Route 66 (TV Series) Once to Every Man (1961) User Reviews

Did you see the XP-755 Mako Shark GM concept car?

[CTfans · 10 August 2011]

This was a great episode. The ending was sort of predictable given that we know that Tod will not settle down with Tod.

Did anyone notice the rather exotic car that Prudance Adams drove? This episode aired in 1961. Buz & Tod drive a 1961 Corvette. Prudie drives what looks sort of like a 1968 Corvette which was still seven years in the future. It has a double bubble clear top and huge side pipes. After researching this a bit, it appears that this car was a GM concept car. GM supplied most of the vehicles used in this show. It appears they supplied an XP-755 Mako Shark I GM concept car. I guess they wanted Prudie to have a European looking sports car but of course, they needed to have only GM cars in the show.

Check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mako_Shark_(concept_car)#Overview

10/27/61: "Once to Every Man"

[schappe1 · 3 May 2015]

Janice Rule played a fiery Cajun shrimp boat owner in the second ever episode, ""A Lance of Straw" Much of the action takes place out on the water. The ultimate theme of the episode is an anti-feminist one: that she needs to become less "mannish" and more of a woman to be a complete woman. Here, a year later, she's playing the jet set playgirl of a rich Boston family. It's a totally different role but there are some similarities.

The family owns a ship-building firm where the boys are working to build a yacht for her. Her father, (Murray Matheson, who will be back a few episodes later in a different role), is having the yacht built for her to coax her back from Europe. And it does, but only because he's killed in an accident at its launch, (instead of being crushed by the boat, a bunch of boards falls on him and falls into the water to drown). Our heroes, who are part of the building crew, pull him out of the water but it's too late.

So Janice comes back for the funeral. She contacts Tod and Buz to thank them for trying to save her father, even inviting them to a fancy dinner. She's more impressed with Tod, who knows all about wines while Buz is more of a beer guy. In fact she's so impressed she decides to marry Tod, who now has a chance to become rich again and resume his former, carefree life of leisure. There are some scenes with them in the yacht out on the placid water, (the water in "A Lance of Straw" was not so placid.)

Obviously, that's not in the cards, (the series has three years to go). The problem is that Tod has grown close to the workers in the shipyard and has big plans for it- he figures he'll be running it from now on, with Buz has a top employee. Buz wants no part of that and says he'd be glad to be the best man at the wedding but then he'll hit the road, (he calls a taxi for that purpose as the corvette belongs to Tod). He warns Tod about that ring Janice wants to put in his nose. Janice intends to make the decisions and she wants to sell the ship yard and take her new husband on a tour of Europe. She's not interested in making boats - or money. She just wants to spend it. That provides the break-up and the boys are soon back in the corvette, driving down the road to their next adventure ,(the best one they ever had).

On irony is that there were plans for a fifth season when the show got canceled. And that fifth season would have taken place in Europe.

This episode has some good lines, as when Janice's grandmother says ""I'm not unhappy- just sad.", Buz telling Tod, "You can't play a duet with a virtuoso", and Tod telling Buz at the end: When I burn a bridge, even the river disappears" and that he'll discuss it "maybe some other time in some other town." There would be many other towns before this show was done.

Is This The End ?

[dougdoepke · 29 October 2014]

I recall this episode from when it was first shown, maybe because our road buddies looked like they might split up. Certainly, Prudie's (Rule) enough to turn any guy's head, with a powerful personality to match. Buzz's blue-collar origins and Todd's high-class background come to the fore here. Poor Buzz's beer-stained etiquette is no match for Todd's polished ways at Prudie's ritzy sit-down dinner. Plus, looks like Todd's made for executive-in-charge of Prudie's family business. So why shouldn't Todd step into such a sweet setup, except what would happen to the series and the Corvette.

Anyhow, those shots of the boat-building yard add a lot of flavor. But, I think it's really Rule that has stuck with me—a fine actress and distinctive personality. Here, her Prudie can't decide whether she's a free spirit or a moneyed control freak. All in all, it's a heckuva package.

Janice rules, or The Adams Family

[lor_ · 3 March 2024]

This is the first Route 66 episode to be preceded the week before by a preview: Maharis narrates a love story between Milner and guest star Janice Rule, her second starring role in the series.

Lot of atmosphere in the Gloucester, Massachusetts setting as M & M work in a shipyard. Before the opening credits they try to save (in vain) the life of the boss MM (Murray Matheson), killed in an accident involving the launch of their new yacht Prudence. It's a Hitchcock-style gimmick, killing off a main character so early in the show (re: "Psycho").

Rule falls in love almost instantly with Milner, while Maharis warns him repeatedly about the danger (of heartbreak) for hanging around with this jet setter/society queen. It's fun to see the boys in an uppercrust environment, rather than their usual salt of the earth milieu.

Rule's snazzy sports car upstages the Corvette for once, and the sailboat out on the water symbolizes the show's spirit of freedom. Soon Marty tells his pal he's planning marriage -uh oh! There goes the TV series.

But no, George was right all along, and Janice emasculates Milner just enough to dash his hopes and rather abruptly, the Bromance continues. TV writer Frank Moss provided a way too obvious script, with the depth of a swimming pool, not the wide ocean beyond. Saving grace is actress Ann Shoemaker as Rule's patrician grandmother, giving the episode gravitas from a subtle scene-stealer right out of "Dinner at Eight".