I’m watching a episode of Blue Bloods S3E1 and it suddenly dawned on me the main guest character actors aren’t credited in the opening.
That was always a thing when I grew up. You might see the opening for “Cannon” starring William Conrad with Guest stars Scott Marlow, John Larch, Ramon Bieri, Stewart Belford and Special Guest star Christine Belford. They briefly show a photo of each actor.
I identified this episode as S2E19 Feb 14,1973 by the names of actors. That’s the only time they all appeared in IMDB credits. I was in the 9th grade when it aired and watched Cannon regularly.
After thinking about it, I can’t remember when this stopped. Now the tv shows have a standard opening for at least one season. They don’t even list all the regular cast. Blue Bloods lists the adult Reagan actors. Not their wives or coworkers.
Listing guest stars with their picture hasn’t been a frequent thing since the days of Fantasy Island and Love Boat. I think shows prefer to let recognizable guest stars be a bit of a surprise now days unless some contractural obligation requires them to give credit at the start of the show. Even then, it’s just text usually superimposed over the opening scene.
And that’s likely because, compared to decades ago, most TV shows no longer have full-on opening credits (which were often accompanied by a theme song).
And my understanding is that both of those (shorter theme songs, shorter opening credits) are part of a trend to get into the action immediately to get viewers hooked in. I was listening to the Strike Force Five podcast (with various late-night talk show hosts) and they were saying that the networks were constantly pushing them to have shorter and shorter openings.
I’m not sure why I suddenly remembered how tv shows used to start in the beginning. I hadn’t thought about it in years. It definitely has a great Theme Song.
I have season 1 1980 of Magnum PI on Prime. I’ll check there and see if it uses the old format.
Undoubtedly, as here’s a Youtube clip of it, and it’s a minute long. It’s really only in the last decade or two that the old-style openings have gone away.
FWIW, I don’t recall “guest stars” being given billing in the classic Magnum P.I. opening credits, but I think they got billing in the credits that ran in the opening scene post-credits and commercials.
The length of tv shows has steadily gotten shorter. Magnum PI running time was 46-49 mins (Wikipedia).
Blue Bloods is listed as 42–44 minutes. It must Depend on the season.
Shortening the opening and closing is one thing they can cut. Along with some content.
Yes, I think the names of guest stars still appear in the credits that show up as unobtrusive text during the first few minutes of the show. They just don’t draw attention to them like they did in the old days.
It’s been a while since I’ve watched the late night talk shows (The Tonight Show et al). May I assume that they still anounce the night’s guests in the opening credits?
I guess the modern day equivalent is showing a prominent guest star in the trailer / images shown on streaming services prior to actually clicking on the show.
And that happens a lot; a big star who’s only briefly in one episode is still likely to make the trailer for the whole series. But they wouldn’t put the actor’s name though.
I’ve read that actors through their agents haggle over their appearance in credits. Everyone wants top billing.
Removing them from the opening of tv episodes probably had to be something negotiated with SAG-AFTRA.
Anyway, I didn’t particularly notice when it changed. I just remembered last night that old tv shows were different during my childhood.
It’s more than the credits. The whole structure and pacing is different. Watch an old episode of Cannon, Barnaby Jones, or Medical Center and you’ll notice. We’ve all gotten used to the way tv is written today.
For me it’s like slipping on a old pair of shoes. Very comfortable because it reminds me of my childhood. It must be quite different for someone that grew up watching tv in the 00’s. Pluto, Prime and other streaming services have brought back a lot of vintage tv.
I can’t remember a custom for sitcoms to credit guest stars in the opening credits - not Tom Selleck in Friends, Walter Cronkite or Betty Ford in Mary Tyler Moore, or Sammy Davis, Jr. in All in the Family. (I think the Dick Van Dyke Show might have done it once or twice, but not for arguably its two biggest guest stars, Danny Thomas and Chad & Jeremy.)
Did I Love Lucy feature it’s guest stars during that trip to California where Lucy met everyone in show business?
I associate this practice largely with Aaron Spelling, and even then mostly in those shows like The Love Boat and Fantasy Island where each episode featured a different collection of B to C list celebrities trying to keep themselves in the public eye, together with a handful of up-and-comers trying to get noticed by casting directors. That is, shows where the various guest stars were largely the whole point.
I don’t think this was ever common practice for a show that just happened to have a well-known performer appearing in a single episode. They might get a “Special Guest Star” credit superimposed over the opening scenes, but they wouldn’t get a separate listing in the opening credits.
Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood get’s one of those guest-star-with-a-picture credits on his episode of FBI. That probably convinced me that the practice was more common than it actually was back in the day.
Given that The FBI and Cannon (the OP’s original example) were both “Quinn Martin Productions,” it suggests to me that, like Aaron Spelling (noted by @MrAtoz), featuring the guest stars in the opening credits/sequence was part of Martin’s schtick.
