The NBC television show Emergency!, which ran 123 episodes on NBC from 1972 to 1977, plus six made-for-TV movies that aired in 1978 and 1979, did a lot to make the public aware of professional Medics, playing a significant role in elevating the profession from mere “ambulance drivers.”
The show starred Randolph Mantooth and Kevin Tighe as Paramedics Johnny Gage and Roy Desoto, running out of the fictitious Los Angeles County Fire Department’s Station 51. It was the last show created by Jack Webb (of Dragnet and Adam-12 fame).
That one station seemed to cover it all: the mountains to the seashore, small neighborhoods to downtown highrises, and industrial complexes — whatever it took to get a fresh angle on rescue and medical intervention and tell the story.
And it helped draw a lot of new Medics into the business in the 1970s, including myself (in 1977).
While Mantooth, now 67, still works as an actor, he is also still active in promoting professional EMS. He appears at many EMS conferences, including at the EMS World Expo in Las Vegas, which I’m attending this week.
Squad 51 Dispatch
Dispatch audio for Squad 51 (KMG-365!)
A typical dispatch sound clip from the show. The two tones specify the station to set off a horn there, much like a pager. Then the firefighters can hear where they’re being dispatched to.
The dispatcher’s voice is done by a real LAcoFD dispatcher, Sam Lanier, who did all the dispatching on the show (he was on duty 24x7x365, the poor bastard!)
Lanier went to work as a dispatcher at the Los Angeles County Fire Department in late 1958 after a stint in the military, and retired in 1977 shortly after the show ended. He died May 21, 1997, from a heart attack — ironically while helping at a car crash outside his house. He was 65.
The “KMG-365” at the end of the reply (by Randy Mantooth) is the station’s radio callsign, as issued by the FCC, much like any other radio station. KMG-365 is, in fact, issued to the LAcoFD, but for the station in Bellflower.
Iconic
Another star of the show was their Dodge rescue vehicle, “Squad 51”. Long after the show ended, it was recovered and fully restored by LA County Battalion Chief Jim Page, who was instrumental in starting the fire agency’s paramedic program. He was also a technical adviser for the Emergency! series. Once Squad 51 was restored, he donated the vehicle to the County of Los Angeles Fire Museum.
Mantooth serves as honorary chairman and spokesman for the museum, and sometimes the two — Mantooth and Squad 51 — appear together, as they did this week in Las Vegas. I went over to meet him, introducing myself by saying, “Hi Randy, I’m Randy,” which made him chuckle. Yeah, I know: I’m a geeky fanboy.
Mantooth is quick to humbly point out he’s “only an actor,” and reveres the medics who do it for real — many of whom (at least the older ones!) were inspired by him.
The Real EMS Folks Behind Mantooth
Jim Page, the “rescuer” of Squad 51, is considered the father of Paramedicine, and was mentor to many of the now-old-timers. Indeed, the character “Johnny Gage” is named to honor James Page.
Page later became a lawyer and often represented medics, fighting for them, and became the founding publisher of the Journal of Emergency Medical Services — known in the trade as JEMS. He died in 2004 of cardiac arrest, at 68. His law firm still exists, still bears his name, and still specializes in EMS.
The show’s executive producer/co-creator, Robert Cinader, was considered an expert in EMS by the end of the show’s run (not because he produced a show about paramedics, but rather because he studied the field so thoroughly).
In 1978, Cinader was appointed to L.A. County’s Emergency Medical Services Commission, and served until 1982, his death. LACoFD named Station 127 in Carson (the stand-in for “Station 51”) in his honor: LACoFD knew it was Cinader, not the actors, who brought the show to TV in the first place, causing a radical shift in pre-hospital care.
The Biggest Spinoff Ever
The show’s impact was enormous: when it premiered in 1972, there were only 12 operating paramedic units in North America. Ten years later, more than half of all Americans were within ten minutes of a paramedic unit.
The Smithsonian’s National History Museum, public-service section, has some of the equipment from the show, including its real defibrillator, to illustrate the early history of paramedicine.
It’s truly cool that Randy Mantooth is carrying on Jim’s legacy, and takes seriously the important role he played in mentoring so many Medics, even if it was “only” a TV show.
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Note: Contrary to popular belief, Los Angeles County did not have the first civilian paramedics. That honor goes to Pittsburgh, and that story is also on my blog, in The First Paramedics.
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Did they always uses the KMG-365? I thought they only started using that in the Second Season? Not important, I guess… just a piece of trivia.
