User Reviews

Yes, a simple TV show like Troubleshooters was one of my favorites. I've often wondered why they haven't done reruns on cable or satellite. Growing up loving heavy equipment, I would go anywhere earth moving or ditch digging equipment was operating. When Troubleshooters started, I was in Heaven! Solving situational problems with heavy equipment was a bonus. The one I remember the best is the episode where the push a pipe through a wall of dirt at a cave-in to get air to the trapped people in the cave. Of there were a few more involving personnel issues. But overall a decent show. You could set down and watch it with family and come away with a positive message. Keenan and Bob became favorite actors. Sorry, I can't right off recall the others. Maybe I will if I ever see a rerun. Let's hope that is soon!

Seriously, I caught this show in second run on WGN in Chicago,(like at least one other poster), in the early 1960s. As I remember the opening, Keenan Wynn comes uphill towards the camera on a motorcycle, (make, unknown), and Bob Mathias comes down towards the camera riding a hook on a construction crane. They are, the troubleshooters ! Interesting look at the life of 'globe trotting' construction workers. Aside from their work, these two, naturally, get involved in the lives of the people who work for, with, or, around them. One episode had them, and their crew, build an iron lung for a young local/native lad who had apparently contracted polio, or a similar type of respiration paralysis. Another had them hold a carnival, subsidized by the construction company they work for, to raise funds for something or other. The highlight of this episode was a booth where each kid got a free ice cream cone, which they could either eat, or, throw at Keenan Wynn's face sticking through a canvas backdrop. Now, the telling part. As I remember, the name of the construction company was Corbett. At the same time, early 1960s, my uncle worked for a Corbett Construction Company, on the project to build what is now the Michigan Ave., Oak St. Lake Shore Drive interchange. Yet, I can't find it on Google.

Clicked onto TCM to find the movie Around the World Under the Sea (1966) featuring Keenan Wynn - also Lloyd Bridges, Shirley (Goldfinger) Eaton & David McCallum) - and was reminded of this series, but could not remember the title. A quick search of Keenan's credits did the trick! I just want to thank everyone who put their personal recollections & reflections in these interviews - refreshing my memory of this all-too-brief, very cool series! It's a shame that any recordings are apparently lost! This would've been a great addition to any of the many channels now offering reruns from the 50s & 60s!

This is a very obscure, essentially forgotten construction-based show from NBC from 1959-1960. My father, Chet Allen, played the role of "Slats" on the show. He has for many years tried to obtain VHS/DVD copies of the show but with no success. There is rumor that the archives were destroyed due to neglect over the years. I've never seen the show and would be delighted to be able to do so. Anyone out there with any concrete information about how to obtain copies of this show or who is in contact with former cast members or who have any memorabilia from the show, please feel free to contact me. My Dad would be really grateful if you have any information. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks.

This really was an interesting and unusual show, quite a change from so much of the routine programming of that era. I suppose that the success of "Sea Hunt" made the idea of a series based on somewhat unusual occupations look like a good idea for a series. I remember one episode where some men were trapped by a cave-in in a tunnel, which was filling with water. The men on the outside used a bulldozer to push a large pipe with a cap on the end, not screwed tight with a wrench so that the men on the inside could remove it with their hands, through the soft cave-in to the inside.They knew that they would have to add another length of pipe, so they put another cap on the end the bulldozer pushed so as not to mess up the threads. Shows you how careful and realistic they tried to be down to the last detail. Great series, too bad it only lasted one season. Hope the episodes have not been lost.

I remember this TV SERIES back in the beginning of the 1960's. I was a small kid about that time, but the episode i remember best of this TV SERIES with excellent actor KYNAN WYNN (The untouchables with Robert Stack) , was that they were digging in Germany and all of a sudden they discover a secret BUNKER interred inside a mountain and they open it and they found people inside alive, that did not know the II world war had finished 20 years before. One of the persons alive that they found was a very aging ADOLPH Hitler and his wife EVA BRAUN. I was was very impacted emotionally with this episode, because all the news of that time maintained that Hitler was dead since 1945, when he killed himself and his wife EVA BRAUN with him. I was very shocked, but my father simply told me that this was a fictitious episode TV SERIES

I remember the show... it was shown on a local independent (WGN) here in Chicago as an after-market show...

