For some reason, Broderick Crawford spent a considerable amount of time on most if not all episodes of "Highway Patrol" walking around half of the patrol car and then getting into it. If the camera showed him standing by the passenger door, he'd walk around the front or back to enter the driver's seat. If he was standing just outside the driver's door, he'd first make sure that a uniformed officer was in or approaching the driver's seat, and then walk around the front or back and get into the passenger seat. Other observers have pointed this and similar issues out, independently of myself, over the years.
"Highway Patrol" is now newly available on a local station I can pick up. It's so obvious that all the filming was in California -- and in at least one episode the scenes were clearly in a residential, hilly section of the city of Los Angeles, with LA street signage, and City Hall not far away at all in a background scene. Yet when I saw the show as a kid I knew nothing of such issues. Hence, just as Beaver Cleaver's "Mayfield" was never definitely linked to one state, it was fun to pretend that Crawford and crew provided law enforcement in an unnamed and unnameable state, in a rural area where people knew to call the "highway patrol" for first response. There were and still are areas like that in the U. S.
And, yes, Broderick Crawford still has to walk around the car before he gets in and drives away, usually to the familiar music.
"Highway Patrol" is now newly available on a local station I can pick up. It's so obvious that all the filming was in California -- and in at least one episode the scenes were clearly in a residential, hilly section of the city of Los Angeles, with LA street signage, and City Hall not far away at all in a background scene. Yet when I saw the show as a kid I knew nothing of such issues. Hence, just as Beaver Cleaver's "Mayfield" was never definitely linked to one state, it was fun to pretend that Crawford and crew provided law enforcement in an unnamed and unnameable state, in a rural area where people knew to call the "highway patrol" for first response. There were and still are areas like that in the U. S.
And, yes, Broderick Crawford still has to walk around the car before he gets in and drives away, usually to the familiar music.