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I’ll just say I don’t remember any other callsign used. -rc
In 1971 and 1972 I had a part time job cleaning the ambulances/hearses at the local funeral home. Yes, at that time, we were among the places using hearses as ambulances. No, we didn’t have paramedics then. I had to have a professional driver’s license so I could drive the hearses in and out of the building, and in case I had to drive to pick up a “customer”. I never had to, but for a 19 year old, it was an experience.
Oh those tones. They can still be heard as a wav file on our county CAD system as an alert sound option for an individual user. Still gets the blood pumping when you hear it.
Thanks for posting this. While recovering from surgery I’ve been watching re-runs of EMERGENCY (among other ’50s-’70s TV shows) and, for all their dramatic flaws, enjoying them quite a bit. (I remember having a serious crush on Julie London when the show originally ran.) I was not aware, however, of the impact the show had on the expansion of EMS services in the US; a worthy story, and well told.
Emergency! was almost required TV when I was an EMT in the 70s. And the sounds you heard when the radio went off were called Tone Squelch — our dispatch radios (made then by Plectron, which was after a while a generic name for the dispatch radios) would not sound unless that tone was transmitted prior to the verbal dispatch since we shared the frequency with other local departments. Every department had their own set of tones and when multiple departments were called out you heard the tones transmitted to the ones being alerted after you were. For instance if the Independence, Valley View (my department) and Brecksville were called out to the same scene in that order, I would not hear Independence tones, but I would hear Valley View and Brecksville. Those multi-town callouts didn’t happen often, but when they did it got the adrenaline flowing. There was nothing like those tones to wake you up! Emergency remains on Netflix,and it’s still fun.
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You (or more likely whoever explained it to you) have things mixed up a bit. “Tone squelch” is short for Continuous Tone-Coded Squelch System, or CTCSS, more commonly called “PL” (“Private Line” is the trademarked name for Motorola’s version — if I’m not mistaken, Motorola invented it). CTCSS uses “sub-audible” (it’s low, but you CAN hear it) continuous tones, and is very common on analog comm systems — systems that don’t use it probably should. Paging systems use “Selective Calling” — clearly audible, speech-range tones to set off alerts and/or “open up” receivers so the user can hear a message. The system used in LA County at the time was Quik Call I, also by Motorola, which uses a pair of dual-frequency tones.
The standard “time window” for modern toneouts is 1.25 seconds for the first tone, and 3 seconds for the second. Since LA often sent out large response groups, that standard took too long, so they custom-shortened the tones, which still worked fine. (Marin County, Calif., did the same shortening, but with the Quik Call II system.) Plectron was a much simpler system that only used one (long) tone, which can only be shortened so much before it stopped working right, which made it more suitable to very rural areas — I never worked in a place that used them. More details on selcall is here. Yes, I know way too much about this stuff…! -rc
You said in your email you were a bit young for Emergency, but I was five and it was my favorite show. My career-choosing year was later than 1977, and I opted for something else, but “paramedic” was high on my What To Be When I Grow Up list for quite a while.
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Actually, I said I watched it, but I was too young to get into the business in 1972. One needs to be 18, so I got my first ambulance job several years later — 1977, after graduating high school. -rc
Used to love watching that show. I was in the Army then, so I don’t think I saw every episode, but I have fond memories. Just checked Amazon, looks like all seasons are available for ~$114.
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It’s also available to stream on Netflix, but not all the episodes are there. -rc
YouTube tv has it, and you can get all the episodes. Maybe slowly but if you keep them to your library you can watch them over and over.
If you get the ME-TV station in the U.S. and Canada, they show episodes of Emergency every afternoon. I loved the show when I was a kid and had a crush on Johnny Gage. I now own all the seasons, plus the movies, on DVD.
COZI TV airs two episodes a day at 11 am and Noon Central time. My MeTV does not air the series.
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I’d guess MeTV did back in 2015, when that comment was made. But yeah: definitely look around if you can’t find it! Could well be others are showing it now and then, including Netflix, where I went through the series again a few years ago. -rc
I absolutely *loved* Emergency when I was a kid. (I was born in 1970, so I watched the re-runs that aired on the weekends on an independent station in Atlanta during the late ’70s and early ’80s).
I recently found them available for streaming on Netflix — I wish they had all the episodes there, but they do have *most* of them which is better than nothing. 🙂 I’ve been catching up on them over the past several weeks. Still a great show, even after all these years!
