Interview (engl.)

[Dan Tanna Spenser]

What’s old is new again. Just ask actor Randy Mantooth who played paramedic/fireman John Gage on Emergency! from 1972-1977 Now more than 30 years after it went off the air, Emergency! is a hit on Fancast.com, where a new generation of fans are rediscovering the action-packed trials of paramedics from Squad 51. [Watch full episodes here.] Mantooth isn’t surprised the Jack Webb-produced series has not only survived but thrived with the release of DVDs and streaming online. “I get letters from 14-year-old girls wanting to marry me,” he laughs. The actor, 57, who appeared in the 2007 film He Was A Quiet Man, spoke about his former partner, Kevin Tighe who played paramedic/fireman Roy DeSoto (and now appears as John Locke’s father on Lost), as well as his co-stars, the late actors Julie London (nurse Dixie McCall) and Bobby Troup (Dr. Joe Early), and also how the classic show nearly didn’t make it onto the small screen.

Q: The show went off the air in 1977 … hard to believe huh?
A: [Laughs] Yep, I was really only 12 when I did the show… I’m actually 57 years old now … I am not enjoying that number.

Q: When the show started out, America never heard the word paramedic …
A: Initially, when I was told I was going to be playing this character and I was going to be a paramedic, I said, ‘what the hell is a paramedic?’ …

Q: What were your thoughts about starring in a show like this?
A: Well, I was only 20 years old and I was just showing up for work like everyone else; I didn’t realize it was so controversial until we were in the middle of it all. The struggle to keep it as real and as authentic as they could make it during the confines that NBC gave it was very difficult.


Q: How did they get around those confines in order to make it appear real?
A: You never saw anyone die during the time we were on the air. … Sometimes, today, I think we go a little too far with the reality of shows. Although it doesn’t bother me but it does bother some. We would just show a flash of blood and the audiences’ own imagination would take hold. Most of the time, they swore that they saw so much more than there was.

Q: How did you land the role of John?
A: I had done a few things before where they saw me working with Hal Holbrook … a piece of the film was shown and then I got cast. I didn’t audition for the role nor did Kevin … I was under contract with Universal and he was doing a play … they informed us we would be on it. In fact, I turned it down because I had hair down to my shoulders. They told me to shut up and sit down and that I would have to cut my hair short. ‘Jack Webb is going to make me cut my hair?’ I said. ‘I don’t want to cut my hair’ … it was not a fun day for me … I had the hippie thing going and living the good life …

Q: Is there any episode that is your favorite?
A: We don’t remember shows by episode but by rescues. I really only remember a rescue for a few reasons like it was either particularly hard, or we had to shoot it for a long time, or something very funny happened … or we were working with someone we were star struck by …

[Watch more episodes.]

Q: Like who?
A: Well, I’m talking about people that I was working alongside that just two years earlier; I was sitting at home watching them on the TV with my parents. Like when I was working with Kent McCord and a year before starring with him, I was watching him on Adam-12 … but Dick Butkus was probably the person I was most start struck by.

Q: What about that rescue called ‘Nurses Wild’?
A: Everyone brings that rescue up. [Watch it now.] They say they enjoyed it and what I recall are a lot of pretty nurses.

Q: Were there other favorites?
A: The favorite of all time that fans always bring up and what was great is that it was written by a battalion chief firefighter who was our technical advisor for the show, James Page, the father of paramedics. He risked his job to be our technical advisor because the LA Fire Department was really resisting the paramedic program because they didn’t want anything to do with it. These old time firefighters would say that ‘we put out fires we don’t deliver babies’ … they didn’t want anything to do with IVs. It was fought and fought hard … Doctors didn’t want to do it, ER nurses didn’t want to do it, politicians certainly didn’t want it because they would have had to figure out how to fund it and they didn’t want to raise taxes. So, it was almost dead in the water.

Q: So, what happened?
A: By Emergency! actually airing — it sort of let the genie out of the bottle and all of America looked up and said, ‘is this real and do firefighters really do this?’… ‘Yes, they are doing it in LA and Seattle and we want that, too,’ was what we said. The doctors were threatened by it because of an ego thing and the nurses thought they were going to be put out of work. So, when it turned out that none of any this was true, the show went through. If it wasn’t for Jack Webb, I don’t think it would have ever been on the air … that’s not to say that we wouldn’t have paramedics today, but it wouldn’t work the way it does now and probably would not have progressed as fast as it has in the last 30 years.

Q: Why doesn’t Kevin like to talk about the show as much as you do?
A: Well, Kevin is still my best friend … The show almost killed his career, he almost couldn’t work after it, and he had to drop out for about 10 years. He had to go back to New York, rebuild his image, and go back to the stage in New York. It’s not like he is ashamed of the show, he just doesn’t like to spend a lot of time talking about it.

