Sometime next fall the TV viewer will tune in to the “Route 66” series and he will see Buz Murdock and Todd Stiles hard at work in the Crown Zellerbach papermaking plant in West Linn.

And he will also see the familiar scenery of the tri-city sights: the Oregon City vertical elevator, probably Willamette Falls, the old but picturesque and still usable bridge between the two cities, Willamette Falls Locks, and possibly a score of others squeezed into the hour-long CBS series.

Buz Murdock is the stage name of George Maharis, and Todd Stiles, his TV cavorting partner is actually a man named Martin Milner. Forte of the series is a weekly change of scenery, with the two some shifting from one job to another weekly. They usually are cast as intellectual, hard-feeling but wandering workmen, who live through one emotional episode to another, aiding a damsel here, a pal there.  They might be stereotyped as dual Robin Hoods mounted on a sports car.

Two of the show's top men are due at the end of the week to talk over the script and its physical limitations at Crown Zellerbach.  John Benson, location representative, is expected Friday, and Stirling Silliphant, associate producer, is due soon thereafter, according to Barney Mullaney, Crown's supervisor of industrial and community relations.

A cast of 45-55 persons are due to start production July 26, with several days of “shooting” planned at the West Linn mill, and a week in the Oregon City area.  Mullaney, who has read the script, said there is a considerable amount of emphasis on the historical aspect of the tri-city area.  

The script is being checked by Crown to eliminate technical difficulties, and for suggestions, in order to prevent disruption of the plant's papermaking production.

Included in the script are scenes of bundle logs being towed to the mill, a lifting crane, cutting, slasher saws, chipping, and of papermaking departments such as the newsprint, which supplies paper for daily and weekly newspapers, and the telephone directory division, which produces the paper used in telephone books.  Another TV shot will include the scenic wooden walkways at the West Linn plant, Mullaney said.

“Route 66” is shown on KOIN-TV, and is a product of Lancer Productions by Hugh B. Leonard [sic], who has also produced Naked City, Rin-Tin-Tin, Bengal Lancers and others.

TV crews this week were in Astoria, making use of that city's canneries and Columbia River scenery for another "Route 66" show.

Oregon City hosts this week the production of one of TV‘s most popular shows and making it, probably the most versatile production unit in the industry.

“No other producer has attempted such a beast!” according to Sam Manners, executive producer in charge of production for the Bert Leonard endeavor.

The accomplishment of the series requires a “studio on wheels,” which operates with a “minimum of equipment and a maximum of efficiency.”  Ability and compatibility among all workers is of absolute necessity, the executive emphasized, since the “studio” works 11 months to make the weekly hour-long series. (Other shows of the same length require only six mouths.)

Four trucking units make up the “studio.”  The basic unit is the grip and prop truck, which carries all electrical supplies and props.  Providing rest rooms, dressing area, and toting the wardrobe is the “honey wagon.”

Mysteriously called the “blue goose,” the third truck is used to transport the actual filming equipment -- camera and platform that raises and lowers; sound mechanisms, and a power plant capable of lighting two masterlights, which carry from 500 watts to 5000 watts.

And the fourth is the transport, employed to chauffer the Big Star and stand-in from location to location.  The Chevy Corvette and his twin brother have been twice replaced since the series began two seasons ago.  One of the two stack-ups happened right here in Oregon at Grants Pass.  September 1960 two boys were moving a vehicle when it skidded, at 60 MPH, into one of the many mountains in that area.

Luckily, the car bounced back onto the road, and neither passenger was seriously injured.  The manufacturer and co-sponsor of the program provides three of his automobiles for “Route 66” use.

In preparation for the filming of a sequence, locations must be first determined.  Three shows must be shot within a 100-mile radius in order to make the journey profitable. Manners said letters from cities all over the country are received. The selection is made, at least in part, from these letters.

Astoria was “Route 66s” original lure to Oregon.  Oregon City fit the bill for a small town near Portland with a rich historical background and was hence chosen.  Next there is a preliminary “scouting trip.”  It enables the executives to decide upon a script and localities for filming.  The second scouting trip is made with the writer. Then the location: are set up, still in preliminary stage, and details of the script refined.

One week in advance of the crew and actors, the location man, John Bensen, and the casting director, Bob Maharis travel to the scene and take care of the many procedures which are necessary, including setting up bank accounts, casting local actors, filing permits, and so on.

