The Wall Street Journal
LOS ANGELES — For viewers who grew up watching “Emergency!” the bar for any new EMS TV series will be set high. That popular NBC show about Los Angeles County paramedics, produced by Jack Webb, had a long run beginning in January 1972, and the L.A. County Fire Museum, crammed into a nondescript warehouse in this suburb just south of downtown L.A., is hoping that an open house on Saturday at the Robert A. Cinader Memorial Station 127 in nearby Carson (the real-life fire station that served as the fictional Station 51 on the show) will bring the museum some much-needed publicity.
“Emergency!” was about two firefighters, John Gage (Randolph Mantooth) and Roy DeSoto (Kevin Tighe), who were pioneers in a brand new specialty called paramedicine. (Bobby Troup, the jazz artist and composer of “Route 66,” played one of the emergency-room physicians on the series. And jazz singer Julie London—who was the wife of Troup and the ex-wife of Webb—played a nurse.)
When Mr. Mantooth auditioned for his role, “I didn’t know what a paramedic was,” he said by phone. The actor went on to appear in a number of movies, soap operas and public-service announcements for carbon-monoxide poisoning, but said he is still best remembered for “Emergency!”