My Mother and Daniel J. Travanti

My Mother and Daniel J. Travanti

Broadcast on RTE Radio 1’s Sunday Miscellany 22 March, 2020

 

In the early 1980s, a new American television series called Hill Street Blues hit Irish TV screens. It was a police drama unlike anything we’d seen before.

Set in the fictional Precinct of Hill Street, in a gritty, deprived part of an unnamed American city – Chicago? Pittsburgh? New York? –  the station’s chaos conveyed by documentary-style filming, often with hand-held cameras. That was new.

The nature of friendship was a strong theme in the show, as were questions of right and wrong.  There were storylines around infidelity, and topical issues like Aids and drugs. Not every storyline would resolve at the end of one episode; some would carry into the next one, and the next. That, too, was new.

At the series’ heart was the large cast of brilliant characters whose personal and professional struggles were played out with delicacy and nuance.  I had three favourites.

Undercover cop Belker, who looked dodgier than any gang member and literally barked and growled like a dog at suspects.

Debonair divorced Staff sergeant Phil Esterhaus, whose amorous exploits were legion. He began each episode with a roll call of Hill Street’s cops and an outline of what might come up that day, before warning his crew: ‘And, let’s be careful out there,’ before the opening credits rolled.

And the man in charge of them all: Captain Frank Furillo, always impeccably dressed in a three piece suit. Furillo, played by Daniel J Travanti, held the station together, supporting his cops but reining them in when they went too far. He negotiated truces between the Hispanic gangs and struggled with the city’s bureaucracy and politics.  His private life was equally challenging: he had an ever demanding ex-wife and a new relationship with defence attorney Joyce Davenport whose job was to defend the very people Furillo was trying to convict.  Episodes frequently ended with these two in bed, or in the bath, talking about the day’s events.

Hill Street was ground breaking and  widely regarded as paving the way for shows like the Sopranos, the West Wing, Mad Men and Breaking Bad.  It was compelling, and for the teenager that I was, unmissable.

Sometimes I watched it with my mother, who’d grown up on the shores of Lake Michigan between Chicago and Milwaukee. And when I did, she’d always remark that she knew the actor who played Captain Furillo, Daniel J Travanti.

They’d both gone to Mary D Bradford High School in her hometown of Kenosha, she said.

Daniel had had a part time job delivering fruit and vegetables to their house, she told me one night.

She sometimes rewrote Daniel’s English essays for him, as her handwriting was better than his, she boasted.

And once, she mentioned casually, Daniel had even stolen a kiss from her.

As a sceptical I was highly dubious about all this – my doubt reinforced by my mother’s firmly held belief in the existence of angels and whose conspiracy theories could fill volumes.

And as in those pre- internet days the Travanti connection was impossible to prove or refute, it was left as unresolved as a story line at the end of a Hill Street episode.

When, a few years later, Travanti appeared on Terry Wogan’s chat show on the BBC, I listened to my mother phone London and leave a message for him: if he was coming to Dublin she would love to see him.

Now, surely, I’d find out if there was any substance behind these stories.

But the reply that came eventually from the Beeb neither confirmed nor denied any acquaintance: Mr Travanti didn’t have time to go to Dublin, maybe next time.

Over a decade later the story was finally resolved when my mother returned to America for the first time in many years.  In the meantime she had managed to write to Travanti and on this trip she didn’t just meet up with Travanti, she was invited to stay at his house.  She returned, quietly triumphant, with  a photograph of him on which he had written, ‘Dear Mary, You were my June Allyson.  Daniel J. Travanti’.  My mother was his June Allyson! The 1950s American movie star known for playing the girl next door role, similar to Doris Day.   I admitted defeat, but was sincerely impressed.

But that wasn’t all. The following year, in 2003, came the final episode of this story when Travanti came to Ireland for a holiday, and to see my mother.   And during this visit Captain Furillo of Hill Street Blues visited me, my wife and two small children I will never forget the sight of a grey haired Captain Furillo, sitting in our tiny living room.

 

Initially conversation was stilted.  I mean what do you say to Captain Furillo?  After chatting for a while we went for a walk to Joyce’s Tower.  I asked him about Hill Street and then about his and my family.  Travanti confirmed most of my mother’s recollections as well as adding extra details about the connection between our families, particularly regarding my grandfather John McEvoy.  My grandfather was a Kenosha lawyer who’d handled the Travanti family’s immigration from Italy to America and remained the family lawyer for many years.  According to the person who was transforming from Captain Furillo but Dan, his father said that if he ever had any problem Mr. McEvoy would sort it.

 

But the funny thing was Dan taking as much interest in me as I was in him.  He seemed to take genuine pleasure in meeting the son of his childhood friend and asked about my writing, my work and my family as we walked.  And as we neared Sandycove I watched a car drive towards us and the driver  literally do a double take, mouth falling wide open, head turning as he passed staring at the person walking beside me.  It was as if he couldn’t believe what his eyes were telling him.  There was Daniel J Travanti!  There was Captain Furillo!  And though I was walking along with him, I hardly believed it myself.  But it was true.

 

In these strange new times we find ourselves in, when everything seems to take on new meaning, it’s been a pleasure to rewatch old Hill Street episodes, currently available free on the Channel 4 player – and to remember, as Sergeant Esterhaus’s wise note of caution, ‘And hey, let’s be careful out there’.