A “travel-work day” begins the operation for the rest of the company.  They leave their location move to the next, going right to work as soon as they arrive.  Details that must be handled include wardrobe cleaning, union settlements, setting up a dark room, providing food money for actors, paying hotel bills and others, and arranging a transportation channel to carry the film to Hollywood by the fastest route.

After the first work day has been completed, the company meets with Manners for a production meeting where problems are aired, and the schedule for the following day is set.

Then the “same routine is followed the next day, but with my other motto, be flexible.”  So much can determine the success or failure of a scene.  Weather, for example, is very important.

During the week filming is taking place in one area, Bensen and Maharis are working at the next location.  (They are now at Portland preparing for next week’s shooting there.)

Following the Oregon shows, the company moves to Chicago on Aug. 16.  Then they will go to Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennesee [sic], Texas, and finally home for Thanksgiving.  A vacation lasting three weeks is scheduled then, through Christmas.  But with the new year, back to work they’ll go!

The job isn’t finished by any means, when the film leaves Oregon City.  There are still problems for editing, cutting, scoring, sound effects, and optics to deal with in Hollywood.

Actors and crew must comply with working conditions legally established in each state.  They are paid, Manners reported, at a rate of anywhere from $100,000* (for guest stars) an episode to $100 (for line-speakers) a day.

Saturday, the company will finish here at Oregon City and move -- actors and studio -- to Portland to film the sequence there.

Seafare dock in Astoria is one of the more picturesque places in the state to be selected for filming a television show.  The Route 66 cast has spent the past week shooting “One Tiger to a Hill,” a story centered around Astoria’s fishing industry.

This week the television crews move to the Crown Zellerbach’s West Linn plant to shoot a paper mill story titled, “Across Walnuts and Wine.”  The following week’s show, to be shot in Portland, will be titled “Welcome to the Wedding,” with scenes centered around the Portland Zoo, Hillvilla restaurant and the railroad terminal.

When the Portland episodes are completed, crews and equipment will move to Chicago for three shows, then to Kentucky and Virginia.  They will finally get some time off Thanksgiving.

Tempo of the show is fast.  Actors do the scenes in short takes, quickly going over the few lines of dialogue just before the scene is shot.

Martin Milner, co-star of the KOIN-TV show, said the crew worked 49 weeks last year to shoot 36 episodes.  Shooting time, the crew tells you, averages six “impossible” days to eight “easy” ones.  They usually get every other Sunday off.

Milner was enthusiastic about the Hotel Gearhart where he and his family have been staying.  He termed it highly comfortable with a diversity of things to do.

He’s happy to be back in Oregon.  The Route 66 crew shot two shows in Grants Pass a couple of years ago.  “This state is nearly perfect when the weather is nice,” he said.

However, he remembers the Northwest in the winter, too.  “When I was a child in Seattle, I used to get sick of looking out the window and seeing a steady drizzle of rain.”

His great grandfather was one of the founders of Cottage Grove, he said, and used to ride horseback to the Legislature.  He lived in a cottage in a grove of oak trees.”

The Route 66 crew is proud of its baseball team, practices during the luncheon break, hopes to play a game in Portland Sunday.

Milner spent his three-week vacation this year sailing with his wife in a chartered 32-foot boat off Catalina.  “It was quiet and peaceful,” he recalled.

Preferences Told

Which Route 66 shows did he like best last year?  One shot in Philadelphia called “Thin White Line.”  And another shot in Gloucester which dealt with sailing.

David Janssen, who has just completed a motion picture with Debbie Reynolds, will return to Hollywood to start shooting a picture for Paramount.  He played the villain in the Astoria show, a disreputable fisherman who pursued beautiful blonde Laura Devon.

In the story, Buz Murdock and Tod Stiles arrive in Astoria in their Corvette, get a job on a fishing boat with Signe Hasso, who plays Laura’s mother.  The heroes have several fights with Janssen.

Said one of the  Astoria fishermen, watching a rehearsal of the fight scenes, “They should have had the cameras down on Main street last week.  They could have filmed one for real.”

Director David Lowell Rich very seldom had to shoot his scenes twice.  When some hammers sounded in the background to an intense dialogue between Signe Hasso and David Janssen, the sound man warned Rich about the interference.

