Cannon (1971–1976)

The cases of a fat private detective.

Stars:

William Conrad, Patrick Culliton, Tom Pittman

Nominated for 3 Golden Globes. Another 2 wins & 3 nominations.

Cast

Complete series cast summary:
William Conrad	...	Frank Cannon (121 episodes, 1971-1976)

Storyline

The weekly adventures of Frank Cannon, an overweight, balding ex-cop with a deep voice and expensive tastes in culinary pleasures, who becomes a high-priced private investigator. Since Cannon's girth didn't allow for many fist-fights and gun battles (although there were many), the series substituted car chases and high production values in their place.

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Plot Keywords:

detective | private detective | private eye | fat man | character name in title

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Genres:

Action | Crime | Mystery | Drama

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Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

14 September 1971 (USA)

Filming Locations:

Los Angeles, California, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

Quinn Martin Productions (QM)

Technical Specs

Runtime:

60 min 60 min (120 episodes)

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

4:3

Did You Know?

Trivia

The license plate for Frank Cannon's "Cannonmobile" was "963-XUJ"

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Quotes

[repeated line]
Frank Cannon: My name's Frank Cannon, I'm a private investigator.

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Crazy Credits

In all five seasons, the credits are shown in capital and lower case letters.

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Connections

Referenced in The Tonight Show with Jay Leno: Episode #21.133 (2013)

User Reviews

Another Excellent Detective series of the 70's.

Cannon was an excellent tv movie and resulted in a successful series that ran for 5yrs.

William Conrad was brilliant as the overweight Private Eye Frank Cannon.

He proved that you didn't have to be good looking or a super hero to be a good detective.

So he was fat, so what, he was an everyman detective and an ordinary guy that you might see in the street who happened to be overweight.

Despite this he proved he was intelligent, quick witted and he had a number of smarts to outwit his opponents, but he was also capable of looking after himself physically when the situation arose (he was an expert in karate, being overweight does not mean you can't handle the rough stuff when you need to, my judo instructor was 19st, the same weight as Cannon, but boy could he move fast when performing various judo throws and moves).

I am 19st myself, but I know that I can look after myself when need be, with my experience of judo.

Remember Cannon was cunning and knew that his size might get in the way of the physical rough stuff, so he planned his moves carefully and used short swift karate & judo moves to gain the upper hand of his opponents.

He proved that a fat man could look after himself and that he was more than capable when it was needed to deal with violent crooks.

If he was ever attacked and beaten up, he usually got his revenge at the end of the story one way or another.

Also it has to be remembered that Cannon carried a gun. He was an expert with firearms and an excellent marksman (as was William Conrad in real life)and was a competent driver in his Lincoln Continental.

All in all Cannon was another good tv detective series of the 70's, which sadly has given way to the over violent and over done crime films & television series of today, which to my mind lack story content of these old tv detective series of yesterday, which had good story content without the need for over the top violence.

I hope to see video releases of this series soon.