"I'm used to 20 years of knowing scenes in advance," Rock Hudson admitted.
On reflection, Adolph Zukor begged to differ, "It just couldn’t happen again – those old days of 40-50 pictures a year. Motion pictures were a novelty. And the world was different. People really believed that everything would work out happy in the end. Now people don't know what tomorrow will bring. They don't always want their movies that way either. It’s like a book; if you knew how that was going to end, you wouldn’t want to finish the book."
Between 1971 and 1977, Rock could be seen in 'McMillan & Wife', "It's a mystery and a comedy and the accent is on solving the crime...The shows were 90 minutes and 2 hours...We turned out a complete 2-hour movie every 10 or 12 days...We were part of the NBC Mystery Movie and we were on only once a month."
From the outset, Rock emphasized, "I can only operate on the assumption it’s going to be a hit...Chemistry is all. If we fail there, the game is over."
Co-star Susan Saint James confessed, "The hardest part of the show is deciding whether to play a line as a joke or do it seriously. Then Leonard Stern comes down to the set and says , 'Remember this is a comedy', and we do the joke." Rock added, "We shoot 10 or 12 pages of dialog a day...I realize the show is very difficult to write...I maintain (solving the crime) is not all that important, because you know you’re going to solve the damn crime or there isn’t going to be a show in the first place. So concentrate, I keep saying, on the comedy. Let's not worry about solving the crime, let’s just have fun solving it."
Susan shared, "People ask me what I am. I answer with 'Who knows?' That slows them down. I really don’t know. If a part is serious I get real serious. If it’s light, I’m after laughs. And once I get into a character I like to stay there and not jump around into other roles. My training is all speed. Get it out to meet the TV show deadline."
Adolph acknowledged, "You don’t get actors or actresses off the street anymore. Mae West could play one terrific part in her day, but just one. Today's stars have to be able to do more...Take Audrey Hepburn. She could play Camille or do a Mae West part if they’d let her."
Susan also made the point, "If only I had one-half credit time at the end of a show to explain to the public what we did because of lack of time. But that’s dreaming. I’m not really like those TV actors who turn into monsters and become pretentious when they land a movie role because they have so much time to prepare. I'm the kind who would die of a nervous collapse of being so relaxed before the cameras. As an actress I can do a line about 80 different ways, and gloss it all over with personality."
Rock observed, "For television you work faster. What would take 10 weeks for a feature takes 10 days for the tube...Since I was about 8, I used to go to films a lot – as did everyone else in those days, Depression days, and before that, my mother played piano at the silent-movie house. I remember being very discerning about performances." Leonard made the comment, “Rock is an actor who was weaned on light comedy and farce. He was able to make the transition to ('McMillan & Wife') with ease. Do you realize that most of his peers from those earlier days are now (1977) in their 70s. And there are few replacements coming along."
