Glen A. Larson

Born on January 3, 1937 in Los Angeles, California, Glen A. Larson was the man behind some of the world's best-known prime-time television series.

Was a member of The Four Preps singing group in the late 1950s.

35 girls and not one boy showed up to audition for the annual Hollywood High School talent show in the fall of 1955. The next day, the school bulletin pleaded for "any guys out there who can do anything" and a show business story began that sounds a little like an MGM musical. Unable to resist such amorously appealing odds, four talented and highly-motivated teenagers in the school choir, lead singer Bruce Belland, baritone Glen Larson, bass Ed Cobb and high tenor Marvin Ingram, literally formed a quartet overnight and stepped into the crinoline void as The Four Preps. After stealing the show with choice hits by their idols, The Crew Cuts and The Four Lads, they quickly found themselves in demand for every kind of event imaginable. "We didn't turn anything down", Bruce Belland remembers. "We once performed on the back of a flatbed truck for the opening of a parking lot. They paid us $75.00; enough to buy gas and our first matching sport coats. We were totally stoked". A short time later, legendary Capitol Records producer Voyle Gilmore, who recorded stars like Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra and Louis Prima & Keely Smith, heard a tape of a live performance by The Four Preps and signed them to a long-term recording contract. At the time, the Preps were the youngest act ever to sign with a major record label. (In an article about their signing, Variety dubbed them "Capitol's jolly juveniles".) While The Preps started searching for a hit, their old HHS classmate, Ricky Nelson, was launching a recording career of his own. As his records began to burn up the airwaves, he and The Four Preps embarked on their first nationwide personal appearance tour which kicked off the very week that Nelson's picture was on the cover of LIFE magazine, with the caption - "RICKY NELSON - Teen Idol" - a phrase the Editors had created expressly for him. The group was picked up by Capitol Records and scored a hit in 1957 with "26 Miles (Santa Catalina), co-written by Larson. But Larson wanted to be a television writer, and he turned out scripts he hoped to sell, while The Four Preps toured extensively. Glen Larson's first story credit came in 1966 for an episode of The Fugitive (1963). He rose quickly in the television business, becoming an associate producer on It Takes a Thief (1968) in 1968.

Many of the hit television shows Glen Larson produced found little favor with critics, including B.J. and the Bear (1978), about a trucker and his pet monkey. And despite his success, sometimes with multiple series running simultaneously, Larson never won an EMMY. But Larson felt he knew what viewers wanted, and he was proved right in many cases. "I'm proudest of the fact that I fell in-step with an audience taste level, that I knew how to judge and maybe deliver for, and consistently", he said in a 2009 oral history interview by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. "It wasn't a one-shot. It wasn't a lucky this or a that. There's a consistent body of work here that has some symmetry to it in terms of why it worked and how it worked". Larson's formula was derived, in part, from studying both dramatic programs and comedies. He felt humor worked best when it was closely embedded in a protagonist's unexpected situation. "I call it predicament humor", Larson said. "You don't do anything that cuts the star off at the knees or worse. You make him intelligent, you give him great ideas and great things to do. But sometimes, things happen". Except for some 1990s shows that received disappointing receptions - including One West Waikiki (1994), which made its debut in 1994 - he felt vindicated by his career. "There's nothing that could dampen my enthusiasm", he said, "for how much fun it has been to do programs that the audience seems to have enjoyed, and enjoyed a lot".

(1980), Battlestar Galactica (1978), and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979). The hallmark of Larson's style is family entertainment. Always humorous with the firmly tongue-in-cheek, his series are textbook examples of the genre for any would-be prime-time producer: simple storylines, likable, charismatic lead characters combined with very little violence, no bad language and well-crafted "motif"-laced soundtracks. People like Larson's series because they are fun and relaxing and a wonderful escape from the real world. Glen A.

His highly successful productions (successful both financially and popularly, less often critically) include Knight Rider (1982), The Fall Guy (1981), Magnum, P. I.

Received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6673 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California on October 23, 1985.

Glen A. Larson passed away on November 14, 2014, two months from what would have been his 78th birthday on January 3, 2015.