“Leave it in,” the director ordered.  “I don’t know where it’s coming from, but it’s part of the authentic sound of this dock.”

Janssen was standing aboard a green boat, the “Steelhead,” with the wind blowing his hair.  Just before the take, someone whipped out a mirror and he brushed it back.

The cameras picked up a long shot of Signe striding purposefully along the weather beaten dock past picturesque fishing nets and ropes.  Although it was almost noon, fog still shrouded the headlands and gulls wheeled in the background against houses perched high on the hills.  A couple of dozen fishing boats and some weatherbeaten piling was included in the scene.

Back at the end of the dock, policemen shooed spectators out of camera range.  Half a dozen Astorian fishermen lounged along the dock railing.  “Just get those paper cups out of sight and we’ll be all ready,” said the director.

He raised his megaphone, shouted at the people in the background, “Extras -- action -- but don’t look at the camera.”  They all started moving in a business-like way.

At the command, “Quiet -- roll it -- background action,” Signe, wearing a blue sweater, moved easily through the group of men, pausing to look over the gray splintered railing at the bluish-green water and fishing boats below.

WHAT’S BUZ Murdock really like?  George Maharis moved the twin speakers of his elaborate stereo set out of the chairs and placed them on his portable refrigerator.  He moved a large cardboard box filled with his favorite records, sat down and gave his opinion of the character he plays on Route 66.

“Buz is a guy who, if he had lived under certain circumstances as a boy, would have been a fine, polished human being.

“But he turned out to be a rough, aggressive -- a man with a punch, but with a heart of gold behind it.  When necessary he can use a whip -- and that’s what I am myself.”

He reflected a moment, then continued.

“He’s a man of action, determination, movement.  He’s a diamond in the rough.  Try to polish him and you’re in trouble.

“You should never know what’s coming with this character.

“He’s predictably unpredictable.

“He’s organized to the extent of being disorganized.”

Does he have any trouble memorizing  lines?

“I don’t worry about words,” he replied.  “If I know what I’m talking about the words just fall into place.  If you memorize words, they’re like the pearls on a string.  Very bright but all in the proper place.

“I worry instead about the things that motivate a man to say a particular thing at a particular time.

“Some actors wait for cues.  That’s like putting a nickel into a slot machine.  Sometimes I’ll tease another actor by dropping the cue word into the middle of a sentence.  They’ll come gabbling away with the formula reply.”

How does he keep his spontaneity?

“I never play the end of a scene.  I do it from moment to moment as it happens.  If the actor doesn’t give me the reaction I want, I take him out of the scene.

“You can never let a wooden actor pull you down to his level.  You have to inspire him to do better instead, or else take him out.”

Does he have trouble with people upstaging him?

He doesn’t worry about people breaking in on his lines.  He just stands and looks at the actor, waits until the man stops.  “The longer he goes, the more foolish he looks, especially in the dramatic scenes.  You have to learn to use these people.  You have to realize they they [sic] aren’t actors, they’re egomaniacs.

“If you’re Sugar Ray Robinson and you’re in the ring with Joe Louis, you don’t try to outpunch him, you just get on your bicycle, and use him.  A man like that can only feed when he can get through to you.  When he can’t, he destroys himself.”

For the next couple of days, the Route 66 company will be shooting at 916 Washington Street in Oregon City.  Since they’re doing interior scenes in an old Victorian house, visitors can’t see too much action.  The streets for several bocks [sic] around are barricaded and all that’s visible in front of the house are the huge sound trucks with numerous TV lines snaking up across the lawn.

Mrs. Raymond Benski said that a week ago a man who had been driving around Oregon City asked if the Route 66 crew could use the house.  It’s been like a Person to Person visit ever since.

All her furniture was moved out of the living room and the props substituted.  A sign, “Psychic Reader,” was placed in her front door.

Whenever director Herbert Leonard calls “Quiet,” she takes the phone off the hook so it won’t ring during the take.  Her husband, trying to put up drapes in the kitchen, stands frozen on the ladder.

What Portlanders are taking part in this week’s production?

Bob Maharis has the list:  Gary Adams, Michael Opton, Diana Minor, Kathleen Classick, Kay Lopez, Linda Huntoon and Jeff Thomas.

Just by chance, during tryouts the speaking part went to Diana Minor, who is a 1951 graduate of West Linn high school, locale of the episode.  She’ll play a woman in a séance with Betty Field.