''21 Beacon Street'' is an American detective television series that originally aired on

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. It is one of NBCUniversal's ...

from July 2 to September 10, 1959. Produced by

Filmways Filmways, Inc. (also known as Filmways Pictures and Filmways Television) was a television and film production company founded by American film executive Martin Ransohoff and Edwin Kasper in 1952. It is probably best remembered as the production c ...

, the summer replacement series for '' The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show'' consisted of 11

black-and-white Black-and-white (B&W or B/W) images combine black and white to produce a range of achromatic brightnesses of grey. It is also known as greyscale in technical settings. Media The history of various visual media began with black and white, ...

30-minute episodes. The show starred Dennis Morgan as private investigator Dennis Chase. Other cast members included Joanna Barnes, Brian Kelly, and James Maloney.Brooks, Tim and Marsh, Earle, ''The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows 1946 – Present'' Ballantine Books, 1979, page 647 The series pilot was broadcast as an episode of '' Panic!''. The show aired on Thursdays at 9:30 p.m. Eastern Time. Reruns were broadcast on ABC-TV on Sundays at 10:30 p.m. from December 1959 to March 1960. Leonard Heideman was the show's creator. The series' first episode was "The Rub-Out".

Premise

Dennis Chase was a private investigator with an office on 21 Beacon Street, in an unspecified city. Chase was aided by Joanna Barnes as Joanna, who was a combination of beauty and brains. She was able to glean information and then act as a decoy. Brian Kelly was Brian, a young law school graduate; and James Maloney played Jim, an expert on dialects, as well as a skilled craftsman. Chase and his assistants worked to discover who the criminals were, but then notified the police to come and apprehend the law breakers.

Forerunner to ''Mission Impossible''

The producers of ''Mission: Impossible'' were sued for plagiarism by the creators of ''21 Beacon Street.'' The suit was settled out of court. Bruce Geller claimed never to have seen the earlier show; ''Beacon Street's'' story editor and pilot scripter, Laurence Heath, would later write several episodes of ''Mission: Impossible.''

Episodes

References

External links

*
Cimaclub Online21 Beacon Street on DVD
1959 American television series debuts 1959 American television series endings 1950s American crime television series Black-and-white American television shows American English-language television shows Television shows set in Boston American detective television series Television series by MGM Television Television series by Filmways NBC television dramas {{US-drama-tv-prog-stub