Barney Miller

‡ Murdock, Gorman, and Leiber all made guest appearances in other roles in addition to their regularly recurring series roles.

Barney Miller had a stock company of character actors who made frequent appearances in different roles, among them Don Calfa (7 episodes), Rod Colbin (7), Phil Leeds (7), Ralph Manza (7), Oliver Clark (6), Arny Freeman (6), Peggy Pope (6), Philip Sterling (6), Kenneth Tigar (6), Martin Garner (5), Walter Janowitz (5), Howard Platt (5), Leonard Stone (5), Ivor Francis (4), Jay Gerber (4), Larry Gelman (4), Michael Lombard (4), Edwin Malave (4), Rosanna DeSoto (4), Todd Susman (4), Michael Tucci (4), Sal Viscuso (4), Candice Azzara (3), Eugene Elman (3), Bruce Kirby (3), Jack Kruschen (3), Richard Libertini (3), Kay Medford (3), Nehemiah Persoff (3), Titos Vandis (3), Michael Durrell (2), Alix Elias (2), Peter Jurasik (2), Jenny O'Hara (2), Walter Olkewicz (2) and Lyman Ward (2).

The 12th Precinct had a number of regular complainants, habitués of the holding cell, or other people who often dropped by. Characters seen on three or more episodes included:

‡ cast in several different roles over the series's run

Fish's wife Bernice made an appearance from time to time in Seasons 1 to 4. In Seasons 1, 3 and 4 she was played by Florence Stanley (in a total of seven appearances); in Bernice's only Season 2 appearance she was portrayed by Doris Belack. In that episode, Fish also had a grown daughter named Beverly, played by Emily Levine. Also seen as recurring characters in Season 3 were group home children Jilly (Denise Miller) and Victor (John Cassisi), who would eventually become Fish's foster children. In 1977, the Fishes were spun off into their own show, Fish which also starred Barry Gordon, who memorably played an embezzler who gets a pay raise and promotion in Season 5 and a lawyer representing Wojo in Season 8.

In addition to Barney's wife Liz, Barney's son David (Michael Tessier) and daughter Rachel (Anne Wyndham) appeared in the pilot. Barney's son was written out of the show after the first episode (though was still occasionally mentioned), while his wife made appearances through the second season, and very sporadically thereafter. Wyndham also reprised her role in two later episodes, Season 1, episode 5 "The Courtesans", and Season 7, episode 140 "Rachel".

Darlene Parks played Wojo's ex-prostitute girlfriend Nancy in a 2-episode arc in Season 5. The episodes focus on the 'period of adjustment' following Nancy's move into Stan's apartment.

Production of Barney Miller deliberately resembled a theatrical stage play; scenes rarely strayed from the precinct station's squad room, with its prominent open-barred holding cell, and Miller's adjoining office. The room was said to be on the second or third floor, depending on the episode. Clutter was plentiful and much of it seemed immobile over the years, including a coat hanging on a clothes rack near Harris' desk. A handful of episodes (fewer than a dozen of 170) were partially or fully set in other locations, including a stakeout location ("Stakeout"), a hospital room ("Hair"), an undercover operation ("Grand Hotel"), a jail (three separate rooms in "Contempt"), a hotel room ("Chinatown"), and the apartments of Barney ("Ramon" and "Graft"), Chano ("The Hero"), Fish ("Fish") and Wojo ("Wojo's Girl"). In "The DNA Story," we finally see the inside of the men's room. Barney Miller tended to obey two of the three classical unities of drama: unity of place and unity of time. The third unity, unity of action, was not followed, since each episode had multiple subplots.

Barney Miller was one of the few sitcoms of the period that occasionally mentioned the then-current year or allowed the audience to infer the then-current year.

Barney Miller was notorious for its marathon taping sessions.[13] Early seasons were recorded before a live studio audience and used a laugh track for sweetening reactions during post-production. Creator and executive producer Danny Arnold would then rewrite and restage entire scenes after the audience departed, actively looking for quieter, subtler moments that would not play well before a crowd; a taping session that began in the afternoon or early evening would then continue into the early morning hours. Max Gail referred to this in the Jack Soo retrospective episode aired on May 17, 1979, remarking that one of the clips shown was a scene that "we finished around 2:30 in the morning." In a 1977 blooper, a crew member mentions it being 3:15 a.m.

