign of pride and personal respect.

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Amusing things I've noticed about the show:

1) How incredibly easy it was to get a job with no social security number, background check, or any other kind of paperwork. I know they were leaf-level jobs, but still . . . . today this can't be done. No job gets filled without a lot of jumping through hoops.

2) How many towns have cheap, informal lodging (home-owners -- some with children! -- "letting rooms for rent"). It's inconceivable today to give an itinerant stranger a key to your house, but up until 1967 this didn't strain the bounds of incredulity to network TV audiences.

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Very true today; and I wonder if it was truly more common for someone in Kimble's situation to get jobs and housing in the 1960s, small or larger towns.

Regardless of the job, one would think being paid by check would be difficult to cash without identity. Once in a while we see Kimble pull out ID for police in which it verifies his alias. I would think that this is a wallet he found (we can't imagine him stealing; or at best he could return the money...he is so honest, after all); and back in the day I guess driver's licenses did not include photographs; I have heard of that.

Some episodes do show him buying clothes in a thrift store (exchanging a chauffeur's uniform for street clothes). He goes through so many, and so many suitcases or bags that it's inconceivable he would acquire them anywhere except cheap second-hand stores. In eps where he has to run at the conclusion, and is not known to have any money on his person, getting more clothes, food, anything, tends to be a wonder.

Nonetheless, The Fugitive was an excellent show, and they hold up well today.

(and as I posted on another thread, the one amusing thing I have noticed consistently is the business telephones that do not light the active line; all the buttons are dark no matter what)

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That's all true about the jobs, especially away from major cities. Why do a background check or laborer job in Sioux City or a desk clerk in Duluth? Now they probably would.

Also, many more businesses,--retailers especially--are chains now, thus a pharmacist's assistant, a good fit for Kimble, would as likely as not be in an independent drugstore, while most are now CVS. Osco, Rite Aid, Walgreen's or some other chain (or franchise). They'd do a check, and due to drugs being involved, a thorough one.

As to rooming houses, rooms to let, those were everywhere, even in big cities. I remember a lot of rooming houses in Boston as recently as  the 70s. Most had strict standards, though, the better ones, though there were skid row type places as well. Now there are no rooming houses and no skid rows.

When I was younger I lived with a family, babysat for their children, and in the city, too; but I knew them slightly through friends. For two years I lived with an extremely elderly old lady, was on call 24/7, paid no rent, managed to save over 10 grand during that period, but in both cases I'm going back many years.

BTW: in the 60s Don Knotts horror comedy The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, the eponymous Mr. Chicken lives in a very nice boarding house, complete with meals, but again...standards, standards. They'd watch the women coming and going like hawks, and I doubt a man was allowed to have a woman in his room with the door closed, let alone overnight.

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Hmmmm, I just noticed another amusing thing as I watched "The Walls of Night," one of the last eps before the finale. Perhaps talked about elsewhere, but I see Kimble walked past "Del Floria's" in the epilogue. Del Floria's tailor shop, looking just like what we see in The Fugitive is the secret entrance to U.N.C.L.E. headquarters. Oh my....

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