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Proceedings of a Conference (Littleton, CO: Fred B. Rothman & Co., 1993) ©Tarlton Law Library The Lawyer in the History of American Television -- An Overview Horace Newcomb* would like to introduce perhaps to many, and perhaps remind some others, of the many depictions of the legal profession available in the history of American, popular, prime-time series television. But I would like to do that in the context of the significance of popular culture in our lives, and, even more importantly, of the role of television in con- temporary popular culture. The last topic is important in our discus- sion because television as most of us have known it is rapidly disap- pearing -- the network era is over. Changes in the technological and economic boundaries of television are already altering the content, the cultural forms, the icons, the representations appearing on home screens. What place, then, remains for those electronically transmitted lawyers and officers of the court who exist alongside our realities? What is happening to those amazing distortions, those truth-telling lies we know as fictions? To best understand this overview we must have some sense, beyond our common exclamations of annoyance and delight, of how television works. I suggest that it can best be understood as our central medium of cultural expression. In that capacity it follows other media that have functioned in similar ways in other times. From the twenties, perhaps earlier, until the sudden rise of television, the movies were the central cultural medium, surrounded and supported by radio and mass-circulation magazines that came into the home. In the nineteenth century, the novel offered a central medium of cultural expression, and, in earlier periods, the theatre was the locus of similar opportuni- ties for both audiences and creators of expressive material. Ultimately, religion and religious ceremonies stood in this cultural position, and the interrelations of religion, ritual, theatre and the other arts continue to be topics of scholarly analysis. In taking its current place at the end of this lineage, television also assumes another aspect of central cultural media. Often closely aligned with commercial interests, appealing to mass audiences, and drawing from successful formulaic patterns, these expressive forms are usually seen as simplistic, aesthetically inferior, and potentially harm- ful -- particularly for children and for those "masses" who cannot judge and discriminate as accurately and acutely as "we" do. These charges should sound familiar in any discussion of television, but we must remember that these same complaints have been leveled against every other popular medium, including many works that went on to be redesignated as "classic" works of art. One reason for this general denigration of popular media, in my view, is that they all present disguised versions of our most signifi- cant topics, issues, themes, ideas, controversies, conflicts that beset our lived experience as societies. Issues and ideas such as the family, sex- ual relations, the role of violence, matters of race and gender, of eth- nicity, appear here. So, too, do more abstract notions -- the concept of honor, of loyalty, of love and generosity. And significantly, for our purposes here, these expressive media have returned repeatedly to the question of justice, how it is to be administered, where, by whom, and in whose interests. To best understand this fictional mix that touches so often, but often in such silly ways, on crucial aspects of our lived experience, I have likened television to a cultural forum. Following those other central media that served central functions in other times, I suggest that television is currently the central negotiating ground on which we, as a collective society -- a culture in some sense -- consider significant ideas and problems. We consider them in relatively non-threatening form, knowing that we can always change the channel or switch off the set. But the controversies continually swirling about the influence of television demonstrate that the threats are often real for a great many people. But note that the threats come from all sides, all political per- spectives. Business groups monitor television and find that big busi- ness is most often presented as villainous. No profession, including the legal, finds itself accurately reproduced in the world of TV. Ethnic and racial groups cite misrepresentation. Religious groups and con- servative social guardians find general moral decay, the erosion of traditional values, and attacks on specific religious orientations. In the academic study of television, some of the strongest critical analysis has come from the left, demonstrating that all these apparent misrepresen- tations and forces of decay nevertheless maintain existing power rela- tions, support dominant attitudes and ideologies, and prop up prevail- ing social conditions. This tack suggests that if socialist heroes would still draw audiences to the commercials, then American television would be filled with