Backstory: Tom Selleck...the original Indy...

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Posted by junior from lou-ts3-22.iglou.com (204.255.239.128) on Tuesday, November 06, 2001 at 10:19pm :

Okay-Okay, pipe down kids. I know Harrison is the original Indy.
This is just a little nugget I dug up on the situation.

Background: After years of bouncing around Hollywood, Selleck got his break as a guest on "The Rockford Files" in the 1979-80 TV season. He was brought back for several episodes "by popular demand". But a sthe season ended, "Rockford" star James Garner quit. That left CBS with a hole in its schedule where a successful detective program had been...and a distaste for unmangeable "big stars". The network also had an empty studio in Hawaii, since the long-running "Hawaii Five-O" had just ended. CBS's solution was "Magnum, P.I."- a detective show based in Hawaii, starring newcomer Tom Selleck. It was scheduled for the 1980-81 season.

Story: As Cheryl Moch and Vincent Virga describe it in their book Deals: "Then the actor's dream became the actor's nightmare. (He was offered) two sensational jobs at once. Steven Speilberg and George Lucas cast him (as Indiana Jones) in Raiders of the Lost Ark. They wanted a new face. They asked CBS to postpone "Magnum"...Ark would most likely make Selleck a superstar, a big plus for an aspiring TV series. Selleck held his breath when he wasn't praying.

CBS refused, fearful of losing the already announced "Magnum" idea to a competetor and worried about the demands superstars make. The two jobs conflicted and Selleck belonged to CBS. He packed for Hawaii. As it happened, an actor's strike delayed (the Magnum) production for three months. Raiders, shooting abroad, was exempt. "I could have gone to Europe and Africa, "Selleck said with a sigh, "done Raiders, then come back to Hawaii to do Magnum.

Magnum ran for 8 years and made Selleck famous, but he never really made it as a movie star. Raiders of the Lost Ark, starring Harrison Ford, became one of the top grossing films of all time and helped establish Ford as the biggest box-office attraction in history.

Thank you CBS for sticking to your guns.

jr



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