The Name of the Game

This series was brilliant. Few shows have reached this level of quality. From musical scores to well thought story lines. Great chemistry between actors. What I enjoyed was it revealed American dynamics and world events through the magazine journalist. We saw what makes an interesting story and how it is brought to the pages. We also saw why a story is valuable. Not because it would sell magazines but because it was just interesting. This series was interesting. It had a particular feel about it that set it apart from any other show. Yes this is what television was ment to communicate.

I had just visited Universal Studies, Hollywood in 1968, when I was 15 and saw sets where they filmed The Name of The Game. Growing up with Bat Masterson and The Untouchables, I was a big fan of two of the stars, Gene Barry and Robert Stack. Susan St. James was just a young lady as Peggy Maxwell at 22 years of age. Tony Franciosa was fine too though I think he got into some type of dispute with the studio and disappeared from the show.

The 90 minute show ran on Friday nights and I remember enjoying it quite a bit. I have not seen it in some time and really hope it will be available on DVD sometime soon. It was shot in color and I think ran for about three years. Though the show is now almost 40 years old, I know I would still have fun watching it. My kids would laugh at the rotary dial telephones and lack of computers but to me it would still be a blast. They would recognize Robert Stack from Airplane though! Tony Franciosa was good but my favorites were Barry and Stack. The action, cars, outfits and setting were all classy. Please bring it back on DVD!

"The Name Of The Game" was, as I recall, a very interesting and well-done "rotating" series that portrayed various and sundry well-known actors such as Gene Barry and Tony Franciosa as personnel connected with a well-known magazine. The peculiar thing was that this "fictional" magazine later became the real thing in life as we know it. It was a fascinating show to watch -- especially if you'd not seen it before and had caught it in passing later in syndication. It also had a very cool theme song, quite an accomplishment in itself.

I used to love this show. I have not seen it recently, and I do not know how it would play today. However, my younger self remembers this as one of the best tv dramas ever. I remember one episode when Tony Franciosa returns to New York City to visit his mother and astranged older brother played by Martin Balsem. Franciosa throughout is trip is reading Thomas Wolf's "You can Never Go Home Again." He reunites with is brother, but later find that his grocery store owner brother is also a local drug dealer. It ends with Franciosa turning his brother into the police. His mother forgiving him, but she leaves to live in her home country of Italy. Susan Saint James played one of the magazine's researchers, and stared in one episode opposite Joseph Cotton. This was a 90 minute show that had three rotating stars. Tony Franciosa played the star reporter for a fictional magazine called "People," his millionare publisher was Glenn Howard played by Gene Barry, and Robert Stack played Dan Farrell, a former FBI agent turned crime reporter.

This series to me was in a class by itself. The stories were first-rate and the stars were very charming and sophisticated. I always did admire Gene Barry as an actor and his work in this series made me a lifelong fan. I loved the clothes that he wore on the show and hence have tried to emulate his sophisticated style ever since. I feel that there were very few actors at that time other than Craig Stevens and Robert Wagner that had the same aura and screen presence. I also greatly enjoyed the episodes that Tony Franciosa and Robert Stack headlined. This series had the feel of a theatrical motion picture and one could tell that big bucks were being spent to produce it. I have some episodes on tape and still think that they hold up very well as compared to dramatic television today. Like the old saying goes; "They don't make 'em like that anymore".