The Judge and Jake Wyler is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 television movie

Television movie

A television film is a feature film that is a television program produced for and originally distributed by a television network, in contrast to...

 directed by David Lowell Rich

David Lowell Rich

David Lowell Rich is an American film director and producer. He has directed nearly 100 films and TV episodes between 1950 and 1987...

. The teleplay was written by Richard Levinson

Richard Levinson

Richard Levinson was an American writer and producer who often worked in collaboration with William Link. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a Bachelor's Degree in Economics in 1956. He served in the United States Army from...

, William Link

William Link

William Theodore Link is an American film and television writer and producer who often worked in collaboration with Richard Levinson.-Life and career:...

, and David Shaw. It was produced by Universal Television and broadcast by NBC

NBC

The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

 on December 2, 1972.

The title characters are a hypochondria

Hypochondria

Hypochondriasis or hypochondria refers to excessive preoccupation or worry about having a serious illness. This debilitating condition is the result of an inaccurate perception of the body’s condition despite the absence of an actual medication condition...

c former judge

Judge

A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as part of a panel of judges. The powers, functions, method of appointment, discipline, and training of judges vary widely across different jurisdictions. The judge is supposed to conduct the trial impartially and in an open...

 who now owns a private detective agency and her parole

Parole

Parole may have different meanings depending on the field and judiciary system. All of the meanings originated from the French parole . Following its use in late-resurrected Anglo-French chivalric practice, the term became associated with the release of prisoners based on prisoners giving their...

e partner. The two are hired by Alicia Dodd to investigate the alleged suicide

Suicide

Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...

 of her father, whom she suspects was really a murder

Murder

Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...

 victim.

Production notes

The film was a pilot

Television pilot

A "television pilot" is a standalone episode of a television series that is used to sell the show to a television network. At the time of its inception, the pilot is meant to be the "testing ground" to see if a series will be possibly desired and successful and therefore a test episode of an...

 for a proposed weekly series that failed to make the network's schedule. Earlier that year, Bette Davis

Bette Davis

Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis was an American actress of film, television and theater. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional...

 had starred in Madame Sin

Madame Sin

Madame Sin is a 1972 British thriller film directed by David Greene and starring Bette Davis, Robert Wagner, Denholm Elliot and Gordon Jackson. The screenplay was written by Greene and Barry Oringer.-Plot summary:...

, a pilot for ABC that also failed to sell.

In 1973, the character of Judge Meredith resurfaced in the form of Lee Grant

Lee Grant

Lee Grant is an American stage, film and television actress, and film director. She was blacklisted for 12 years from film work beginning in the mid-1950s, but worked in the theatre, and would eventually win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Felicia Carp in the...

 in the TV movie Partners in Crime, scripted by Shaw and directed by Jack Smight

Jack Smight

Jack Smight was an American theatre and film director.Smight was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota and went to school with future actor Peter Graves...

 . This, too, was a pilot that went no further than its initial airing.

Principal cast

• Bette Davis
  Bette Davis
  Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis was an American actress of film, television and theater. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional...
  
   ..... Judge Meredith
• Doug McClure
  Doug McClure
  Douglas Osborne "Doug" McClure was an American actor whose career in film and television extended from the 1950s to the 1990s...
  
   ..... Jake Wyler
• Eric Braeden
  Eric Braeden
  Eric Braeden is a German-American film and television actor, best known for his role as Victor Newman on the soap opera The Young and the Restless and as John Jacob Astor IV in the 1997 film Titanic...
  
   ..... Anton Granicek
• Joan Van Ark
  Joan Van Ark
  Joan Van Ark is an American actress, most notable for her role as Valene Ewing, which she originated on the CBS series Dallas and continued for thirteen seasons on its spin-off, Knots Landing...
  
   ..... Alicia Dodd
• Gary Conway
  Gary Conway
  Gary Conway is an American actor and screenwriter.Conway was born Gareth Monello Carmody in Boston, Massachusetts. His most notable credits include a co-starring role with Gene Barry in the detective series Burke's Law from 1963-1965...
  
   ..... Frank Morrison
• Lou Jacobi
  Lou Jacobi
  Louis Harold "Lou" Jacobi was a Canadian character actor.-Life and career:Jacobi was born Louis Harold Jacobovitch in Toronto, Ontario to Joseph and Fay Jacobivitch...
  
   ..... Lieutenant Wolfson
• Kent Smith
  Kent Smith
  Kent Smith was an American actor who had a lengthy career in film, theater, and television.Born Frank Kent Smith in New York, New York, Smith made his acting debut on Broadway in 1932 in and, after spending a few years there, moved to Hollywood, California, where he made his film debut in The...
  
   ..... Robert Dodd

Principal production credits

• Producers
  Television producer
  The primary role of a television Producer is to allow all aspects of video production, ranging from show idea development and cast hiring to shoot supervision and fact-checking...
  
   ..... Jay Benson, Richard Levinson, William Link
• Original Music
  Film score
  A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film, forming part of the film's soundtrack, which also usually includes dialogue and sound effects...
  
   ..... Gil Melle
  Gil Melle
  Gil Mellé was an American artist, jazz musician and film composer.In the 1950s, Mellé's paintings and sculptures were shown in New York galleries and he created the cover art for albums by Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins...
  
  
• Cinematography
  Cinematography
  Cinematography is the making of lighting and camera choices when recording photographic images for cinema. It is closely related to the art of still photography...
  
   ..... William Margulies
• Art Direction
  Art director
  The art director is a person who supervise the creative process of a design.The term 'art director' is a blanket title for a variety of similar job functions in advertising, publishing, film and television, the Internet, and video games....
  
   ..... Alexander A. Mayer
• Costume Design
  Costume design
  Costume design is the fabrication of apparel for the overall appearance of a character or performer. This usually involves researching, designing and building the actual items from conception. Costumes may be for a theater or cinema performance but may not be limited to such...
  
  ..... Burton Miller

External links

• The Judge and Jake Wyler at the Internet Movie Database