Barney Miller/Trivia

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• Actor Allusion:
  • Fish, Abe Vigoda's zodiac sign is Pisces whose symbol is the fish.
  • Deputy Inspector Luger is forced to take some vacation time and doesn't know what to do with himself so he asks Yemana if Flower Drum Song is still playing on Broadway. Jack Soo, Yemana's actor, was in the original Broadway run and The Movie.
  • When the squadroom gets a flier for a police department variety show, one of them says "Barney, didn't you sing in college?" and he says no. Hal Linden is a song-and-dance man who's been in many musicals.
• The Character Died with Him: On January 11, 1979, midway through the show's run, Jack Soo, who portrayed Yemana, passed away. In response, a special memorial episode was aired in which Yemana had been killed. The actors broke character and recalled their favorite Yemana scenes. The episode ended with entire cast raising their coffee cups in tribute.
• The Danza: Ron Glass as Sgt. Ron Harris.
• Dawson Casting:
  • Inverted with Abe Vigoda as Fish. Vigoda was in his early fifties when the series began, but Fish was implied to be well into his sixties; Vigoda was cast in the role because the producer thought he looked tired during his audition (he had been jogging that morning), which fit the world-weary personality they had in mind for Fish (specifically, Danny Arnold looked at Vigoda and said "You look like you have hemorrhoids!").
  • Yemana claims in one episode that he will be 46 on his next birthday; however, Jack Soo, who played Yemana, was over 60 when the series premiered.
  • Unwittingly played straight with Steve Landesberg as Dietrich; in his first appearance, Dietrich claims to be 28, and for many years, Landesberg was believed to have been born in 1945, which would have made him 30 years old at the time. However, he was actually born in 1936, making him over a decade older than Dietrich; self-consciousness about starting acting relatively late in life prompted him to lie about his age (even at his death in 2010, Landesberg's IMDB page listed his birth year as 1945).
• Directed by Cast Member:
  • Hal Linden directed the fourth season episode "Corporation".
  • Somewhat fittingly Max Gail directed the fourth season episode "Wojo's Problem".
• Hey, It's That Guy!:
  • Linda Lavin appeared in early episodes as Det. Janice Wentworth.
  • Christopher Lloyd was hauled in on one episode.
  • Ron Glass (Harris) also played the repairman's assistant in The Rashomon episode of All in The Family, an African American Felix Unger, and eventually Shepherd Book.
  • James Gregory (Inspector Luger) was Senator Iselin in The Manchurian Candidate, the Gorilla General in Planet of the Apes, the creepy sanitarium doctor in that one episode of Star Trek, and Smrgol the dragon in The Flight of Dragons.
  • Jack Soo was a lot of people. A character actor with a long string of credits, you're most likely to remember him in various roles on M*A*S*H. He also played Sammy Fong in Flower Drum Song.
  • And, of course, Abe Vigoda's best-known role before this was as Sal Tessio in The Godfather.
• Marathon Running: Cable channel TV Land once ran a marathon of Cotterman-centered episodes called "Welcome Back, Cotterman".
• The Other Darrin: Abby Dalton played Barney's wife Liz in the pilot, while Barbara Barrie took over the role for the series.
  • Florence Stanley played Bernice Gruber Fish in Seasons 1 and 3. In Bernice's only appearance in Season 2, she was played by Doris Belack.
• Prop Recycling: The familiar boxing poster regularly seen on the hallway wall opposite the squad room's door first appeared in Chano's apartment in the first season's "The Hero".
• Technology Marches On: In one episode, a man threatens a deli owner when his winning lottery ticket is void because the owner didn't send it to the lottery authority in time. Today this his handled automatically by the lottery machines.
• Uncanceled: The pilot was originally not picked up, and just "burned off" in the summer. However the ratings of that one showing revived interest in the concept, and more episodes were ordered the next season.