Writer Tom Reeder described working on the show:

Danny Arnold was the creator of the show, and especially in the early years, he was a marvel. When he was "on", he could spin out entire scenes, ad-libbing dialogue—and great jokes—for every character. By the time those scenes got to script form, though, he obsessively rewrote them.

That's true of a lot of showrunners, but Danny couldn't seem to stop himself. Sometime during season 2 (or maybe it was 3) the show was no longer taped in front of an audience, partly because the script was rarely done by show night. When one season began, six pages were in print. Not six scripts—six pages of one script.

This meant that on the day the show was taped, the actors would hang around on the stage, waiting for pages to be sent down. Then—sometimes at 2 a.m.—they would have to learn new scenes. Ron Carey (Officer Levitt) would get his fairly quickly: "Here's your mail, Captain." On the other hand, poor Steve Landesberg (Dietrich) might have to memorize long speeches explaining how nuclear fission works.

In the early years, Danny benefited from the heroic writing efforts of Chris Hayward, who was a veteran writer, and rookies Tony Sheehan and Reinhold Weege who, like me, didn't know any better. They were the Barney Miller writing staff. My agent wisely turned down Danny's annual offers of staff jobs, negotiating freelance assignments (so-called "multiple deals") for me instead. Even so, the pace was frantic—on one assignment I was given 3 hours to write the story outline. On another occasion, a friend came into my office at ABC-Vine Street and said, "Hey, Reeder, want to go get some lunch?" I pointed to the paper in my typewriter and said, "This script is on the stage—thanks anyway."[14]

Employing a live audience became impractical as lengthy reshoots became commonplace. By Season 4, only a quiet laugh track was used when necessary.

When Barney Miller premiered in January, 1975, actress Barbara Barrie was hired as a regular cast member to play Liz Miller, Barney's wise, faithful, and loving wife. She received second billing in the opening credits after Hal Linden. During that half-season, Barrie appeared in seven episodes out of thirteen. At that time, the premise of the show was to focus on Barney's career as a police captain at the 12th precinct as well as his home life with his wife and children.

At the start of the 1975-76 season, when it became evident that storylines at the 12th precinct were taking precedence, Barrie went to producer Danny Arnold and asked to be released from the show. Arnold reluctantly agreed and Barrie appeared in only two episodes during that year – “The Social Worker” which was the second episode of the second season and the holiday installment “Happy New Year”. However, she continued to receive second billing in the opening credits throughout the second year.

In the third season, Barrie's character of Liz as well as Barney's children were occasionally mentioned but never seen. In the spring of 1978, Barrie returned to the series as a guest star reprising her role of Liz Miller in the episode “Quo Vadis”. In that installment Barney gets shot on duty but survives his attack virtually unharmed. However, Liz, upset by the incident and unable to stand the pressures of being a policeman's wife, gives Barney an ultimatum – to either give up his police job so they can move to a safer neighborhood or end their marriage. At the end of the episode, Barney and Liz separate.

During the 1978-79 season, Barrie made her final appearance on Barney Miller again as a guest star in the Christmas show “Toys”. In that episode, Liz meets Barney at the 12th precinct on Christmas Eve to discuss celebrating the holidays with their children leading up to the possibility of a reconciliation. After this installment, Liz is never seen again but towards the end of the fifth season, Barney happily announces to his police staff that he and Liz have ended their separation and that he is moving back to their apartment. Despite Barrie's absence, her character of Liz Miller continued to be mentioned throughout the rest of the show's run.

In the first season of Barney Miller, the character of Fish (played by Abe Vigoda) proved to be so popular that a spin-off was being considered by ABC as early as October, 1975. The series, Fish, premiered on February 5, 1977. The premise of the series focused on the domestic side of Fish's life as he and his wife Bernice (played by Florence Stanley) became foster parents to five racially mixed children known as “Persons In Need Of Supervision” or PINS. Vigoda's character of Fish continued to appear sporadically in the second half of Season 3 of Barney Miller while also starring in Fish. During the 1977-78 season, Fish officially retired from the NYPD in Season 4, Episode 2 episode of Barney Miller. While Fish did reasonably well in the ratings, it did not attract the same number of viewers as Barney Miller. ABC was going to renew the show for a third season, but, according to cast member Todd Bridges, Vigoda demanded more money than the producers were willing to pay. As a result, Fish was canceled by ABC in May, 1978 without a series finale. Vigoda did not return to Barney Miller as a regular cast member. However, in the spring of 1981, he did make a final appearance as Fish as a guest in a seventh season episode of the series called "Lady and the Bomb", thus giving his character some closure.

