When the Uniform Fits

William Boyett (1927-2004) was an American actor best known for his television roles in law enforcement dramas on television. Aside from a handful of uncredited film roles early in his career, he was a mainstay of television from the 1950s through the 1990s. The handsome actor was known for his tight, frontal baritone vocal delivery and looking right at home in a uniform.

Harry William Boyett was born in Akron, Ohio, and showed an interest in theater at a young age. He won a Shakespeare competition in high school, which led to acting jobs in radio. After his service in the Navy during World War II, he performed on the stage in both New York City and Los Angeles. By the mid-Fifties, his career was jump-started with recurring roles in over sixty-five episodes of Highway Patrol. Boyett also portrayed a policeman in such diverse series as Bat Masterson; Batman; and Star Trek: The Next Generation. He had roles on Sea Hunt in ten episodes, eight episodes of Perry Mason, and nine episodes of Dragnet 1967. But by far his most visible role was as Sgt. "Mac" MacDonald on 129 episodes of Adam 12.

Through the 1960s and 1970s, Boyett found steady work on such diverse series as Laramie, I Spy, The Andy Griffith Show, Fantasy Island, The Love Boat, The Rockford Files, Gunsmoke, Emergency!, Knight Rider, Murphy Brown, and Night Court. Boyett's final visible role, not surprisingly as a desk sergeant, ended his career on a low note in the direct-to-video live-action comedy, Theodore Rex (1995).

A Noted Television Composer

 

Jerry Goldsmith (Jerrald King Goldsmith 1929-2004) was an American composer and conductor known for his vast work in the film industry but also for television scoring and concert works. He composed scores for five films in the Star Trek franchise and three in the Rambo franchise, as well as for Logan's Run, Planet of the Apes, Patton, Chinatown, Alien, Poltergeist, Gremlins, Hoosiers, Air Force One, and many others. His 1997 opening fanfare for Universal Pictures debuted with the release of The Lost World: Jurassic Park. His silver screen compositions continued into the Twenty-first Century. "Among his many other works" is synonymous with Goldsmith. His film scores were not always identified with him, ranging from light and melodic to very dissonant scores in a style where the melody is nearly non-existent, like many of his influences of early 20th-century composers.

Goldsmith found early work at CBS in 1950 as a clerk typist in the network's music department under director Lud Gluskin. There he began writing scores for radio shows, later progressing into scoring live CBS television anthology series. As the decade progressed, he scored multiple episodes of the television series The Twilight Zone and Dr. Kildare. Goldsmith composed the theme for The Man from U.N.C.L.E. in 1964 and later added his touch to the James Bond parody, Our Man Flint, 1966, and its sequel In Like Flint, 1967. His military/action flare with snare drums was sometimes a giveaway during this period. His most notable television theme in the Nineties was the theme for the UPN series Star Trek: Voyager in 1995. He won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Main Title Theme Music. It is the most beautifully constructed theme of any Star Trek television series. His score and theme for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, 1979, was later used on the popular television series, Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1987 with an arrangement by Dennis McCarthy.

Note: Goldsmith was good friends with fellow composer, Morton Stevens, of Hawaii Five-O theme fame. Stevens also wrote the theme to television's Police Woman. Goldsmith confessed he used that theme for his Derek Flint character film series. He turned Steven's theme "inside-out" but the melody is lifted intact. Both composers were amused by the reuse.