The Case of the Partners in Crime Curse
By Eric Grigs | June 26, 2021
Being a connoisseur of Charlie’s Angels from a very early age, I remember I was sent sky high when I learned Lynda Carter (Wonder Woman) and Loni Anderson (WKRP in Cincinnati) were teaming up to solve mysteries on a show called Partners in Crime. They might be missing a third partner and a boss who gives assignments by speakerphone, but somehow I knew there’d still be plenty of sparkly fashion and big hair between the two of them, along with a steady stream of danger, unbelievable hijinks, and obscure guest stars.
Promotional photos for the show were shot by Harry Langdon.
The setup: Private-eye Raymond Caulfield is dispatched to the hereafter minutes into the pilot, leaving his estate and business to his two ex-wives—Carole, a classy but uptight photographer (Carter) and Sydney, a streetwise musician who plays upright bass at a jazz nightclub (Anderson)! Opposites thrown together by the terms of their dead husband’s will, they take it upon themselves to solve his murder. After their first taste of success, they decide—zero experience be damned—maybe they can make a go of running his detective agency. The credits brilliantly tell us what to expect: “How do we manage? We call the cops a lot.” Carter and Anderson are bolstered by a solid supporting cast, including the legendary Eileen Heckart playing their mother-in-law, character actor Walter Olkewicz as office manager and house handyman Shain, and Leo Rossi as the long-suffering police lieutenant (the cop who’s called a lot).
That sure sounded like a hit to my adolescent brain that was addicted to campy “jiggle TV.” However, my jolt of joy would sadly be short-lived, as it lasted only one season of 13 episodes, and then just… vanished. How could that be?
Actually, my husband jokes that if I love a show, it’s destined to be canceled fairly quickly. If I have any interest in a new series’ preview teaser, it’s soon to become a future answer in bar trivia about forgotten TV history. So to dispel the theory of my being granted some sort of cosmic powers to curse a show due to my personal enjoyment, like the skilled P.I.’s of my favorite shows, I’ve used my wits, a library card, and some basic googling to track down the real reason for the untimely demise of Partners in Crime.
My first clue: Out of the gate in the fall of 1984, the show launched out of order. The pilot, a two-hour movie which laid the groundwork for everything else that would follow, somehow became the fourth episode to air. NBC instead rushed episode 2 (titled “Celebrity”) first to capitalize on guest star Vanessa Williams’ Miss America controversy as free publicity for the show. It backfired, as critic John J. O’Connor of the New York Times dubbed it “the top contender for this year's Dumbest-Show-of-the-Season award.”
Ouch.
Clue number two (and talk about being cursed!): Partners in Crime struggled under the weight of bad luck behind the scenes from the beginning. Leonard Stern (The Honeymooners, Get Smart), the creator of the show and its original pilot director, was fired by the network execs just weeks in. He wanted to make a character-driven series showing two disparate women at odds with each other. Over time working together, they’d realize they are not so far apart. Meanwhile, the network was only concerned with the potential sex appeal, wanting to amp up the T&A as much as possible. Stern and the writing team walked with the show’s thirteen scripts. In her autobiography, My Life in High Heels, Anderson writes: “We finished the pilot, which was delightful because Leonard had done it, but after that, the hacks-of-the-week took over. From late spring to November 1984, Lynda Carter and I watched as our frothy, sophisticated, reasonably intelligent series became what we called ‘Kung-Fu Warrior Women of the A-Team.’ What a disaster. Every week, there we were, hotfooting it through San Francisco in designer wardrobes, and high-heeled boots, waving guns around and shouting ‘Freeze!’ at each episode’s one-dimensional villain.”
Ouch again. (But for the record, I think a show called Kung-Fu Warrior Women of the A-Team sounds amazing. If you’re still reading this far, I suspect you do too.)
Loni and Lynda had been looking for years to find the right project to work on together, yet once they found it, the strains of its San Francisco location shooting began to wear quickly on the two stars’ personal lives. With travel back to L.A. each weekend, the endless tabloid harassment for Loni, and the stress of a new marriage which began only months earlier for Lynda, “what had looked like a good idea for both of us soon became incredibly difficult,” according to Anderson.
Yet, the worst blow for Partners’ story was still to come—and an especially tragic one.
The series wasn’t a runaway hit, but it wasn’t a ratings dog either. Despite the show’s likely renewal, in an unusual move, Loni asked a personal favor of Johnny Carson (whose production company was bankrolling the show) and the NBC brass to give it the chop. Her mother had suddenly been diagnosed with cancer and flying back and forth between shooting and her mom’s hospital bedside was a burden at a difficult time in her life—which also included relationship troubles with Burt Reynolds. She remembers leaving the set saying: “My mother’s having seven surgeries, and I’m getting on a plane and going home. I don’t know when or if I will ever be back. I don’t know what you’re going to shoot, or how much it’s going to cost you, or how much you’re going to sue me for. And I don’t care.” Throughout the experience, Anderson has said Carter was incredibly supportive.
The show is absolutely an empty calorie confection, but it sure hit my sweet tooth at the time. In the intervening years but before the age of internet video, I remember thinking about it and wondering if it really happened or if this amazing Loni & Lynda team-up was only something I had personally dreamed up. It’s never gotten an official release on home video or streaming, which is baffling—both actresses were once among the biggest names in Hollywood at one time. Well, as luck would have it, the curse may be broken for those who don’t remember it at all but are curious to check it out (and those like me who love to relive it). Recently, YouTuber Don Jack has done some epic sleuthing and uploaded full episodes in HD which means, at least temporarily, we can experience all its 80s synthesizer scoring and shoulder-padded fashion glory! This is probably the best Partners in Crime has looked since it aired in 1984.
Now that I’ve cracked the case of what went so wrong with what should have been a surefire hit, it’s a bit heartbreaking for me to have discovered how miserable the two leads largely were when filming this blip on the timeline of my pop culture memory. Although, watching it today with all this behind-the-scenes knowledge, the finished product is a testament to what consummate pros Anderson and Carter truly are to squeeze all the magic they did out of such a chaotic and troubled production.
I don’t really know what it is about these types of fluffy, episodic, crime-solving, fashion advertisements that put me under their spell. Much of TV today is a serious chore that must be about something, or be grounded in reality and tell us deep things about life. Perhaps I miss being allowed to check out for an hour on the real world with a bit of escapist entertainment. Is that a crime?
If it is, I know two divorced widows who could probably solve it in an hour and look fabulous doing it.
Eric Grigs is a pop culture writer, artist, and co-host of the Pop Trash Podcast.