"Good evening. This is Paul Savage."

Paul Savage

Savage

Release Date: March 31, 1973

In the 1973 television feature Savage, Paul Savage (Martin Landau) is a network TV journalist looking into a lead after a young woman offering to sell him a compromising picture of a prominent judge ends up dead. Savage is joined in his investigations by his program's producer Gail Abbott (Barbara Bain).

Lee Reynolds (Susan Howard) approaches Savage with a photograph involving her and Judge Daniel MacKenzie Stern (Barry Sullivan, previously directed by Spielberg in Eyes and Los Angeles 2017), a Supreme Court candidate. Reynolds dies under mysterious circumstances and Savage presses his investigation which will soon involve a widening net containing Joel Ryker (Will Geer), a wealthy man of political influence; Philip Brooks (Paul Richards), Ryker's right-hand man; and Allison Baker (Michele Carey), a commercial model who frequented Ryker's parties and was a friend of Reynolds.

Co-stars in Savage include Louise Latham (previously directed by Spielberg in Los Angeles 2017) as Marian Stern, the judge's wife; Dabney Coleman as Ted Seligson, network president of news and public affairs; and Pat Harrington as representative of the Justice Department. Carl Gottlieb, who would write and play Meadows in Jaws, and Warren J. Kemmerling, who would appear in Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, also have roles in the telefilm.

Steven Spielberg directed the political drama, written by Mark Rodgers and William Link & Richard Levinson (Columbo: Murder by the Book), from a story by Rodgers. Link and Levinson served as executive producers and Paul Mason was the producer of this Universal Studios production. The film's cinematographer was Bill Butler, who shot Something Evil for Spielberg the previous year, and would go on to serve as director of photography on Jaws, while Edward M. Abroms (The Sugarland Express) edited.

Savage was conceived as the lead-in film to a potential series to star Landau and Bain, but the proposed series never came to pass.

The film, which aired on NBC on March 31, 1973, was Spielberg's final TV project until 1985's Amazing Stories. At that time of Savage's broadcast, Spielberg was already in production directing his first feature made expressly for theaters, The Sugarland Express.

About the Film

About the Film

CAST
  • MARTIN LANDAU,
  • BARBARA BAIN,
  • WILL GEER,
  • PAUL RICHARDS,
  • MICHELE CAREY,
  • BARRY SULLIVAN
DIRECTOR
  • STEVEN SPIELBERG
SCREENWRITERS
  • MARK RODGERS AND WILLIAM LINK & RICHARD LEVINSON,
  • STORY BY MARK RODGERS
PRODUCERS
  • PRODUCER: PAUL MASON,
  • EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: WILLIAM LINK & RICHARD LEVINSON
CINEMATOGRAPHER
  • BILL BUTLER
ART DIRECTOR
  • WILLIAM TUNTKE
EDITOR
  • EDWARD M ABROMS
COMPOSER
  • GIL MELLÉ