M Squad

M Squad
Lee Marvin as Lt. Frank Ballinger, from NBC's 'M-Squad' in 1959.
Genre	Crime drama
Starring	Lee Marvin
Composer(s)	Main theme by Count Basie Stanley Wilson Incidental music and arrangements by Sonny Burke Pete Carpenter Benny Carter John T. Williams Orchestra conducted by Stanley Wilson
Country of origin	United States
Original language(s)	English
No. of seasons	3
No. of episodes	117 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producer(s)	John Larkin Richard Lewis
Producer(s)	Robert Bassler Maxwell Shane
Editor(s)	Lee Huntington John B. Moss Stanley Rabjohn
Running time	30 minutes
Production company(s)	Latimer Productions Revue Studios
Distributor	Universal Television NBCUniversal Television Distribution
Release
Original network	NBC
Original release	September 20, 1957 – June 28, 1960

M Squad is an American crime drama television series that ran from 1957 to 1960 on NBC. It was produced by Lee Marvin's Latimer Productions and Revue Studios. Its main sponsor was the Pall Mall cigarette brand; Lee Marvin, the program's star, appeared in its commercials during many episodes. Alternate sponsors were General Electric (GE), Hazel Bishop and Bulova watches.

Episodes

Main article: List of M Squad episodes

Season		Episodes	First aired	Last aired
	1	38	September 20, 1957 (1957-09-20)	June 13, 1958 (1958-06-13)
	2	40	September 19, 1958 (1958-09-19)	July 3, 1959 (1959-07-03)
	3	39	September 18, 1959 (1959-09-18)	June 28, 1960 (1960-06-28)

Set in Chicago, Illinois, it starred Marvin as Detective Lieutenant Frank Ballinger, a member of "M Squad", a special unit of the Chicago Police, assisting other units in battling organized crime, corruption and violent crimes city-wide. Paul Newlan co-starred as his boss, Captain Grey. Although Marvin had been appearing in feature films since 1951, it was this series that made him a star, and he later went on to an even bigger film career afterward. Nelson Case was the announcer.

Guest stars

• Roscoe Ates
• Joanna Barnes
• Charles Bronson
• Mike Connors
• Russ Conway
• Walter Coy
• Whitney Blake
• Paul Burke
• James Coburn
• Francis De Sales
• Angie Dickinson
• Joe Flynn
• Alan Hale, Jr.
• Ron Hayes
• Werner Klemperer
• Robert Knapp
• Tom Laughlin
• Ruta Lee
• DeForest Kelley
• Nan Leslie
• Dayton Lummis
• Tyler McVey
• Walter Maslow
• Carole Mathews
• Joyce Meadows
• Sid Melton
• John Mitchum
• Ed Nelson
• Leonard Nimoy
• J. Pat O'Malley
• Burt Reynolds
• Don Rickles
• Janice Rule
• Barbara Stuart
• Mary Treen
• H. M. Wynant

Music

• The theme music for the first season was composed by Stanley Wilson, who won the 1959 Grammy Award for the Best Soundtrack Album and Background Score from Motion Picture or Television. In the second and third seasons, the new theme was composed by Count Basie.
• A soundtrack album, Music from M Squad, with liner notes by Lee Marvin, was released during the run of the show.

Trivia

• The TV series Police Squad! was a spoof on police series in general, and M Squad in particular. The opening sequence of Police Squad! spoofed both the opening sequence of M Squad, and the openings of Quinn Martin's various police shows, and the closing credits from the first season of Hawaii Five-O.
• Similarly, the 1994 music video directed by Spike Jonze for the song "Sabotage" by the Beastie Boys directly parodies the opening sequence of M Squad, amongst other police shows.
• A novel was published in 1962, M Squad: The Chicago Cop Killer, by David Saunders. It was published by Belmont Books, New York.
• Lee Marvin carried two Colt Cobra revolvers, the lightweight variant of Colt's "Detective's Special" revolver, which was popular with detectives at the time.

DVD releases

Timeless Media Group released M Squad: The Complete Series on DVD in the Region 1 on November 11, 2008. This release has been discontinued and is out of print.

On November 4, 2014, Timeless Media re-released the complete series on DVD in a new 16-disc special edition collection that contains an entire disc of bonus content.

External links

• M Squad at IMDb
• M Squad at TV.com