such figures -- it's the sale that counts, not the bait. My point is that all these responses are, in matters of degree, accurate. In order to appeal to a huge and heterogeneous audience, in order to cross all major demographic lines, television, like other cen- tral media before it, has managed somehow to present varying per- spectives. Selection of any one of them is to miss the way the process works. We would do better to recognize all fictions as voices in a grand cultural dialogue and, to understand how this dialogue works, to renegotiate the social landscape inside which it appears. And if television is the site of cultural negotiation, then what better place to conduct some of its central discussions than the court- room? Note how well the legal formulas fit with televisual demands. Significant issues are brought into enclosed spaces, interiors. There they are debated by skillful professionals with the requirement that multiple perspectives be presented, rebutted, adjudicated, juried. But always these issues are brought down from the abstract to the personal, to the emotional levels that can touch individual audience members as well as individual inhabitants of the stories being told. Moreover, the cultural forum works historically as well. Over time, lawyers can be seen in different roles, the law working in different ways, the issues altered by the rules of television as well as by the social reality from which they are drawn. As we look, then, at some of the fictional lawyers from television's history, consider them -- the individual lawyers, the settings in which they work, the cases with which they deal -- as different voices in this ongoing dialogue focused on the na- ture of justice in our society. My overview will be selective, leaving out legal programs that many of you might think important. What I hope to do, however, is provide a framework that will allow you to place those shows you select as other voices in this discussion. My own survey has to begin with "The Defenders." In many ways most elements of all legal shows can be found in this series which ran from 1961-65. Perhaps more significantly, they can be found in the program which preceded the series, a live television drama called "The Defender," written by Reginald Rose and aired in 1957. In this remarkable television work, Ralph Bellamy plays Lawrence Preston, a distinguished New York attorney assigned to de- fend a young, working-class man accused of murder. The defendant, played to closed-mouth, intense perfection by Steve McQueen, repre- sents everything Preston resents -- sullenness, an inability to articulate his feelings or to rationally present a case. Preston is convinced the man is guilty of a terrible murder, and defends him lamely in the face of strong circumstantial evidence. Standing between the two is Preston's son, Kenneth, fresh out of law school, dominated by his fa- ther, but convinced that justice is not being done. Played by a youth- ful William Shatner in pre-"Star Trek" days, Ken wants to use a "courtroom trick," more reminiscent of "Perry Mason" than of his father's prestigious style, to test the witnesses. The father resists until the last minute. In that last minute, with the court in confusion, Ken slips a look-alike to the defendant's table, then has a witness mistake him for the defendant. The judge, after chastising the Prestons, is forced to free the defendant. But the basic point is that neither the court, the Prestons, nor we the audience are ever sure who committed the murder. In short, it is not the elements of the case that are on trial; rather, it is the law itself In the series that came to the air in the sixties, Lawrence Preston was played by E. G. Marshall and Kenneth by Robert Reed. The pattern remained similar to that in the special. There was usually tension between older and younger lawyer. There was commitment to truth and justice. The cases were usually involved with civil rights of one Sort or another, and sensitive topics such as free speech, sexual rights, the rights of the handicapped, were presented in considerable complexity week after week. We might call this entry into the cultural dialogue, the voice of legal idealism. It appears again, quite briefly, in two shows built on the quest for social relevance emerging in television in the early seven- ties -- belatedly following the surge of such quests throughout the 1960s. Both "The Young Lawyers" and "The Storefront Lawyers" placed young, committed groups of lawyers under the guidance of more experienced elders and put them in strong social situations. They defended clients involved.in slumlord cases, drug busts, and civil rights actions. Significantly, the premise of "The Storefront Lawyers" was that an elder attorney had left a prestigious law firm to move with his younger partners into a more socially aware practice. When the show's ratings faltered, however, it was put on hiatus and re- vamped. When it returned, all the lawyers had rejoined the major firm but maintained their commitment to social causes. The ratings weren't helped by the alterations. Perhaps the power