ABSTRACT
Route 66’s narrative design emerges directly from the conditions shaping Hollywood television circa 1960. The series draws on two somewhat antithetical trends prevailing in prime-time drama during that period, action-adventure and the “semi-anthology.” Action
shows, notably a spate of imitative Westerns (à la Cheyenne) and detective shows (77 Sunset Strip et al.) from Warner Bros., became the primary symptom of a perceived “crisis” of programming mediocrity and imitativeness bemoaned by critics and industry insiders (predating Newton Minow’s “vast wasteland” rhetoric by several years). The semianthology, so dubbed by Variety, was one effort by telefilm producers to upgrade their dramatic product in the wake of the criticism, a differentiation strategy that fused anthologystyle stories with continuing-character conventions in an effort to increase story variety and narrative flexibility. Wagon Train (1957) was widely considered the founding example, and Naked City imbued the form with a contemporary sensibility in 1958, using a policeprocedural premise as a pretext for stories about New York. Naked City’s creators, producer Herbert B. Leonard and writer Stirling Silliphant, mounted Route 66 two years later.2
