Mr. Novak

My Dad was a teacher in 1964 so Mr. Novak had a pre-installed fan base at our house. Watching the shows recently its surprising how edgy they were dealing with topics such as Student-Teacher romances, teen pregnancy, drug addiction, racial prejudice, older teachers with dementia, kids with no self confidence and false accusations against teachers. Its fun to see then young actors as students such as Tony Dow, Terry Garr. Bonnie Franklin, Joey Heatherton, Beau Briges, Richard Dreyfuss, George Takei, Walter Koenig and many more. This is pre-Beatles America and a Los Angeles where no one locks their car door. Long extinct but fun to see and visit again. Dean Jagger stands out as Principal Albert Vance, the wise no nonsense Administrator who never enjoyed the series and bailed halfway through the second and last season.

It's hard to overstate how impressive this series was for those of us seeing it for the first time. As the first reviewer here noted, its positive theme was very impressive for the day, coming on the heels of dramas that were either saccharine or "tough" or of certain tried and true genres, such as the western, the medical or doctor story, and others of the day.

Franciscus was impressive for his acting skills, obvious from the first episode, and the entire cast was well-chosen, especially Dean Jagger, who had a chance in this series to get his career off to a new start, and did a good job of convincing us of his position and authority. A long gone actor of great skill; compare his performance as the town drunk in "Bad Day at Black Rock."

I highly recommend this series.

As we commemorating on the 60th anniversary of a classic television series the critically acclaimed "Mr. Novak" was in fact the absolute best among the finest of programs to be produced during the 1960's. It ranks with "The Fugitive", "The Andy Griffith Show", "Ben Casey", "The Defenders", "The Twilight Zone", "The Dick Van Dyke Show", and others as the absolute pinnacle of brilliant television programming that came from that decade. The series "Mr. Novak" was nominated for four Prime Time Emmys including Outstanding Dramatic Series and won the Peabody Award in 1963 Best Dramatic Series. It also was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor In A Dramatic Series and Outstanding Writing In A Dramatic Series.

Created by E. Jack Neuman (who was also the executive producer of the series)along with producer Boris Segal and producers Joesph Calvelli and David Victor, the critically acclaimed dramatic series aired on NBC's prime time Tuesday night schedule that ran for two seasons producing 60 episodes all in black and white airing from September 24, 1963 until the final telecast on April 27, 1965. The series was produced by Arena Productions in association with MGM Television for the NBC Television Network. The first season alone had impressive ratings where it faced strong competition against ABC's World War II drama "Combat!" and CBS' variety series "The Red Skelton Show". The second season saw solid ratings as well as it faced numerous casting changes during its run.

The award winning series stars James Franciscus(of Naked City) in the title role as John Novak who is a first year English teacher at Jefferson High School in Los Angeles who often gets involved in the lives of his students and fellow teachers and other employees of the school while under the guidance and the watchful eye of the school principal Albert Vane (Dean Jagger in Season 1 only) and later under the school principal Martin Woodbridge (Burgess Meredith in Season 2). The series took on the issues of its time as it dealt with controversial subjects that were intense for network television at the time but in turn brought solid riveting performances.

The guest stars that were on this program consisted of some of Hollywood's best that included June Lockhart, Robert Culp, Edward Asner, Eddie Albert, Johnny Crawford, Sherry Jackson, Shelly Fabares, Martin Landau, Beau Bridges, Don Grady, Kim Darby, Tony Dow, Tommy Rettig, Brooke Bundy, Steven Frankel, Frankie Avalon, Diane Baker, Peter Breck, Billy Gray, Tige Andrews, George Takei, Harold J. Stone, Mark Slade, and Patricia Crowley just to name a few. Big name directors like Richard Donner, Alvin Ganzer and Mark Rydell contributed to some of the great episodes. "Mr. Novak" was the forefront of shows that became the trailblazer for others to follow later like "Room 222" and later "Lucas Tanner",and "The White Shadow". A brilliant series that should have stay on the air longer but was abruptly canceled after two seasons.

This was the best "teacher" show ever on TV. It was intelligent, thoughtful presented real problems facing high school students and their teachers and concentrate don education and it's role in people's lives. Later shows tended to idealize the attitudes of students, showing them getting involved in political campaigns and the like. Here, as in reality, they are more concerned with their own lives.

James Franciscus was the first choice to play Dr. Kildare but had to bow out due to a scheduling conflict. this was his consolation prize. the show is basically Kildare in a high school instead of a hospital, with Dean Jagger playing principal Albert Vane, who mentors Novak the way Gillespie mentors Kildare. Franciscus, who looked enough like Richard Chamberlain to have been his older brother, is like Chamberlain, a thoughtful, restrained actor who is easy for the audience to identify with. Jagger's manor is totally different from the imperious Gillespie but he is just as impressive in his own way, as his surface nervousness resolves itself into a steely moral rectitude. Also impressive is Jeanne Bal, who plays a businesslike but knowing assistant principal. She is not only a talented actress but ask yourself if you have ever seen a more beautiful woman.

