The Blue Knight

Some of William Holden's best work from the 70s is in this made for TV movie The Blue Knight. It came out at the time that Joseph Wambaugh was being celebrated for his work involving police. The Blue Knight was a best selling novel and one of Wambaugh's best.

Holden perfectly captures the aging Bumper Morgan on the last week of his job hoping to go out on top against the criminals. A prostitute he knew from his beat is found murdered.

That in itself is interesting because police as a rule don't give too much attention to crimes against hookers. But Holden is apparently thought of enough that they make an effort on this one.

Holden is keeping company with college professor Lee Remick who would like to marry and settle down with him. Holden is at loose ends though contemplating his retirement.

Some praise should go to Sam Elliott as the homicide detective who is assigned the hooker case. He and Holden don't get along, but by the end respect each other. Also to young Sergeant Joe Santos who the following year would be another sergeant, Dennis Becker on The Rockford Files who serves kind of as Bumper's alter ego and better self.

What I liked best about this film is that we really have no idea what Holden's future will be. You can speculate for a week about it.

A Golden Globe for Lee Remick and an Emmy for William Holden as Best Actor to go with his Best Actor Oscar for Stalag 17. The Blue Knight is one of the best made for TV films out there.

The film has a gritty realism. Holden gives, I think one of his best performances. Lee Remick is wonderful as the love intrest. You'll be surprised to see a very young Sam Elliot in the role of the rookie cop.

My friend & me were discussing old TV shows & she remembered a great detective/police show starring William Holden that she viewed back in the 70's. She couldn't remember the name of it so I told her I would go online & find out the show's name & the information for her, which I did at this site. She loved the show & watched it even though the series didn't last as long as she would have liked. She also said the show included a dog which was his companion. I did discover that the dogs name was Leo & that it was a Bulldog/Terrier mix. I noticed this information was not on the other comments & thought maybe some of the readers would enjoy knowing this. Thanks so much for this great site!

William Holden makes a very credible character out of the aging policeman who after twenty years decides to retire, although he knows nothing else. Yes, he has a girl, Lee Remick, but the job gets between him and her. It's an interesting almost documentary study of regular policeman's work on the off beat streets of Los Angeles with hookers and drug dealers and bookies and what not, and he finds it his mission to keep the crap at bay. It is a rather bleak story and typically melancholy for a William Holden film, and he makes it one of his best films, although there are so many of them. It is in a way a study of life in the gutter, and someone appropriately tells him that he is married to the gutter. He wants to leave it and get away from it, but the film and the story never tells if and in that case how he really succeeds. It is actually two films that can be watched separately, but watching them in one stretch is fully rewarding. The music by Nelson Riddle is excellent and adds to the fascinating genuineness of the whole. It is not an edifying film, no entertainment, no great action, but the more interesting for actually being profoundly human providing an indispensable insight into the truth of a naked city.

I also saw this NBC mini series in its original uncut network run in the fall of 1973 and then saw it repeated in 1975, but that's it. Yes, it needs to be released on DVD or VHS in its original state because this is classic landmark adult TV. This was the re-birth of William Holden's career and he was beyond memorable as Bumper Morgan. The characters ran better here than in print and that was hard to top because Wambaugh wrote a great first person character analysis with his novel of the final works days of a dinosaured LAPD street cop. Overlooked was the supporting mastery of Joe Santos, Vic Tayback and Sam Elliot. Along with KOJAK, this was TV's best of 1973.