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         Lost TV Series Found!

                    New Life For An Old-Time TV Justice Show

It was a long-forgotten part of television history that Brian "Bman" Barrett discovered one cold raining day at a San Jose flea market 16 years ago.
Now, that inadvertent discovery could result in a revival of a 1950s true stories crime-detective series fashioned by the same lawyer-author who gave the world Perry Mason.
In addition to inventing arguably the world's most famous fictional criminal defense lawyer, Erle Stanley Gardner for years impaneled what he called the "The Court of Last Resort," a group of lawyers and investigators who looked into the cases of those claiming to be wrongly convicted.

In October 1957, Gardner's "court" came to television, where actors dramatized the true story murder cases.
At the end of each half-hour show, the real Gardner, seated behind a long curving bench beside his legal cohorts, would give a briefing and then peer out of his thick horn-rimmed glasses while he told the audience: "You, the people, are the Court of Last Resort". Later in life, Gardner stated the investigative panel was his best life time accomplishment.
For Gardner, The Court of Last Resort - which started out as a series of magazine stories and a book - served as his attempt to improve public understanding of the justice system while pointing out terrible mistakes and injustice. In articles that he began writing in 1948, Gardner assembled an actual group of private detectives, lawyers and forensic experts who investigated the questionable convictions of men and women sentenced to death or life behind bars.
But relatively few people ever saw the TV dramatizations of the court's work. The 26 true story serial was broadcast for a total of two seasons, in 1958 and 1959. After NBC dropped the show, the fledgling ABC network repeated the episodes the following season in order to fill a vacant Wednesday-evening slot.

In 1993, Bman, a pro who buys and sells just about anything, said he acquired the original negatives from the nephew of a man who legally purchased them 33 years earlier at an auction.

According to Bman, UCLA was the original recipient of the film collection. When it was time to remodel their film library, the rare series along with many other reels of film were placed in storage but later failed to pay the facility for their services.
The high bidder of the "court" reels bought the film in the early 1960s at a Bekins Storage lien sale but failed to do much more with it.
The nephew inherited the 16mm black and white programs and decided to see what they would be worth, which is how he happened upon Bman and his own collection of Hollywood memorabilia at a swap meet.

Bman never heard of "The Court of Last Resort" when he was approached about buying the 26 cans of film.
But after researching and learning very little about the show, he couldn't resist the prospect of dusting off a piece of Hollywood history.
If nothing else, he figured the silver on the old negative film must have been worth a least a few hundred dollars.
He bought the reels for $400 in trade, including autographed photos of William ("Capt. Kirk") Shatner, Adam ("Batman") West, Burt Reynolds and Sally ("Flying Nun") Fields.

After discovering the film series had been lost and fell into the Public Domain, nobody owned the rights to the rare classic footage. Bman began to make plans for turning the long-ago legal show into a new commercial endeavor.
"That's when the artist and collector became a producer," said Bman. "I knew I was sitting on a piece of lost history".
Next, he transferred the negatives to video, edited the contents and filed for copyright in the Library of Congress.
Then, he turned his attention to finding a way to take advantage of the public's interest for law-related television shows and lost images from the past.

As for the little known classic TV series itself, the 26 half-hour programs feature the likes of a youthful Michael Landon, Charles Bronson, Robert Blake, Doug McClure, Dan Blocker, and dozens more.
Although the TV show lasted a couple of seasons, the investigative panel itself operated for a decade, during which time it examined at least 600 cases. Bman said his research indicates that at least a few dozen cases were reopened, resulting in some reversed convictions.

Gardner started his shadow court in 1948, two years after he was featured in a three-part series in the Saturday Evening Post Described in the articles as a relentless and unorthodox "champion of the underdog". The man who was admitted to the California bar in 1911 was quickly overwhelmed with pleas for help from prisoners who had been sentenced to death or life terms.

Gardner became personally involved in some high-profile cases but also wanted to do something that would have a more lasting impact on the judicial system. In particular, he was determined to hold the legal system up to public scrutiny in the hope that awareness of its shortcomings would bring about pressure to improve the system, which to this day, still has major flaws.

Airing on Friday evenings, "The Court of Last Resort" had the misfortune of
competing against two popular westerns: "The Adventures of Jim Bowie" and "Trackdown." In contrast, "The Court of Last Resort" was more unsettling to viewers. The show was constantly questioning the integrity of the legal system by highlighting racism, corruption, planting of false evidence, poor investigative work, incompetent lawyers and major judicial errors. "It was a time of pre-Miranda era and quite unpopular to point the finger at the justice system" said Bman.
For starters, the show's appearance during the Cold War days of the
Eisenhower administration was hardly conducive to a warm reception.
At that time any attacks on the American legal system were really a boost for Communism and was more fun to watch Jim Bowie fight a bear!
Beyond that, many Americans in the 1950s simply were not prepared to acknowledge problems in their justice system.
"The vast majority believed that if a court found you guilty - if a cop testified against you and a judge passed judgment - then you were guilty. As a result, the show was based on a premise that was very difficult for the average viewer to buy into.

Bman has been working on a huge property development project the past decade which placed the "lost" TV series on hold. He also recently produced a pilot for a unrelated, unscripted reality show that he believes will be a great success.

Over that period of time, only a few episodes from The Court of Last Resort have surfaced, which verifies the fact the rare "lost TV series" is just that. "No library, film archives or other entity hold the complete set of reels", said Bman.

New plans for revival of "The Court of Last Resort" is underway.
He is currently searching for interested parties with serious connections in the film industry and has ambitions to partner up with those in cable broadcast and DVD distribution.

Contact for Brian "Bman" Barrett can be made through his web site: http://www.GreatStuffOnline.com
or contact made directly by email: greatstuffonline@yahoo.com

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