1960s Los Angeles
Is Mannix a set-bound TV show or is it filmed "on location" in Southern California? Does the show make good use of Los Angeles?
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Joe's office is definitely on the Paramount studios lot. Yes, they do make good use of the Los Angeles area, but like most shows filmed at Paramount in those days, there is a lot of clever cutting back and forth between the Paramount studio buildings and the real streets of L.A. I can always spot the ''fake L.A.'' and the real L.A., ha ha! That Paramount back lot is very familiar to those of us who watched Star Trek, The Mod Squad, Mission: Impossible, Get Smart and so many more shows of the late 60's and early to mid-1970's that were filmed at Paramount. Paramount Studios owns or used to own or lease a ranch near Los Angeles where as lot of outdoor location shots were filmed, too when stories needed to get away from the city, so that is seen a lot too. Paramount also used a lot of California state parks for location filming, too. Many of them are close to Los Angeles.
shareThanks for your reply! I just got seasons one and two and it's pretty easy to tell the difference between the Paramount lot and actual L.A. Guess watching six seasons of "Mission: Impossible" was a good primer!
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That Paramount back lot is very familiar to those of us who watched Star Trek
I recognized that same "city" set that was in such episodes of Star Trek like "City on the Edge of Forever" and "A Piece of the Action." It sort of looks too much like Brooklyn in the 20s to pass for LA. I just watched an episode where Mannix is looking for some kid who is staying in a flophouse and the set is obviously the same one from Star Trek. The studio sure got a lot of use out of that set.
Yes, during the first couple of seasons, besides the "17 Paseo Verde" part of the Paramount set, they filmed a *lot* of the episodes on the back lot -- as you mentioned, the set with what looks like a New York street with all the stairways approaching what appear to be a series of tenements, doesn't look remotely like any real street in Los Angeles (except -- maybe -- a small area near downtown L.A.) It's particularly jarring when Joe is shown in one episode meeting someone near what is clearly a real L.A. apartment complex, with green grass surrounding a group of low buildings.
There are also a number of shows with scenes shot around what I like to call the "town green" set, with a number of false-front buildings surrounding a rectangle of green grass; it can be seen in, for example, the opening episode of the second season in which Mannix helps a deaf woman who "overhears" (via lip-reading) a telephone conversation on the faux streets next to the "green." One can also recognize many buildings that also were clearly part of the Paramount back lot, such as its lumber yard and the "streets" in between the (very tall) soundstage buildings, which convincingly looked like an industrial area. It's sometimes a fun diversion to try to figure out where various scenes were filmed on which part of the back lot.
Fortunately, as the series wore on, they did more and more of the filming off of the lot -- to the point that one can occasionally recognize real street signs and, therefore, figure out where in Los Angeles the filming really took place. (One popular place, which also showed up on many episodes of "Mission: Impossible," was an area near Griffith Observatory in the hills above Hollywood, where there was a tunnel that is quite recognizable from a number of episodes of both series.) The "New York" street set occasionally still showed up (and it was always jarring when it did) in the later seasons, but at least its use, and the use of the studio lot, diminished over time.
Season three's Walk With a Dead Man features what looks to be extensive L.A. location filming. There's even a scene where Mannix and guest star Peter Richman ride a bus--and at night. That's quite a step up from the "town green" set.
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