Cobb, a cheapskate, unabashedly unheroic private detective working the dusty trails of America’s Old West.

Again the pilot for a prospective NBC series, it finds Clu Gulager playing Charles A. Another notable YouTube offering is Charlie Cobb: Nice Night for a Hanging (1977).Oliver Nelson, who also composed music for It Takes a Thief, The Name of the Game, and Ironside, gave us the Cutter theme. Cutter’s opening title sequence is embedded above. Apparently, NBC executives were of a like mind, for they passed on Cutter in favor of Tenafly, another show about an African-American gumshoe (played by James McEachin), but one who was rather less courageous and prosperous. While I enjoyed watching this picture as a cultural artifact, I can’t imagine a subsequent series succeeding alongside McCloud, McMillan & Wife, and Banacek. I’d been looking for Cutter online for a decade, before I finally stumbled on it last week. His seeming preference for white women added a daring-for-the-time element to the story, and an ambulance pursuit in the dénouement brought at least some novelty to the usual TV car chase scene. He had an answering service, but no office. Protagonist Cutter came off as cool, sophisticated, but with ample street toughness when he needed it.

Former High Chaparral regular Cameron Mitchell guest-starred, along with Barbara Rush, Robert Webber, Janet MacLachlan, and ex-vaudevillian Stepin Fetchit. Scripted by Dean Hargrove and directed by Richard Irving, this 90-minute feature starred Peter DeAnda (1938-2016) as Frank Cutter, a black, Texas-reared Chicago private investigator in the John Shaft mode, who was hired to find a missing football quarterback. Nonetheless, I would be remiss were I not to point out the unexpected availability there of Cutter, a 1972 pilot film for what its developers hoped would become a new NBC Mystery Movie segment. I despise having broken links in The Rap Sheet, so I’m leery of writing about YouTube videos, as those things have a habit of disappearing suddenly and without explanation.

Rap Sheet by James Henry Audett