It’s always bugged me… How did Judd Hirsch get top billling in the opening credits for the show “Taxi”? Why not Andy Kaufmann? At least he was a name! (Was Judd Hirsch even known?) Not sure Danny Devito was established yet, but maybe.
So, how does this happen? His agent simply demands it for a no-name? Even more puzzling, as the show progressed, I thought Danny Devito was the bigger star! Then, Andy Kauffman or even Tony Danza. Couldn’t his name have been removed from the very opening of the openign credits?
Personally, I always thought Judd Hirsch was so lame, sorry Alex.
Because Latka Gravas was just a side character. The show did seem to center on Alex Rieger, who was the only driver who considered cab driving his profession and not just an interlude in his (or her) life.
Was andy Kaufman much known outside of NYC before the show? Taxi was the first I’d ever heard of him.
Danny DeVito was so un-established that when he first emerged from behind the cage, his unexpected shortness caused quite a laugh.
Kaufman was known only as a weird standup comedian, not an actor.
I think Alex was the “Pogo” of the show; he held everything together. Like Pogo in Walt Kelly’s comic strip, he didn’t have the best comedic lines, but the show centered on him and he provided a moderating influence among the crazies. Whether or not that justified top billing, I don’t know. I think Hirsch’s acting status was slightly above the others when the show started, and someone had to be first.
If IMDB’s to be believed, Taxi was Tony Danza’s first big gig. Hirsch had been in a couple dozen shows & movies, including a (starring?) role in a 22-episode series named Delvecchio. DeVito had as many credits as Hirsch, but he didn’t seem to star in much, although he was in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, probably playing the 2nd Crazy Guy from the Left (a bunch of DeVito’s credits don’t list his character’s name).
So, in the interest of picking the face people would recognize, advantage: Hirsch.
As per IMDB, Hirsch had also just turned in a performance on “Rhoda” that got him an Emmy nomination; AFAICT, the awards ceremony was held three days before the first episode of “Taxi” aired in '78.
He was relatively prominent in it, from what I can recall. As were Christopher Lloyd and Vincent Schiavelli, who both went onto appear in Taxi of course, co-starring and guesting respectively.
I remember Danny Devito in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I believe he played Martini and was always fretting about his wife. That predates Taxi, but I didn’t remember him when I saw the show. But later on I rewatched the film and then of course recognized him.
While all the observations above are valid, I think you nailed it right here. Whenever I see a semi-famous person billed higher than expected, I assume they’re represented by a heavy hitter.
Don’t forget about stage credits. I remember an interview with Marilu Henner in which she mentioned being a bit starstruck to be acting with Judd Hirsch just shortly after being in the audience of a play he was in.
Yeah, I remember Delvecchio. Hirsch also had done commercials for Coronet toilet paper. “Soft as a baby’s . . . ear.” So I knew who Hirsch was when Taxi debuted. Kaufman was also famous from Saturday Night Live where he played the foreign man character that eventually evolved into Latka Gravas.
You’re correct that DeVito played Martini, but that character who was always fretting about his wife was Mr. Harding, played by William Redfield.
Martini was the character who couldn’t get the idea of betting at McMurphy’s card games quite right. Or maybe he understood too well–when McMurphy declared that a cigarette represented a dime, Martini broke a cigarette in half, and pushing one half into the pile, declared he was betting a nickel.
Taxi was one of those shows which was originally meant to be about a star and his eccentric friends/coworkers which slowly evolved into being about all the characters, making it no longer clear who the star was. Judd Hirsch’s character was supposed to be the nice, ordinary middle-aged guy who had accepted the way his life worked out. He was once a salesman quickly rising in a corporation where he expected to someday be a high-level executive. He had a wife and a daughter and worked a second part-time job as a taxi driver. Then everything fell apart. He lost the salesman job, he got divorced, and his wife and daughter moved to Brazil when she married her second husband. He had realized by the time of the first episode that he was stuck as a lonely taxi driver for the rest of his career. This was supposed to contrast with the other characters who still had dreams of other things.
It slowly became clear to the people running the show that the other characters were at least as easy, if not easier, to write shows about. They even added further eccentric characters like Christopher Lloyd’s. Lloyd essentially created the character himself. They needed someone to play a preacher who performs the wedding ceremony for Andy Kaufman’s character. Lloyd came into the audition for that character with an entire bizarre background worked out for him, and the show’s runners decided they liked his twist on the character better than the more obvious choices. They liked Lloyd’s performance on that episode so much that they decided to write him into the show as a new taxi driver.
Hirsch was the biggest name in the original cast. He had already starred in a TV series of his own: Delvecchio. No one else had that sort of clout.
Danny Devito was completely unknown: one of the big jokes of the pilot episode was that he came out of the cage and you discovered how short he was. The joke assumed that no one knew who DeVito was. (Yes, he’d had other credits, but nothing that would have made his name known.)
The rest of the actors were also unknowns when they were hired. Taxi made them stars. But billing is determined before the show goes on the air. It doesn’t matter that they are more prominent in the show later; Hirsch’s contract gave him top billing and that wasn’t going to change.
As for his character, he was the Pogo of the show – an absolutely essential central character that gave everything else the grounding it needed to keep it from becoming a mess. As for his acting ability, two Tony Awards, a Golden Globe, two Emmys, and an Oscar nomination would indicate he has some ability.
As others have pointed out, Hirsch was probably the most recognized name when the sow started. His previous series, “Delvecchio” may only have run for 20 weeks, but that was 20 weeks longer than any other cast members. That matters in credits. Kate Jackson got top billing in “Charlie’s Angels” because she had been on a series previously, “The Rookies”.
As far as the OP question of later in the run, dropping Hirsch from top billing, not very likely. I imagine credits are spelled out when contracts are signed, and contracts can usually run about seven years (or a series of seven one-year contracts, as you used to see with NFL players).
Hirsch and his agent weren’t going to voluntarily change that without some compensation. And if you do drop Hirsch, with whom do you replace him. It could cause problems with the actors who don’t get the star billing
While you are correct about all the related items for these characters, it is common for a show to develop over time. Very little of this backstory is likely to exist before the pilot is first filmed, as no one knows how long the show will run, if ever.
So as a show’s future becames more certain, characters have backstory added to them; a marriage, a divorce, a previous job, a sister, brother, parent, love interest, all of which might have been developed in advance, but probably wasn’t. It was developed as needed.
I doubt that Jim Ignitowski’s “original” name of James Caldwell or his attendance at Harvard was invented before his first appearance as a minister. Some clever writer thought it up much later and they ran with it.
