Longstreet-related miscellany

As some of you may be aware, John McIntire (who played Dr. Dan Stockton in the pilot) and Jeanette Nolan (who played Mike's mother, Alice Longstreet) were married in real life and often appeared together in movies and on television. One of their other joint appearances was in the comedy series Night Court, where they played the two title characters in the 1984 episode "Dan's Parents." (There are a couple of clips on YouTube.) Oddly enough, their tv-son, assistant DA Dan Fielding was (like John Larroquette, who played him) originally from New Orleans. Do you suppose that Dan is Mike Longstreet's half brother? Or, since we don't know who would have played Mike's late father, even his full brother?

I can't help wondering whether these screenwriters had seen the Longstreet pilot:

One of the fifth-season Murder, She Wrote episodes with no Jessica Fletcher is called Jack and Bill, in which Bill is a private detective who inherits a medium-small French poodle named Jack from an unexpectedly-deceased friend. At first Bill is irked, but then finds that Jack can be helpful.

In one early scene, the (not yet deceased) friend is seen pretending to be blind by wearing dark glasses, and has little (white!) Jack on a guide-dog harness. And near the end, it turns out that the assassination they thought had already been averted is about to take place after all -- by means of a bomb hidden in a large champagne bottle, apparently set to go off when it's uncorked.

Next time someone tells you that Longstreet is unrealistic -- because how could a blind man continue working as an insurance investigator -- you might casually mention that the automobile cruise control was invented by an engineer who was blind.

Ralph Teetor was born in 1890 and blinded in an accident five or six years later. He nevertheless graduated from high school (back when most "education" for the blind trained them to weave baskets in sheltered workshops), then talked his way into a University engineering program (when most colleges refused to accept blind students at all).

Here's an article about Teetor from Smithsonian magazine:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/sightless-visionary-who-invented-cruise-control-180968418/