Probecontrol.com's Jim Alexander meets Hugh O'Brian

When the traffic dissipated, I approached (wearing my logo-embroidered shirt), and introduced myself, mentioning my interest in SEARCH. Upon my mentioning the series, O'Brian said, "That was a lot of fun to do," letting it appear that he had fond memories of the show. I brought up the www.probecontrol.com web page, and described it, and some of the features it contained. I showed him a print-out I'd done of the opening page of the site, and told him that John and Bryan and Don had archived film clip frames, scripts, QuickTime movies, Press Materials, and much more.

This seemed to pique his interest. I told him that we also had many hundreds of letters archived that had been written about SEARCH between dozens of fans, and that indeed MANY of them had been written by overseas parties. I told him of SEARCH airing around the world in syndication-- of its different titles ("Controle Remoto", "Search Control", etc.), and that many, many people remembered it fondly... and that it seemed like almost every week that we were getting e-mails from people who were finding probecontrol.com by doing web searches because of their affection for the show.

O'Brian seemed genuinely flattered, and interested that people had remembered the show fondly. He leaned over to his business manager (if in fact that's who she was), and said very seriously, "I want to look into this. If there's that much interest in the show... we need to see about re-doing it. I want to find out who owns the rights." The lady responded, "You'll need to hire a young stud to take your place to do the 'secret agent' stuff." O'Brian chuckled. I mentioned that he'd be great in the Burgess Meredith "Cameron" role! He smiled.

About then, I pulled out the Mike Walston-made scanner. O'Brian's eyes lit up. I handed it to him, and he examined it carefully, with a big smile. "This is the camera-thing that I wore as part of the show", he said to the lady. She raised her eyebrows in a "that's nice, Hugh" fashion, being completely unfamiliar with what he was talking about (she had obviously never seen SEARCH). I showed him how to pop it off its magnetic display, and he had fun handling it for a few moments. It was a thrill for me just to see him have the Scanner prop in his hand.

I had made a package of material (the same batch I'd pulled the web page print-out from) for Hugh, to explain 'who' we were and what we wanted--with regards to the web page and possible future interview. Being paid to attend the show, I figured that O'Brian couldn't push everyone aside in order to conduct a SEARCH interview, if even only for a few minutes. So, I had prepared papers to present him--complete with the web page address, and e-mail addresses for HIM to contact US in the future. And if we don't hear from him, and need to contact him in the future, at least he'll know (from the papers I supplied) who WE are.

In that batch of papers, I'd had some reproductions of both COLOR and BLACK-AND-WHITE photos of him from SEARCH. He was tickled at seeing some of the photos again (or maybe for the first time?), and asked if there was any way that I could get him copies. Being prepared, I was able to hand him over about 3-each of the four different photos I had with me. I also pulled about a half-dozen SEARCH TV GUIDE cover posters out of my material, and gave them to him as well. His eyes lit up, and he smiled appreciatively. He admired the wonderful Bob Peak artwork for a second, and asked if I knew where the 'original' (Peak's original artwork for the cover) was. I told him I did not.

Then, realizing I'd almost forgotten the best thing, I pulled out copies of all eight of Hugh's SEARCH episodes on VHS, replete with the Anthony Taylor-designed covers. I gotta admit they looked great. It was then that I saw his biggest smile. He looked like he was gonna pop! I said, "Here are all of the episodes you did for the series." He admitted that he couldn't wait to watch them, and was surprised that someone had them. I told him that the copies were of varying quality, and had been recorded from Australian and Armed Forces sources--seeing that SEARCH had never aired in domestic syndication. Then, I asked him 'our big question'-- "Why had Warner Bros. relegated SEARCH to "overseas syndication" only?

He said he had no idea, but would look into it.

He asked if I knew where to get a copy of the pilot ("You know it was originally called PROBE", he said). I was surprised that he didn't have one, and volunteered to send him a copy.

He told me that working with Burgess Meredith was a pleasure, and that Meredith was a sweet guy. He said something about "one of the other guys" being dead (meaning Doug McClure), and asked if I knew where the "other one" (Franciosa) had "wound up". I told him where I'd tracked down Franciosa's agent.

He asked me more than once how to get a hold of me, or where to find the web page. His manager pointed out that I'd given them all the specifics and contact info on paper (and just between you and me, I'd tucked another copy into each one of the VHS tapes-- so they'd be impossible to overlook). O'Brian asked that I give him "a bit of time" before contacting him, but said that he would be willing to do the interview for the web site. He also asked where he could write if he wanted to "send a message" to the probecontrol.com site. I showed him the address.