I had no idea that Emergency was so important to the real Paramedics in this country! So it was both entertaining AND important to the health and well-being of (literally) millions of people in this country. Thanks for telling us about this, rc!
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You’re welcome! -rc
Thanks for the write up! The show was a fav of mine growing up, too. Loved that call tone, it brought back memories.
And today we have Randy, instead of Johnny. Take Care.
I’m a retired firefighter/paramedic. I remember when Emergency was in First Run, and it was pretty cool, but didn’t get me into EMS — I wanted to be a Folk Singer! But I went to college in West Virginia, got involved in a volunteer FD, got my EMT card and joined the Harrison County Emergency Squad, where we watched Emergency religiously, calling it “Training Films” — and laughing at some of the improbable situations Johnny and Roy got into. I came back to NY and got into Paramedic Class, and was the first person hired by my FD who had a Paramedic Card when hired — many years before it became mandatory. I had the pleasure of meeting Jim Page when he came to Albany and gave a ConEd lecture, about a year before he passed away. The show, and the creators have had a profound effect on my life — and I hope on the lives of many of the patients I’ve treated over the years.
I thank the wonderful people that fill the ranks as paramedics and the lives they have saved, including my father.
What I don’t understand, and maybe you can better explain the reasoning, here in Wilmington, NC the paramedics roll out in fire trucks. Remembering back to Emergency!, I thought a reason for the pick-up based rescue vehicle was the speed and maneuverability it provided.
I would think the local paramedics would be better equipped utilizing an ambulance or similar sized vehicle, saving the taxpayers vehicle maintenance costs associated with fire trucks rolling out to provide assistance.
Are there any unseen benefits to fire trucks being used to respond to emergencies?
Just an overtaxed taxpayer.
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Firetrucks are indeed expensive — to buy and to run. But so are ambulances: figure a quarter-million for the vehicle and equipment. And if your paramedics are with the fire department, they already have a lot of that equipment on the fire apparatus. Their choice, then, is to just use the fire equipment (and have extra personnel, too), or duplicate everything on a second expensive vehicle. Sounds like there is a separate, private ambulance service in your town already to do the transport anyway, so it’s very likely that the fire department is doing the frugal thing by not spending even more money to get their own ambulances. -rc
They will also use fire trucks to respond in case there is a fire when they out or returning to quarters. If they didn’t have the truck time would be wasted going back to the station to get the fire truck.
My city of 120,000 or so always sends out a fire truck with the ambulance to medical calls. We have seven fire stations but only three have ambulances, so often the fire truck gets there first. Since all firefighters have paramedic training these days, that gets you medical assistance faster.
Since, 70% of fire department calls are medical, we need more ambulances, and we also need to enhance our dispatch capabilities so that the dispatchers can determine whether a call is a true medical emergency or whether it it can be handled by a non-emergency team (such as needing lifting help). Our fire chief is really good about replying to my questions about both of these improvements. Unfortunately, adding new ambulances will take at least 12+ months because of equipment, labor, and real estate (where to put the additional ambulances since the existing fire stations have no room).
I was 2 when “Emergency!” premiered, but it was still running when I was 5-7, and it was around that age that I decided I wanted to be a nurse, thanks to Dixie McCall, RN. And of course I had a crush on Johnny Gage, my earliest memory of a crush. One TV show, 2 of my earliest memories. How many people end up doing as a career what they saw on a TV show when they were 5 years old? I did.
Emergency was one of the first television shows I remember watching when I was a kid…and my favorite. To this day I am still drawn to medical shows in pretty much any form! This past fall my wife, Jodi, and I were on vacation in Door County and I turned on the TV and Emergency was on…needless to say I told her we were leaving the hotel later than planned because I was watching it! I had no idea it was available for sale on DVD AND on Netflix. I’m geeking out right now and can’t wait to get home from work and start binge-watching the episodes they have available. She won’t be able to complain much, either, as her dad was a volunteer fireman for 50 years, serving 35 of those years as the chief, as well as a First Responder in their little township and an EMT with a local ambulance company. If she complains, I’ll tell her to call her dad! Thanks for the information, Randy (and posters), you really made my day!!
I’ve been watching the series of Emergency on Netflix. So fun to rewatch this show I remember as a young person in the 70s. In 1990, I had my EMT certification as I took a summer semester in conjunction with my certified Medical Assisting degree. About a year ago the knowledge came in handy when I came across a rollover accident of a van on a road in my home state or Ohio. Thankfully also, an RN driving past also stopped and we were able to get the person out and happy to say that they had a good outcome. So happy that we have so many dedicated EMT professionals out there giving their time and talents to serve their communities.