I saw the notice of Bob Matthias' death today on cnn.com and remembered that he and Keenan Wynn starred in the show.

They were always tearing around on bulldozers and such, and blowing stuff up.

I vaguely remember Slats... just the name... what did he do? The opener to the show started off with an explosion... I can remember one episode where Bob Matthias had to get over a ditch... so he made a pole out of bamboo and pole-vaulted over the ditch...

For some reason I was recently thinking about this TV show. It is my earliest recollection of TV. I'm 54. I could not remember the name of the show, only that Hartz Mountain (the flea collar people) sponsored it at one time. I looked all over the internet to no avail then remembered for some reason that Keenan Wynn was in the show as some tough guy. So I looked on IMDb and got the answer. I had many Tonka toy construction trucks and used to emulate the show by myself in the house. My parents would not let me take the trucks outside. How messed up is that? I wanted to grow up to blow stuff up. It didn't work out. I'm a lawyer. So I sort of blow stuff up on paper now. I think it is wonderful that people have posted on here about this obscure bit of history. I would pay $1000 for the DVDs if they existed.

I watched this show and loved it. The company that my dad was Secretary/Treasurer of had a quarry near Camarillo, CA. One episode was filmed at that quarry. While it wasn't anywhere near the ocean, when you saw the show, it looked as though the quarry was right at the beach. The company held up a dynamite blast in case the show wanted to film it. The production company declined and said that they would do their own. My dad watched it and told me that they made up a little pile of rocks and dirt and set off a very small detonation. When it was shown on TV, it looked like they had taken down an entire mountain! In the opening lead in, they showed Keenan Wynn riding a crane hook. My dad saw that and commented that they never let anyone ride the hooks.

Bob Mathias was indeed an Olympic Decathlon Champion (1948 and 1952). He was only 17 when he won the first gold medal. He also served in Congress from 1966 - 1974 as a Representative from California.

I have been unable to find copies of the television show anywhere. For anyone who is interested, there was a comic book based on the series and I've seen them for sale on eBay from time-to-time.

I find it interesting that most of the guys who've commented on this show were very young at the time the show was aired and shared the same interest in playing construction worker in the dirt and snow. I was only 5 and their experiences are exactly the same as mine.

I know Keenan Wynn was a character actor in the show, I seem to remember him riding a Harley or an Indian in the show. Does anyone out there remember if he did? I was just wondering, I would love to see tape of the show if anyone out there has one. I was very very young when the show aired, and I remember watching it. It always involved something to do with construction, and it seemed they were always traveling all over the world, and Wynn would at some point always end up riding a motorcycle in the show. I seem to remember as it being an early American Vtwin, either a Harley or an Indian. Like I mentioned I was extremely young when the show aired, so I don'r remember to much about the episodes.

Back in 1959, me & the boys would play construction, digging up the dirt, moving it around in dump trucks, etc. So, here comes a TV show about guys that do just that. Of course, they used dynamite to move more dirt! Hey, we could use firecrackers! You get the idea, eh? A really cool show for 9-year-old boys...

Keenan Wynn as the grizzly old troubleshooter, a real take-no-crap kind of guy.

And, by the way, wasn't Bob Mathias an Olympic decathlete? Is that the same guy who was on the Wheaties box? I think so.

This show was my very first recollection of TV. Through the power of the internet I was able to search on 'Kodiak', 'construction', and 'TV' and got a couple hits which brought me here. If this show aired in '59, then I would have been 3 years old at the time. Sort of amazing considering it was on for such a short time and I may have seen it only a few times. But I loved playing in the dirt and big machines. I actually was training to operate earthmoving equipment but then got my old job back and never went into construction. I too would like to see tapes of this show and see if it was really so cool that a three year old kid would remember it after 46 plus years.

As a 22 year old, I was immediately drawn to this TV program. I thought the story lines were kind of kooky but that's Ray Braqdbury for you. He had a way of displaying what his unbridled imagination produced so you really wanted to believe what was happening, albeit a make believe performance. Witness the successful longevity of Star Trek and it's "Trekkies" followers. I just wish I could remember the name of the construction company the characters on "Troubleshooters" worked for. Anyone with that name is welcome to contact me at "snapfat@aol.com." Why didn't somebody save some film of these episodes? I would have thought the families of Bradbury and Altman should have done this for their own (or anyone else's)future interests.