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HILL STREET BLUES
While shooting a ninety-minute weekly series on NBC called “The
Chicago Story” that took him back to Chicago, one of the directors, Chris
Nyvy, told Dennis about a part that had come up on “Hill Street Blues”
(the third year) that he thought he’d be right for.
Dennis went in to audition and Chris was in the room with “a white-
haired guy” who was flipping a football in the air. “When I came in, he
threw the football at me,” Dennis recalls. He caught it and threw it back to
Steven Bochco, the white-haired guy, and, “I knew right there that I was in
good hands.” Bochco had put Franz at ease with that little gesture. “It was
very cool of him to lighten the mood by doing that,” Dennis says.
A REALLY BAD COP
Dennis was perfect for the role of Sal Benedetto, a bad cop. It was a
two-part episode; the first part had been written, the second had not.
and I end up killing him. I’m thinking, ‘What a great character. This is
wonderful stuff.’ We’re reading more and more and I’m saying (to Joanie),
“Honey, I wonder if they’re thinking of making this guy a regular, because
he’s certainly off-beat from the rest of the guys. He’s a bad,
bad
cop.”
At the end of that episode, though, Sal commits a cold-blooded
murder. With that, Dennis realizes his character can’t come back. “I
wanted to rip out the last few pages of the script,” Dennis says. And, in
the final episode of that season, they do indeed kill off Franz’s character:
Sal ends up taking hostages in the back of a vault during a botched bank
The setup: Renko (Charlie Haid) is demoted and relegated to driving
a scooter; angry about his demotion, Renko writes up a parking ticket for
Benedetto, who informs him he’s a detective with Midtown Vice. Renko is
unimpressed, and gives Sal the ticket anyway. Sal retaliates by kicking over
Renko’s motor scooter and challenges him to a fight at the back of a bar
later. When Renko shows up, Sal, being a dirty fighter, whacks him from
behind and leaves him lying in the alley.
In the second episode, Michael Warren, who played Bobby Hill,
Renko’s partner, does the same thing to Benedetto, although he doesn’t
cold-cock him from behind; he’s just a really good boxer and leaves Sal
lying in the same alley. After the two episodes aired, Bochco asked Franz if
he would be available to come back at the end of the season.
“I said, ‘God, yes, I’d love it,’” Dennis recalls. “So, I got the script,”
he continues, “and I remember Joanie and I poring over it and there were
really good, neat things in it. There was one scene where I knock on the
door of this big heavyset guy and he has one of these windows in the door
that he opens up and he’s talking through it. I tell him I want to come in,
and he says, ‘Where’s your warrant?’
“And I say, ‘I’ve got my warrant right here.’ I take out a pair of pliers,
grab his nose with them, and kick the door in. He goes flying backwards
robbery and the Hill Street cops send in a robot to get him. The robot was
equipped with a television camera, so it could see Sal, who was so insulted
they didn’t have the guts to come in themselves that he lets the hostages
go, “kicks the crap out of the robot,” and shoots himself in the head.
“I guess I showed them,” says Franz.
Bochco had another series called “Bay City Blues,” about a minor-
league baseball team called the Bay City Bluebirds, and cast Dennis as
Angelo Carbone, the pitching coach. However, the show was canceled
after the first season.
Franz was undismayed and wanted back on Hill Street Blues, so he
pitched an idea to Bochco: “How about whatever hair I got left on my
head you can dye blond; I’ll get rid of the mustache, and I’ll come back as
Benedetto’s gay brother looking for revenge!
“Bochco laughed and said ‘It may be a great idea, but it ain’t gonna
work.’”
A couple of years later Bochco left Hill Street Blues and Jeffrey Lewis
and David Milch took over as executive producers. They brought Dennis
back as Detective Norman Buntz, which he played for the last two years of
the show. That led to a “Beverly Hills Buntz” spin-off that failed to garner
an audience. The show was cancelled after the first season.
Profiles
Retired NYC detective Bill Clark (left) was instrumental in helping create the realistic attitudes
and demeanor of the NYPD Blue cast. Clark came on as an advisor and ended up as
Executive Producer. “He was extremely protective of the image of law enforcement,” Dennis
says, seen here with Clark and “the white-haired guy,” Steven Bochco.