EXPLORING BLACK TOOBWORLD - ENA HARTMAN

The closest I’ve ever come to giving Black History Month more than lip service in the Inner Toob blog was 2013, the year in which Billy Dee Williams was inducted into the TV Crossover Hall of Fame for playing his fictional televersion in so many TV shows.  (My overall theme in 2013 for the entire year was the League of Themselves, so I had enough to work with thanks to running one showcase a day for each of Billy Dee’s appearances as himself.)

So now that I’m retired, I hope to be able to run a televisiological essay each day centered around black characters, storylines, and issues in television.  And I’m not taking any chances – I’m writing this one back in October.  (Yesterday’s induction into the Hall of Fame was written and posted back in the summer!)

So today the spotlight is on this nurse from the first pilot for ‘Columbo’: “Prescription Murder”, which starred Gene Barry, Katherine Justice, William Windom, and Nina Foch.  Oh!  And Peter Falk of course.

However, my concern today is with the nurse at the reception desk, who got into a stubborn clash with Dr. Ray Flemming with neither one willing to concede.  Finally she got Dr. Lansbury on the phone and let Flemming talk to him.

And that’s all we saw of her in that episode.  But at least she got credit for her bit part.  The actress is named Ena Hartman and she would have a relatively short career in TV and movies (25 roles between 1964 and 1975.)  Her portrayal of this nurse came after she already made appearances in ‘Star Trek’, ‘Bonanza’, ‘The Farmer’s Daughter’, and ‘Tarzan’ as well as the movie “Our Man Flint”.  She would also go on to appear in such shows as ‘Ironside’, ‘Dragnet’, ‘Police Story’, ‘The Outsider’, ‘It Takes A Thief’, and ‘The Name Of The Game’.  Ms, Hartman also graced the movies “Airport” and “Terminal Island” before leaving the business in 1975.

But it could be said that her most famous role was as Katy Grant, the dispatcher working in the police department of Santa Luisa, California. There are 26 episodes of ‘Dan August’ to her credit as Katy Grant in the Internet Movie Database.

From Wikipedia:

'Dan August' is a Quinn Martin crime drama series which aired on ABC from September 23, 1970, to April 8, 1971. Burt Reynolds played the title character. Reruns of the series aired in prime time on CBS from May to October 1973 and from April to June 1975.

Reynolds stars as police lieutenant Dan August who investigates homicide cases in his (fictional) hometown of Santa Luisa, California. (The town is supposedly based on Santa Barbara but was filmed in Oxnard in Ventura County.) Other cast members include Norman Fell as August's partner, Sergeant Charles Wilentz; Richard Anderson as Police Chief Untermeyer; Ned Romero as Sergeant Joe Rivera; and Ena Hartman as Katie Grant.

‘Columbo’ took place in Los Angeles, and Santa Luisa is farther south, practically next door to Santa Barbara, upon which it was based.  So with my intent to create a theory of relateeveety between Katy Grant and that nurse, it’s nice to know they didn’t live more than a couple of hours away from each other.

As to a name for this nurse, I’m going to make the claim that she was married, so that whichever other character I choose to combine with her, I would then have a splainin for the difference in the last names with Katy being a Grant. 

I think she’s Ida Walters, whom Ena Hartman played in the ‘Dragnet ‘68’ episode “The Missing Realtor”.  She wasn’t a nurse in that; instead she was a secretary at a small real estate agency whose boss was reported missing.  (She was later found dead.)

The splainin is relatively simple: Mrs. Walter was a recent graduate of nursing school and her position as the reception desk nurse was new.  She worked her way through nursing school by taking that job with the Birnam Agency and was planning to resign soon.  As it turned out, with her boss Mrs. Birnam dead, the company was going to go out of business anyway.  So Ida Walters wouldn’t have to burn the candle at both ends for much longer.

BCnU!