Herbert B. Leonard was one of many Hollywood veterans to try his hand as a telefilm producer in the early 1950s, but few were as successful, and none made the transition with such outstanding results. Like other alumni of the studio system, Leonard started his television career by turning out formulaic fare in the B­ movie vein, but by 1960 he was producing two of the most literate and visually arresting series of the sixties, or any decade: Naked City and Route 66.

     Leonard started in the movie business as a production manager for producer Sam Katzman at Columbia in 1946. During this apprenticeship, overseeing the logistics of low-budget potboilers, westerns, and swashbucklers-and the Jungle Jim series for which Katzman is perhaps most famous-Leonard developed a knack for efficient production, and an affinity for location shooting that would mark his later television work.

     After nearly eight years with Katzman, Leonard struck out on his own as an independent television producer. For his first effort Leonard secured the rights to the old Rin-Tin-Tin feature film property and turned the concept into a juvenile-oriented western series, The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, which joined the heroic German shepherd with a young orphan boy at a frontier cavalry fort in the 1880s. This project launched Leonard as an "in-house" independent with Screen Gems, Columbia's television subsidiary, whereby the studio provided pilot financing and production facilities in return for distribution rights and a cut of the profits. With Rin Tin Tin a hit on ABC, Leonard mounted two more half-hour series, Tales of the 77th Bengal Lancers and Circus Boy. Circus Boy was a variation on Rin Tin Tin, centering on the adventures of an orphan and an elephant with a traveling circus in the 1890s, and 77th Bengal Lancers followed the exploits of a British cavalry troop in I9th-century colonial India-all the elements of a TV western in a more exotic setting. Both series were sold to NBC for fall 1956, and by early 1958 Leonard was in pre-production on two more half-hour entries, Rescue 8 and Naked City. The former was a syndicated adventure series about the Los Angeles Fire Department Rescue Squad, notable for its unprecedented location shooting in and around L.A., with spectacular rescues staged in real locations.

     For Naked City, Leonard not only left the studio, but the state. The producer became intrigued by Naked City's potential as a series after seeing the 1948 feature The Naked City when Columbia acquired it for television release in 1957. Although Screen Gems sales execs were lukewarm to the idea, Leonard purchased the rights to the film property, and hired Stirling Silliphant to write the pilot. Leonard described the show to Variety as "a human interest series about New York," a vehicle for anthology-type stories as seen through the eyes of two detectives. He also announced that he would be shooting the ABC series entirely on location in New York, on both counts ("entirely on location" and "in New York") a major departure from the standard telefilm practice of the time. Naked City made an impact on critics with its gritty style and authentic look, but its stories were constrained by the 30-minute format, and its downbeat dramatics could not dent the ratings of the established Red Skelton Show; it was not renewed for autumn 1959.

     By then Leonard was already planning his next series. Brainstorming for a vehicle for a young actor named George Maharis (who had caught Leonard's eye in a couple of supporting roles on Naked City), Leonard and Silliphant came up with the idea for Route 66: two restless young men roaming the highways of the United States in a Corvette, searching for meaning. Screen Gems was even less enthusiastic about this concept than it had been about Naked City, and flatly refused to finance the pilot, so Leonard put up his own money and assembled a crew in Kentucky to shoot the pilot in February 1960. A few weeks later, with a rough cut in hand, the studio sales force changed its tune and sold the show to CBS.

     Meanwhile, Naked City had not been forgotten. In the autumn of 1959, an advertising executive approached Leonard with the idea of mounting Naked City for the following season, again on ABC, this time a 60-minute program. The network also agreed to finance the pilot. After some initial hesitation due to his Route 66 demands, Leonard agreed, turning to Sil­liphant for the pilot script, and by February of 1960 pilot shooting had been completed. With Silliphant heavily involved in Route 66, Leonard hired Howard Rodman as story editor and frequent scripture on the revised Naked City. Yet another hour-long Leonard­ Silliphant project, Three-Man Sub (a peripatetic adventure whose premise is explained by the title), made it to the pilot stage in late 1959-shot on location around the Mediterranean-but did not sell. In March 1960, Variety trumpeted Leonard as the "Man of the Hours," the only independent producer to have two one-hour series in production that season.

     Although supervising two successful network series, Leonard found the time to launch yet another project far from Hollywood in 1961, Tallahassee 7000. The syndicated half-hour entry featured Walter Matthau (with a southern accent) as an investigator for the Florida Sheriff's Bureau, and was shot on location all over Florida. The series was cast in the hard-boiled mold, with Matthau providing first-person voice-over narration a la Mike Hammer.

     Route 66 marked the end of Leonard's relationship with Screen Gems. He went on to produce a handful of feature films and made-for-TV movies in the I960s and 1970s and set up a production equipment rental house as a sideline, using all the gear he had accumulated in his years on the road. In the late 1980,, Leonard revived his first TV project in a Canadian­ produced series, Rin Tin Tin K-9 Cop, with the modern "Rinty" now in the public service as a police dog.

     Route 66 and Naked City remain high watermarks of American television drama, and set Herbert B. Leonard apart as one of the industry's most innovative producers of any era.