[Dan Tanna Spenser]

Q: You have fond memories though …
A: I was so embraced by the firefighters and at one point, I honestly sat down and thought I could really be a firefighter or a paramedic because I really got into it… then I thought, ‘paycheck for acting or paycheck for being a firefighter?’ … I stuck with acting. During my time of soul searching back then, I kept in mind that I am a creative person. I love writing, directing and I would have had to put it all aside if I had chosen to become a firefighter … when I put them both on the scale, the scale tipped and I decided that I could be an advocate for them instead and still be an actor at the same time.

Q: Who else did you get close to on the series?
A: Bobby Troup and Julie London … it was a killer when he passed away and Julie, too. It was like a real end of an era for us … I still think about them and those times when Bobbie was telling me how he wrote the song, “Route 66” and what he was going through … I remember saying, ‘Randy remember every word he is telling you’ … Julie London was so great, and she always referred to herself as a ‘broad.’ My fondest memory of her was the sheer joy of working with her … she always had this droll sense of humor and I also remember sitting in their home [they were married from 1960 until he died in 1999; she was previously married to Jack Webb from 1947-1953]. It was this typical LA sprawling house in the hills overlooking the Valley and there were all these photos of Frank Sinatra and others … I remember sitting there thinking I have been allowed to enter this sanctum that most people don’t ever get to see. It was really neat.

Q: The show has a new following …
A: It’s funny; it is now hitting the radar. I have been on the road talking since 1982 and speaking, so I know there are legions of fans. I think the catalyst for this new interest to those who aren’t in the fire department, or a paramedic or an EMT is the releasing of the DVDs. When you see it, you don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it in its entirety until you see it and your childhood passes right before your very eyes. It’s like bang! What’s old is new again.

Q: So, it’s a nostalgic thing?
A: I get letters from 13-14 year old girls who want to marry me … It’s been 28 years since it left the air …. It harkens back to a more simplistic time and subliminally, people know it is as real as it can be … We were never allowed to make up any rescues… every rescue had to come out of the logs… from any place whether it was San Diego, Kansas City, Mo.; they said you can manipulate it, but you can’t make it up. Subliminally, people know that and that the camaraderie in the station is real. Nowadays, nobody leaves anything to chance… you have to have storyline A, storyline B, etc …

Q: Would it be a hit today?
A: It wouldn’t. What made it great was two factors, one, and you can’t control this and it’s called chemistry. The show had it and everyone loved one another, the planets were aligned you might say and you can smell it. You know when a cast is having a good time and we were. The other factor was that it was about something brand new and nobody knew about paramedics. Now, we’re so blasé about it, and this is what I tell people around the country. People think it is their rite to have a paramedic and it isn’t … it is a privilege to have paramedic.

Q: Do you watch any of the hospital shows like ER today?
A: I stopped watching ER years ago, but I do watch Grey’s Anatomy because my wife does and Kate Walsh is a good friend of ours. From a guy’s standpoint, I don’t want to know who is in bed with who, just tell me … I get frustrated, I’m the typical guy, I want to see more action and less story being told to me.

Q: Why did the show get such a bad rap at the time?
A: It’s amazing that were inducted into the Smithsonian Museum of American History but not ever recognized in the entertainment sector. We did get recognized in the public service sector and that was the highest honor that I have ever received in my life.

Q: Do you ever watch the show?
A: No way. It’s depressing; it’s like watching my own son up there. Kevin and I sat down to watch it and were very dutiful at first. Then, we started asking each other, ‘do you remember him’ or ‘remember when we did that?’ … and both us said ‘no.’ We didn’t get half way through before we stopped and decided it was in the past. It’s like trying to recapture lightening in a bottle … you can’t sit and look at it for too long because you know you can never go back to those feelings of camaraderie or the excitement of running red lights, sounding the siren … you can’t recapture it, so what’s the point?

Q: What are you doing now?
A: Lecturing when I can, but I have done four feature films since December 2007 … I am still working as an actor, but lots of people don’t realize that and they think that I am retired. When you do as popular a show as Emergency, and then it goes off the air, you fall off of people’s radar. I love speaking about paramedics, EMTs the fire service … I also like being my own boss and I can say what I want … It’s liberating to speak on a subject that has been so close to my heart for close to 30 years …

Q: Tell us about the movies you worked on recently?
A: He Was A Quiet Man, with Christian Slater and Bill Macy is already out I believe … it’s a bizarre film but I had a great time working on it. I have a bigger role in an independent film called Flowers and Weed: A film by Tanc Sade. He directed it and stars in it he was an actor [he played Finn] on the Gilmore Girls, and he is an Australian kid. who is brilliant .. it is a beautiful film.

Q: When you give lectures, does the audience confuse you with your character Johnny?
A: Yes, most call me Johnny and that’s OK. I make sure they know I am an actor and not a real paramedic.

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Watch full episodes of Emergency! now.

Learn more about the Los Angeles Fire Department.

Learn more about the National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians.

In addition, Mantooth recommends:

www.RandolphMantooth.com
http://fire.lacounty.gov
www.LACountyFireMuseum.com