Like Kildare, Novak is a symbol of the earnest optimism of the early 60's and his handsomeness and youthful idealism suggest President Kennedy, at least as we chose to remember him. Kennedy was assassinated during the first year of this show and Mr. Novak did a show that was an obvious tribute to him, called "Death of a Teacher". A popular teacher dies suddenly at school and each character has to deal with sudden grief in their own way, as we were all having to do at that time. It's an especially touching episode of a special show.

In the era of new frontier idealism and Kennedy era optimism in the early 60's , Mr. Novak is a stand out because James Franciscus's character of high school teacher Mr. John Novak represented what every teacher should have been at the time. He was smart, caring and resilient and often times showed no mercy to his students who he caught wrong doing but he also did his best to straighten out any of his students who were troubled and experienced psychological issues that prevented them from doing well and graduating from Jefferson High School.

In Recent years, Warner Archive released the first season of the series back in 2018 and I must say the show is absolutely brilliant! Not only for it's stone cold accuracy with the ginormous set (located originally on the MGM backlot in Culver City.) that was built for Jefferson High being an EXACT Replica of the real John Marshall High School in Los Angeles, but also simply for the fact that the show was forward thinking by having actors and actress of color not ONLY playing students mixed in with the white students but ALSO playing staff and teachers at Jefferson High, at a time that took place just about 9 or so years after the Brown Vs US Board of Education landmark Supreme Court Case ruled that segregation amongst American Educational institutions were deemed illegal and unconstitutional (it's pretty incredible this was done in an early 60's show before I Spy and the advent desegregation of actors and actresses on Network Television as a result of this show, which didn't happen till a few years after this show left the air during the 1965-66 Network TV Season).

But also, Dean Jagger is also fantastic as Principle Albert Vane, his character like Novak, showed lots of TLC with the students at Jefferson High but could also be ruthless to any student who didn't follow the rules and was caught doing horrible things to other students.

But the show is also incredible to watch just to see young actors who were still being cast in Teen roles strutting their dramatic stuff such as Tony Dow and Shelly Fabares, Johnny Crawford and Don Grady. Interestingly enough, Steve Franken who was previously known for playing Chatsworth Osborne Jr on the Many Loves Of Dobie Gillis sitcom is seen here as a semi regular cast member playing one of the teachers at Jefferson High.

And like what has been mentioned before about the series, it won MANY awards during it's initial run (many of them Peabody educational awards), but because the series was scheduled opposite against Combat! (Which was in its sophomore year at the time, about to go into it's third year, at the time it was an EXTREMELY hot show at the peak of it's popularity). It failed to really grab an audience. It did ok/well enough in it's first initial year for it to not become a one season series but the immense popularity of the series it was on up against On the same night/ time slot on NBC's rival network ABC unfortunately killed the show and it was cancelled after it's second year (coupled with the assassination of JFK in the middle of it's first season, that also dramatically changed the overall tone of the series as well, as America was starting to move away from Front Tier Optimism and more towards Cold War threats hence the advent of the Secret Agent series). James Franciscus on the other hand, was a hot young B movie actor who was trying to find his own series really. He was in the first season of Naked City that was initially cancelled but when the show was brought back for a second season he wasn't included in the show's new cast. After that he kicked around doing B movies and TV guest star appearances but whenever he tried to do a series each one he was in didn't do well, and he also was originally offered the role of Dr. James Kildare, but he said no to that because he was contractually involved in the pilot for this series and what do you know, the pilot for this series got picked up by NBC and this show was made.

But anyways, after this series left the air Franciscus continued to kick around doing guest star appearances on TV and more B movies until he landed his landmark role of being casted as Charlton Heston's initial replacement in the Planet Of The Apes movie Franchise. After that he played a memorable role as a blind insurance investigator in Longstreet, but in hindsight, his career never really took off and he didn't have the big name status cats like Redford and Bruce Dern and Clint Eastwood would have

And Mr Novak is also remarkable for the series's casting of adults as teachers such as Martin Landau and Ed Asner and Robert Culp, and for it's tackling of then controversial subject matters such as teen pregnancy and racism and romantic love amongst teachers and students.

And so in hindsight, the series really felt like a pre cursor to Room 222 and it very much was also the teacher version of the other MGM produced series Dr Kildare, so if your a fan of early 60's TV dramas, DEFINITELY pick up the first season of this show on DVD On Amazon! You will NOT be disappointed at all!, trust me :).