of real cases emerging from the late sixties dwarfed the idealistic fictions presented in these programs in the minds of audiences. This pattern continues even into the present. For the last two years we have seen a struggling series try to stay on the air to present similar versions of legal anguish. In "The Trials of Rosie O'Neill," Sharon Gless portrays a recently divorced lawyer who has chosen to leave her prestigious firm to join the Public Defender's office. Again, in all these instances, the law itself is on trial. The central question is whether or not justice can be fairly meted despite factors of financial status, gender, ethnicity, or acceptance of dominant ideologies. For the most part, the answer is yes. The law itself becomes the central charac- ter in these fictions, struggled over by cynics and idealists, realists, pragmatists, students and teachers, the fresh and the weary. Increasingly, the sinew of the law is tested by having its dramatic rep- resentatives forced to defend those who seem otherwise despicable. And, in latter years, the sense that equal protection is not always a pleasant choice is offered up as a further example of a free society's required commitments. Before leaving this model I want to mention one other inflec- tion in this voicing of the meaning of the law. Abstracted from the streets or, for the most part, even from the courts, this mini-dialogue on the texture and meaning of the law itself was powerfully presented for a number of years in the late 1970s in "The Paper Chase." Where better to present these discussions than in the halls of leaming, where the elder is truly a teacher by trade and the neophytes have not yet been given responsibility for the lives and fortunes of clients? Here the lessons are extended to question the commitments of those still engaged in study and, in the explanations given them, we, in the audi- ence, lern our lessons as well. There is another voice of the lawyer, however, one that does not diminish or leave behind these overt tests of the law's ability to cover all citizens, but that tests the lawyer's ability to enter the lives of clients. "Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law," starring Arthur Hill, ran from 1971-74. Marshall was presented as a personal lawyer in a small town, and though he, too, handled significant social topics, the em- phasis was on the counseling role. Produced by the same team that gave us "Marcus Welby, M.D.," we might think of Owen Marshall as the family physician of lawyers -- the lawyer who makes, if you will, house calls. It was the personal touch that counted in this show, and in setting out this goal for lawyers, television suggested that citizens are too often out of touch, that, like medicine, the law has lost some sense of personal direction and must recover it if it is to be truly a part of lived experience. Running concurrently with some of these other programs were shows such as "Judd for the Defense" and the starkly but informa- tively titled, "The Lawyers." These fictions built their stories around the lawyer as celebrity, with Judd being specifically patterned on an F. Lee Baily type of jet-setting, high-powered, well-tailored attomey-for- hire. Again, the cases that drew him placed him at times in the service of those who could not afford his fees, but somehow he never seemed to need a new pair of shoes. We might call this voice, the lawyer as hired gun. Here, the law requires power in the form of persona. It is charisma that defines, not compassion, scholarship, wisdom or experi- ence. I have not touched here on a major category, a powerful voice in this dialogue -- the lawyer as detective. Others will deal more fully with that topic. But suffice it to say that from "Perry Mason" to "Matlock," lawyers have been presented on television as capable of extraordinary powers of detection. In such instances, the law becomes Holmes' magnifying glass, a relentless intensifier of a world in which evil truly exists. Murder is most often the subject in such fictions. Nor will I dwell on the one strong comedy set in the court- room, "Night Court." This long-running, gag-oriented program sug- gests that the world of New York's night courts is a world gone pleas- antly, charmingly mad. It also serves as the setting for television's most extreme blue humor, filled with more suggestive and smutty sex jokes than an old-time burlesque house. Perhaps the representation of the courts as a setting for burlesque adds its own word to the dialogue surrounding the law. With all these things in mind, let us come to a group of legal shows now on the air. Because these shows are presented as ensemble fictions, filled with many characters, they are able to gather up the voices I have so far mentioned and put them into actual dialogues in any given episode. "L.A. Law" runs the gamut from wisdom and re- serve to sleaze and corruption. Lawyers are presented as flawed, as self-serving, and as committed to service and justice. Age and experi- ence are presented as assisting the novice, but are often seen as no more able to do justice than the first-year