''Hellinger's Law'' is a 1981 TV movie starring

Telly Savalas Aristotelis "Telly" Savalas (January 21, 1922 – January 22, 1994) was an American actor and singer whose career spanned four decades. Noted for his bald head and deep, resonant voice, he is perhaps best known for portraying Lt. Theo Kojak on th ...

, and directed by

Leo Penn Leonard Francis Penn (August 27, 1921 – September 5, 1998) was an American actor and director and the father of musician Michael Penn and actors Sean Penn and Chris Penn. Early life Penn was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, the son of Russi ...

. It was the pilot for a proposed TV series starring Savalas which was not made, and was screened as a stand-alone film.

Cast

as Nick Hellinger *

Morgan Stevens Morgan Stevens (October 16, 1951 – January 26, 2022) was an American actor, primarily seen on television. Biography Stevens played Paul Northridge in one episode of ''The Waltons'' and in three reunion movies. In ''A Wedding on Walton's Mou ...

as Andy Clay *

Ja'Net DuBois Jeannette Theresa Dubois (August 5 – February 17, 2020), known professionally as Ja'Net DuBois, Ja'net DuBois, and Ja'Net Du Bois (), was an American actress and singer. She was best known for her portrayal of Willona Woods, the neighborhood g ...

as Dottie Singer *

Roy Poole Roy is a masculine given name and a family surname with varied origin. In Anglo-Norman England, the name derived from the Norman ''roy'', meaning "king", while its Old French cognate, ''rey'' or ''roy'' (modern ''roi''), likewise gave rise to ...

as Judge Carroll *

Rod Taylor Rodney Sturt Taylor (11 January 1930 – 7 January 2015) was an Australian actor. He appeared in more than 50 feature films, including ''The Time Machine'' (1960), ''One Hundred and One Dalmatians'' (1961), '' The Birds'' (1963), and ''In ...

as Clint Tolliver *

Melinda Dillon Melinda Dillon (born October 13, 1939) is a retired American actress. She received a 1963 Tony Award nomination for her Broadway debut in the original production of ''Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?'', and she was nominated for the Academy Award ...

as Anne Gronouski *James Sutorius as Lon Braden *Tom McFadden as Detective Roy Donovan *Lisa Blake Richards as Cara Braden *

Kyle Richards Kyle Richards Umansky (: born January 11, 1969) is an American actress, socialite, and television personality. Since 2010, she has appeared as a main cast member on ''The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills'', and as of 2022, is the last remaining ...

as Julie Braden *Arlen Dean Snyder as Da Fred Whedon *

Thom Christopher Thom Christopher (born October 5, 1940)Staff"Thom Christopher" ''Soap Opera Digest''. Accessed May 28, 2009. "Native New Yorker Thom Christopher hails from the Queens neighborhood of Jackson Heights." is an American actor. Christopher attended ...

as Bill Rossetti

Production

Filming was to have begun on 27 February 1980 but was pushed back, reportedly to iron out script problems. Several days of filming took place at the Crutcher Ranch in Fulshear, Texas in April of that year. Fulshear is located about 40 miles west of Houston. About a hundred local residents were used as extras for several of the outdoor scenes. "I know some people are thinking it's a pilot," said Savalas at the time. "I didn't think that way. I made a two-hour movie. But doing it as a series would be different. ''Kojak'' was easy because I was playing Telly for the most part. It was a role I could ad lib. Although I could play a credible lawyer, I know nothing about the law. I'd be more dependent on the scriptwriters." Savalas said if the series went ahead he would want to make the character come from New York rather than Philadelphia. "Telly's from New York, and if you do a series you want to make it comfortable for the actor. It'd have to be close to my roots so I wouldn't have to worry about my speech pattern."Step at a time is Telly's law ''The Globe and Mail''; Toronto, Ont. oronto, Ont6 Mar 1981: p.16.

Novelization

In December 1980, approximately three months before the telefilm aired, ''

Jove Books Jove Books, formerly known as Pyramid Books, is an American paperback and eBook publishing imprint, founded as an independent paperback house in 1949 by Almat Magazine Publishers (Alfred R. Plaine and Matthew Huttner). The company was sold to ...

'' released a novelization of the teleplay. The legal-sounding by-line is by author "Justin Barr", which is probably a pseudonym as it appears on no other published work, and novelization commissions tend to go to writers with prior book credits. The cover features a still of Savalas and a price of $2.25.

References

External links

*
''Hellinger's Law''
at

TCMDB Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is an American movie-oriented pay-TV network owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. Launched in 1994, Turner Classic Movies is headquartered at Turner's Techwood broadcasting campus in the Midtown business district of Atl ...

Review of film
at

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

''Hellinger's Law''
at Rod Taylor Site
''Hellinger's Law''
at BFI 1981 television films 1981 films American crime drama films 1981 crime drama films American drama television films 1980s English-language films Films directed by Leo Penn 1980s American films {{crime-drama-film-stub