Under the Radar: Stuart Margolin

 

 

1940-2022

Actor, director, writer, singer, songwriter--Stuart Margolin was certainly a very creative person, which he talks about in the following video, aptly titled, "The Creative Process":

Margolin comes across as very thoughtful, and a bit refined, very different from the hapless lowlifes he so often and so expertly played, including one of the greatest hapless lowlifes in TV history. Not that he couldn't also play hapless middle-of-the-road characters, as he frequently did as a cast member of this early 1970's series:

 An hour-long comedy anthology series that guest-starred well-known TV actors of the day, each episode usually consisted of three ten-minute stories of romantic ridiculousness. As filler there was a series of blackout sketches enacted by an in-house reparatory company, one of the members of which was Margolin. You'll spot him easily:

Even though he was basically unknown at this point in his career, Margolin must have impressed at least somebody with a bit of influence (probably his brother Arnold, who coproduced Love American Style) because he got a chance to work alongside a former Catwoman and a beatnik-turned-castaway in one of those ten-minute stories, a slice of now-dated foolishness titled "Love and the Cake": 

Bob Denver, reduced to playing straight man? Where is Alan Hale Jr. when you need him? I don't know if it was "Love and the Cake" or one of those ten-minute segments, but a TV star-turned-movie star-now-segueing-back-into-a-TV-star by the name of James Garner caught LAS one night and was impressed enough with Margolin's acting to invite him on his new Western series Nichols. That show only lasted a single season. However, Garner's next series...

...did much better, lasting six seasons. On The Rockford Files, Garner played (wrongfully convicted) ex-con Jim Rockford, now a down-on-his-heels private eye. So down on his heels that he couldn't quite disentangle himself from the disastrous schemes of his former San Quenton cellmate, Angel Martin. That hardly describes the whole series, and Angel wasn't on every episode, but he appeared often enough that he quickly became a fan favorite (including this fan's favorite.) Angel apparently also was a favorite of The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, as they eventually awarded Margolin two supporting actor Emmys for his hilarious portrayal of the hapless lowlife. The following clips (including some recorded telephone messages that opened the show) should give you some idea of Angel's madcap mendacity:

Sherlock Holmes and Watson, by way of 1970s LA. Instead of foggy Baskervilles moors, sun-bleached strip malls.

Finally...

Hey! What's he doing here?

Have a listen:

If I close my eyes, I can almost see Angel Martin doing a duckwalk.