associate. Here, too, emphasis on the personal lives of lawyers opens them to a whole new range of voices. We explore their motivations as well as their actions, their neuroses as well as their expertise, their pet- tiness as well as their high-mindedness. We might say that this is a more "realistic" picture, but we do so at some peril. "Civil Wars," for example, takes what appears to be a cynical view of marriage and the family -- lensed through the jaundiced eyes of divorce lawyers -- but is it any less distorted than those early idealisms offered by Lawrence and Ken Preston'? "Equal Justice," an all-too-short-lived series focused on assis- tant district attorneys, took us into the political bowels of big-city legal systems, but was it any more truthful than Perry Mason's stupendous ability to make his opponents into simpletons? My point is that it is in the dialogue itself that we must look for fullness: lawyer as wise man, law as collected embodied wisdom; lawyer as detective, law as weapon; lawyer as celebrity, law as contest; lawyer as idealist, law as the muscle of freedom. All these expressions are part of our entertainments as well as part of our lives. We must learn all the voices if we are to speak clearly on this topic. We can see this dialogue at work in the program I was re- minded of last evening and had not thought to put in here, a new pro- gram that I recommend highly if it remains on the air called "I'll Fly Away." Set in the American South in that same period when "The Defenders" was actually playing, it has Sam Waterston as a small-town attorney in much the same role as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. The difference is that we see him as a more complex and flawed character. We see a far more complex depiction of small- town Southern life in that period, and we see this in the context of family motivations that are again pushing us back to reconsider our own historical moments with other kinds of issues of social justice in the context of the law. It's a very interesting program and I think it's important to keep abreast of it. And now, to conclude, what happens when this cultural forum is fragmented into bits and pieces by new technologies as is now hap- pening? The more extreme forms of legal fictions, the more explicit references to sexual behavior and violence of various sorts, the stronger depictions of flawed lawyers in the throes of nervous break- downs, the suicides on the air -- all these suggest that there is an at- tempt to pull an audience with more specific voices, to forego the more widely shared, but perhaps no less truthful, expressions of what the profession is all about. I believe this is occurring in part because of another aspect of the depiction of the legal world on television. It, too, has historical roots. From the early days of the medium we have had a steady line of reenactments of actual cases. "The Black Robe," "Public Defender," " Justice," " Famous Jury Trials" -- all these drew their sources from files and made this known to the audiences. I will mention one special version of this type of program. "They Stand Accused" was produced in Chicago in the early days of television. It ran from 1949-54. These cases were not drawn from files; rather, they were patterned on various types of cases, briefed out by an assistant attorney general of the State of Illinois, and ad-libbed by actors playing principle roles. The studio audience served as the jury and reached decisions. I suggest that we are returning to this motif in television, that the Thomas-Hill hearings and the Smith trial in Florida are but the beginnings of a deeper involvement by audiences in "real" trials. From the popularity of "The People's Court" to discussions of cable channels devoted exclusively to courtroom proceedings, all these are indications of our passionate involvement with these issues, themes, and personae. As television becomes less.of a forum and more a newsstand, a library where we can each choose the voices we most prefer, we stand to gain a great deal. Seeing "real" legal actions on the small screen may be part of that gain, for it may lessen our reliance on the fic- tionalized accounts. But I believe we also lose something. We lose the forced engagement with ideas that may lie outside our received no- tions. Those fictionalized test cases asked us to consider the meaning of our own commitment to the notion of justice. And when that ab- straction is lost in the face of sensationalism and opinion, even when presented in the guise of "reality," I believe that we all suffer for that loss. Still, there will always be fictional lawyers, running out their unreal antics in the context of real ideas. And since some form of television will continue to draw substantial, if not massive, audiences, I look for those lawyers to remain a part of popular culture. After all, too many lawyers have their hands in studio business to let their col- leagues off the hook of being made into "characters." * E J. Heyne Centennial Professor in Communication, Department of Radio-TV-Film, The University of Texas at Austin. |
