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Man with a Camera
Original title card
Genre	Crime / Drama
Written by	James Edmiston Paul David Wilton Schiller
Directed by	Paul Landres Gerald Mayer
Starring	Charles Bronson
Theme music composer	Herschel Burke Gilbert
Composer	Leon Klatzin
Country of origin	United States
Original language	English
No. of seasons	2
No. of episodes	29
Production
Producers	Don W. Sharpe Warren Lewis For MWC Productions, Inc.
Production locations	Hollywood, California at Desilu Studios, doubling for New York City
Cinematography	Paul Ivano Robert B. Hauser Black-and-White
Running time	30 minutes
Original release
Network	ABC
Release	October 10, 1958 (1958-10-10) – February 8, 1960 (1960-02-08)

Man with a Camera is an American television crime drama starring Charles Bronson as a war veteran turned photographer and investigator. It was broadcast on ABC from October 10, 1958, to February 29, 1960.

This is the only TV series in which Bronson played the lead role.

Plot

Bronson portrayed Mike Kovac, a former World War II combat photographer. He usually assists "newspapers, insurance companies, the police, private individuals, and anyone else who wanted a filmed record of an event.

By often acting as a private eye, Kovac gets himself into plenty of trouble involving criminals of every kind, helping with cases the police could not handle.

Besides an array of cameras for normal use, for surreptitious work Kovac employs cameras hidden in a radio, cigarette lighter and even his necktie. He also has a phone in his car, and a portable darkroom in the trunk where he could develop his negatives on the spot.

Kovac's police liaison is Lieutenant Donovan (James Flavin), though he frequently seeks advice from and is aided by Anton Kovac (Ludwig Stössel), his father. They are of ambiguous Eastern European ancestry, in one episode Mike and his father serve kapusta to another character.

Main cast

• Charles Bronson as Mike Kovac
• James Flavin as Lieutenant Donovan
• Ludwig Stössel as Anton Kovac

Selected guest stars

• Mario Alcalde
• Rachel Ames
• Roscoe Ates
• Phyllis Avery
• Baynes Barron
• Arthur Batanides
• Nesdon Booth
• Steve Brodie
• Sebastian Cabot
• King Calder
• Anthony Caruso
• John Cliff
• Marian Collier
• Booth Colman
• Russ Conway
• Yvonne Craig
• Norma Crane
• Audrey Dalton
• Alan Dexter
• Angie Dickinson
• Dolores Donlon
• Don Durant
• Robert Ellenstein
• Bill Erwin
• Frank Faylen
• Virginia Field
• Don Gordon
• Rodolfo Hoyos Jr.
• I. Stanford Jolley
• William Kendis
• Don Kennedy
• Jess Kirkpatrick
• Berry Kroeger
• Fred Krone
• Ethan Laidlaw
• Tom Laughlin
• Nolan Leary
• Norman Leavitt
• Ruta Lee
• Karl Lukas
• Gavin MacLeod
• Howard McNear
• Eve McVeagh
• Theodore Marcuse
• Walter Maslow
• Dennis Patrick
• John M. Pickard
• Phillip Pine
• Joe Ploski
• Bert Remsen
• Lee Roberts
• Penny Santon
• Simon Scott
• Johnny Seven
• Doris Singleton
• Harry Dean Stanton
• Ludwig Stössel
• Lawrence Tierney
• Peter Walker
• Casey Walters
• Dick Wessel
• Jesse White
• Grant Williams

Episodes

Season 1: 1958–59

Season 2: 1959–60

Production

Man with a Camera was filmed in Culver City, California, at Desilu Studios. From October 1958 to March 1959 it was broadcast on Fridays from 9 to 9:30 p.m. Eastern Time. From October 1959 to February 1960 it was broadcast on Mondays from 10:30 to 11 p.m. E.T. General Electric's Lamp Division sponsored the 1959-1960 episodes. Warren Lewis was the executive producer for Sharpe & Lewis Productions. A. E Houghton was the producer, and Gerald Mayer was a director.

Home media

The entire run of the series' 29 episodes was released in 2007 by the Infinity Entertainment Group, in collaboration with the Falcon Picture Group and the UCLA Film & Television Archive, from which the source prints were obtained.

Alpha Video has released three individual volumes on DVD, each containing four episodes from the series. A fourth volume was released on February 25, 2014. On October 17, 2017, Mill Creek Entertainment released the complete series on DVD + Digital. Entire Series can be seen on Tubi streaming.

References

1. ^ Brooks, Tim; Marsh, Earle (1999). The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows 1946-Present (7th ed.). New York: The Ballentine Publishing Group. p. 623. ISBN 0-345-42923-0.
2. McNeil, Alex (1996). Total Television: the Comprehensive Guide to Programming from 1948 to the Present (4th ed.). New York, New York: Penguin Books USA, Inc. p. 515. ISBN 0-14-02-4916-8.
3. ^ "This Week (Cont'd)". Ross Reports. October 6, 1958. p. 93. Retrieved July 16, 2023.
4. Adams, Val (August 10, 1959). "Bellamy to Play Jefferson on TV". The New York Times. p. 47. Retrieved July 16, 2023.

External links

• Man with a Camera at IMDb

• 1950s American crime drama television series
• 1960s American crime drama television series
• 1958 American television series debuts
• 1960 American television series endings
• Black-and-white American television shows
• Television series by CBS Studios
• Works about photography
• Television shows set in New York City
• Television shows filmed in Los Angeles
• American Broadcasting Company crime dramas