After Fish was canceled, a special one-hour episode of Barney Miller aired on January 25, 1979. It was created as a pilot episode for another possible Barney Miller spin-off to star series regular Max Gail. Titled “Wojo's Girl”, the first half of the episode was set at the 12th precinct in which Wojo (played by Gail) decides to have his girlfriend Nancy, a former prostitute (played by Darlene Parks), live with him. The second half of the installment takes place entirely in Wojo's apartment as he and Nancy try and struggle to adjust to living together. The pilot did not sell, Park's character of Nancy was never seen again and Gail remained with Barney Miller until the series ended in the spring of 1982.

Shortly after the premiere of Barney Miller in early 1975, actress Linda Lavin guest starred as Detective Janice Wentworth on the eighth episode "Ms. Cop". Her character in that installment went over very well with audiences and Lavin was brought back as a semi-regular for Barney Miller's second year. During that season, a romance began at the 12th precinct between Detective Wentworth and Detective Sergeant (Wojo) Wojciehowicz (played by Max Gail). However, at the same time, Lavin had just completed a television pilot for CBS called Alice, which was based on the Academy Award-winning film Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. The pilot quickly sold to CBS and they included it on their schedule for the 1976-1977 season. As a result, Lavin left Barney Miller at the end of the show's second season. Alice ran for nine years on CBS and immediately established Lavin as a television star. Lavin never returned to Barney Miller although her character of Detective Janice Wentworth was briefly seen in a flashback in the last episode of the series "Landmark: Part 3".

Towards the end of the fourth year, Jack Soo was diagnosed with esophageal cancer and was absent for the last five episodes of the 1977-78 season. To help fill the void during his medical leave, actress Mari Gorman was brought in for three installments as Officer Rosslyn Licori. Cast member Ron Carey's role of Officer Carl Levitt was also expanded at this time to compensate for Soo's absence. Soo returned to Barney Miller at the start of the 1978-79 season but his cancer had already metastasized and spread very quickly. As a result, he was only able to complete nine episodes that year. By the time he taped his last appearance which was the installment "The Vandal" that aired on November 9, 1978, Soo's illness was quite evident in his rapid weight loss. Two months later, he died on January 11, 1979 at the age of 61. The fifth season finale "Jack Soo: A Retrospective" aired on May 17, 1979 and was a tribute to him. For this installment, the cast of Barney Miller led by Hal Linden appeared as themselves on the 12th precinct office set as they fondly shared stories and reminiscences about Soo as an actor and as a friend. At the end of the episode, the cast raised their coffee cups in loving memory of Jack Soo.

During the seventh season, in an attempt to fill the void left by Jack Soo, a new character was added to Barney Miller. In November, 1980, actor Paul Lieber was cast as Detective Sergeant Eric Dorsey. Dorsey had a jaded, cynical attitude who initially alienated his fellow colleagues at the 12th precinct by assuming they were all corrupt. Even though he eventually realized that his convictions were not true, the character was not popular with viewers. As a result, Lieber's tenure on the show lasted only a few weeks with his character of Dorsey reassigned to another precinct. (Incidentally, Lieber had made a previous appearance on Barney Miller during the previous season in a small role as a gunman in the episode "The Architect").

Marty and Darryl were among the earliest recurring gay characters on American television. Danny Arnold worked closely with the Gay Media Task Force, an activist group that worked on LGBT representation in media, in developing the characters.[15] Initially both characters were presented in a stereotypically effeminate manner but in later appearances Darryl began dressing and speaking in a more mainstream fashion.[16] Officer Zitelli's coming out was not the first gay storyline on American television, but was a memorable one.

The series took a while to become a hit, but ABC supported it anyway.[17]

In the 1975 "The Courtesans" episode (S1 E5) with Nancy Dussault, creator/producer/showrunner Danny Arnold threatened to quit his own show, if network censors removed a risque line. The network relented and the resulting publicity over the X-Rated episode that was banned in two markets ensured the series' ratings survival, according to Hal Linden. [18]

Danny Arnold ended production of Barney Miller in 1982 after eight seasons for fear of repeating storylines; the show was not canceled by the network.