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Cold Case Hollywood Milieu ©2009

Written by Denny Dormody

It’s another cold crappy gray day in Philadelphia. Outside the precinct windows it looks like rain. Rain. It’s been raining in Philly like forever. Cops and detectives are dragging their feet over the scuffed and stained linoleum. Maybe one of these decades the city fathers will cough up a few bucks so we can run some hot soapy water over this floor. It would be nice to see some of the scuffs and bloodstains disappear. I’m a detective.

I’m shuffling some papers. The highlight of my day is going to be rifling the vending machines. The coffee vending machines are more one-armed bandits than coffee vendors. As I kick the vending machines and try to get back my lost quarter, I’ll read them their Miranda rights. I’m so glad I’m only acting as a detective.

I’m a background actor and this is TV’s popular Cold Case. Philly detectives opening the white boxes of unsolved cold cases of murders and mayhem in the City of Brotherly Love. We are not really in Philadelphia it only looks like Philly. We are on sound Stage 22 here at Warner Brothers in Burbank.

I’m glad to be here. The floor really is scuffed and looks great and is in character. The set designers have done a great job. It sets the mood. The mood of doom and gloom. Basically the characters are doing expository scenes or in story telling, giving some plot-point explanations. One of the last times I worked this show, I was a pushy news photographer. We did an exterior with veteran actor Peter Graves.

Peter Graves has been acting for decades. A few of his roles come to mind: Mission Impossible, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and many more. And as the pilot in Airplane with the comedy line “Joey, do you like gladiator pictures?” Another early picture of his was Night of the Hunter with Robert Mitchum and Shelly Winters. Peter Graves played a murderer sentenced to death. In jail he meets Mitchum, a charlatan preacher and murderer, jailed for stealing a car. When the state police arrested Graves, earlier in the movie, he was put into hand cuffs.

Peter Graves as the Captain in Airplane

Now it’s decades later and Graves is wearing hand cuffs once again. It’s decades later and I’ve gone from be a kid wanting to be in the movies to a background extra adult actually in the movies and wanting to be a day player with speaking lines. We’re all trying to move higher on the Hollywood food chain. Even Peter Graves.

It’s downtown LA. It’s late afternoon and I’m happy to be working in a scene with this long-time character actor. Peter Graves is waiting in the foyer warmth of an office building. We the background extras are milling about getting our wardrobe checked and scarfing down some hot chili from the Craft Services catering truck. The sun is setting.

It’s getting cold outside. It’s a couple of blocks from downtown. Remnants of decayed newspapers litter the streets like the flotsam from a drowning ship. Homeless with grocery carts filled with soda cans make a clack-clack noise as they pass by. Los Angeles city buses drive by in the background, as commuters head home from living their lives of quiet desperation. Movie Lights light up the dark, damp city streets. It’s show time.

The Cold Case team have apprehended nasty felon Peter Graves. They arrive outside the office building, doubling as police headquarters. We the paparazzi snap a few hundred pictures. I bob and weave between reporters and other press photographers as he is lead from their unmarked detectives car inside to be formally charged. This is the big pay off of the episode. The monster murderer has been apprehended. He is finally in handcuffs.

The shot is blocked or rehearsed for camera angles. The real LAPD hold the traffic. We are rolling. Hold the roll. A real-life police helicopter flies over in hot pursuit and spooks the sound track. We huddle against the chilling temperature in our Philadelphia wardrobe of heavy coats and scarfs. We are rolling again. Take one. Take five. We have nailed it. We are wrapped.

I would love to say hello to Peter Grave and ask him about his early career role in Night of The Hunter, but there is no chance. No time to say hello. It’s now 1030pm. A text message blips on my cell phone. I’m working tomorrow, again as a detective. Better get home and get some zzzs. Tomorrow my call time is 530 am. I’m looking forward to some light refreshment when I get home. Bud, light.

I’m on the freeway. On the way home. As I shift gears on my trusty Ford Focus, Peter Grave’s Airplane line comes to mind. “Joey, do you like gladiator pictures?” I smile. You couldn’t buy this education.

Denny Dormody is a Los Angeles Times Magazine published comedy writer and author of Riding the Hollywood Glacier. dennydormody@gmail.com