Those tones are still used — as far as I can tell, exactly the same — in the up to date equivalent show ‘Chicago Fire’.
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They are real tones used in emergency paging systems. I’ve never watched Chicago Fire, and I don’t know if Chicago actually uses Quik Call I for its dispatching, or if that’s artistic license to use the system from Emergency! because that’s what TV viewers expect. -rc
I like the series I have all seasons of DVDS.
I was 14 yrs old when Emergency aired. I went into the medical field when I was 26 yrs old but not what I wanted to be because my Parents wanted me to care for people as a CNA. I have done that for 22 yrs. My favorite actor was and will always be Randy Mantooth. He’s a great guy even today.
I am sure this has been said, but this show started my desire to go into EMS. I started as an “Ambulance Attendant” pre EMT/Paramedic in my state. I have now been a Paramedic since 1982, and continue in that role today. Roy and Johnny were role models for me, and I am so glad that I had that show to provide me exposure to the EMS community.
I’d wish make a reboot mixed with old cast it’s a wish but a wish could come true. Keep my fingers crossed. I still watch Emergency even at 53 years old.
Montgomery, Alabama has an excellent paramedic corps of which I have made frequent use. We can all be thankful for the inspiration the Emergency show gave.
I am anxious to hear more about Randolph Mantooth’s Seminole heritage.
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He is of Seminole, Cherokee, Potawatomi, Scottish, and German descent, probably roughly in that order. -rc
I was a teenager when show aired and at 16 joined local volunteer ambulance crew due to the stories and actors on this show which i never missed and after becoming five point state certified — we had plectrons to alert us! I worked for ambulance crew last two years of high school, I saw my first few roadside deaths, and then went to combined program for undergrad and medschool and did ER medicine as a doc for 23 years — all sparked by this unforgettable show!!
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Plectron was an early first-responder pager system. The receivers didn’t go on your belt: they were too big …and had to be plugged in to a wall outlet. -rc
It’s interesting to see how far we’ve come in paramedic response since the ’70s. As a comparison to Emergency!, check out, say, the beginning of the movie Bullitt, where some medics come to pick up an injured guy. (And continue watching for an awesome car chase.)
Also, I think it was Emergency! that had a scene that scarred me for life. A kid got his arm trapped in elevator doors, and to this day, it freaks me out to stick my arm out to prevent elevator doors from closing.
Loved the show, watched it a lot as a kid. These days, some of the stereotyping in the show that went sailing over my head as a kid hits like a brick to the head; more gender typing than racial, but still — it’s the kind of stuff that would have a tougher time getting aired these days.
I didn’t realize until a few years ago that Emergency! was a direct spin-off of Adam-12. There was a two-part story involving paramedics, which were still a rare species of first responder at the time, and I think it was Gage and DeSoto who responded to the call.
There were at least two attempts to spin shows off of it as well. One followed an LA County animal control team (which had a very young Mark Harmon as the junior team member) and one had the Squad 51 team head up to San Francisco to attend a seminar while they worked with a local squad with a woman as one of the crew (a fact they make a big deal about on the show, while today it wouldn’t be even remotely out of the ordinary).
COZI TV is a service available through streaming/web-based TV services, cable/telco cable company services and in some instances even over-the-air digital TV broadcasts by secondary channels (in the greater NYC area, it’s on channel 4-2, a sub-channel of WNBC channel 4, which broadcasts on channel 4-1). They often present episodes of Emergency!, though they’re almost always aired out of order. If someone stuck to it and recorded all the episodes as they came on, they’d probably get all of them eventually unless the broadcast schedule changes and COZI dropped the show.
I do wish they targeted their ads a bit less exclusively to their primary audience — people who watched the show as young adults and are now retired seniors. Most of the ads are for things like life insurance, hearing aids, voice-to-text phones and Medicare supplement insurance.
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“905-wild” was an episode of Emergency! that seems to have been a test run of the concept of animal control; Harmon was part of that team. About the same time, he was in an episode of Adam-12, so clearly Jack Webb had his eye on this actor, thinking he had potential. (He did!) The spinoff didn’t happen. The San Francisco trip was one of several Emergency! TV movies that were made after the main show went off the air. -rc