“T.H.E. Cat” (1966-67) and Lalo Schifrin

Out of the night comes a man who saves lives at the risk of his own. Once a circus performer, an aerialist who refused the net. Once a cat burglar, a master among jewel thieves. Now a professional bodyguard. Primitive… savage… in love with danger. The Cat!

Such was the premise of the half-hour Paramount TV action series “T.H.E. Cat,” starring Robert Loggia (1930-2015), which ran on NBC for all of one season between late 1966 and early1967. The show gets its quirky name from its lead character, T. Hewitt Edward Cat (the “T” stands for Thomas, get it?), who is played by Robert Loggia (1930-2015).

Mr. Cat, as he is known to his clients, is one of the proprietors of the super-cool Casa del Gato club. The club is actually run by Pepe Cordoza (Robert Carricart), who calls our Cat “Tomas,” and is an earring-wearing gypsy who once-upon-a-time saved the Cat’s life (apparently, the reverse is true, too).

Loggia, who moves throughout the show as slyly and blithely as a real cat, is expertly skilled in what is now called parkour, martial arts, swordsmanship and good old-fashioned hand-to-hand combat. Some of his bodyguard work comes from assignments that the cigar-chomping police Captain McAllister (R.G. Armstrong) offers him. Other work comes from “out of the past” friends and foes, peopled by the Cat and Pepe’s alliances over the years.

Some of the action happens in and around Casa del Gato, which, of course, means the Paramount backlot. But almost every episode ends up there, with the crafty Mr. Cat seemingly about to get paired off – just like James Bond – with yet another beautiful woman.

II.

“T.H.E. Cat” was the brainchild of Harry Julian Fink (1923-2001), an episodic TV writer who worked on such shows as “Have Gun – Will Travel” (1957-63) and “The Eleventh Hour” (1962-64), itself another one of his creations.

Fink also co-wrote such films as Ice Station Zebra (1968), with Rock Hudson, and Cahill U.S. Marshall (1973), with John Wayne. But Fink is best remembered today as the co-writer of Dirty Harry (1971) – a franchise that probably allowed him to retire. Of the 26 episodes “Cat” episodes that aired, Fink wrote only a few of the scripts, including the pilot opener “To Kill a Priest.”

There is little doubt that “T.H.E. Cat” was inspired by Cary Grant’s character John Robie, “The Cat,” in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1955 classic To Catch a Thief. Like John Robie, T. Hewitt Edward Cat is also a former circus performer and a cat burglar (also in France). The “Cat,” in this case, though, is a full five years younger, reasonably allowing him more of a third-act as a bodyguard in an unnamed American city that pretty closely resembles Los Angeles.

(Loggia, for the record, had previously starred in two episodes of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” and two episodes of “The Alfred Hitchcock Hour” – none of which were directed by the master himself.)

Veteran TV director Boris Sagal (1923-81) – best known today for one of the few feature films he directed, 1971’s The Omega Man, with Charlton Heston – produced all 26 episodes of “T.H.E. Cat,” and directed eight of its episodes, notably the first three.

In his 1996 book T.V.’s Biggest Hits, film and TV music journalist and author Jon Burlingame aptly called “T.H.E. Cat” “a half-hour drama in the Peter Gunn mold.” Indeed, the “Cat” premise is remarkably similar to Blake Edwards’s earlier hit series, with jazz-y interludes as much a part of the story as plot and characters.

This show, however, was unusually weighted down by dialogue for a half-hour show brimming over with genuinely riveting small-screen action. Lots of talk about what’s right and wrong, good and bad and what one owes to enemies and friends.

Indeed, the characters seem to make more Shakespearean soliloquies than natural replies or anything resembling normal conversation. To his credit, Loggia, though – seemingly channeling a proto-Clint Eastwood – sticks to mostly minimal, even-keeled commentary.

But there were always great action sequences that looked very dangerous, especially for Loggia, but also the other actors, too. Filmed on the storied Paramount backlot, “Cat” always had terrific sets, highlighted by unusual camera angles (especially in the early episodes): not so much like the comic-book framing of “Batman” (which also debuted the same year as “T.H.E. Cat”), but rather such feature films as the noirs of decades earlier and the French “New Wave” films that aped those styles in the first place.

The show was directed by a variety of TV veterans – including Alan Crosland, Jr., who had previously directed Loggia in several of the Hitchcock episodes. But one director in particular here stands out.

In one of his last directorial efforts, Jacques Tourneur (1904-77) – director of the influential Cat People (1942 and yet another” cat”!), I Walked with a Zombie (1943), The Leopard Man (1943) and Out of the Past (1947) – directed the 15th “Cat” episode, “The Ring of Anasis.”

Little wonder that TV audiences at the time had trouble accepting it. Either way, it was a bold look for American TV at the time.

“T.H.E. Cat” starred the most exotic of villains and featured a dazzling array of character actors, from Jason Evers, Paul Stewart, Ted Knight, and James Whitmore to Reggie Nalder, Michael Constantine, Lloyd Bochner, Sam Melville, Williams Daniels and Joseph (Dr. No) Wiseman. Cesar Romero and Victor Buono, both “Batman” villains, turned up as “Cat” baddies, too.

The Godfather (1972) stars Robert Duvall and John Morley (who briefly seems to substitute for Armstrong’s cop), even turn up for two episodes apiece.

The show was always rife with beautiful women, all of whom were, well, catnip to the series; although very few of them went on to make a name for themselves outside of such actresses as Carolyn Craig, Sally Kellerman, Diane Muldaur and Lynda Day (George).

III.

The riveting theme to “T.H.E. Cat” is by Lalo Schifrin (1932-2025). Schifrin, whose immortal theme to “Mission: Impossible” dazzled TV audiences a mere one night after “T.H.E. Cat”‘s less-storied debut, also provided the score to no less than 22 of the show’s 26 episodes. (I think the bulk of his cues were written for the first few episodes and repeated throughout the remaining episodes.)

The show’s theme is one of Schifrin’s very best, a superb bongo-fueled slice of crime jazz. While it’s easy to assume that the theme is a twist on Mancini’s “Peter Gunn” theme, there is more to it than meets the ear. I think the song harks back to Schifrin’s brilliant main title theme for Les Félins – still one more “cat” reference – a.k.a Joy House (1964). It even reaches back to some of Schifrin’s superb big-band writing on the landmark Gillespiana.

“Schifrin’s theme for flute and brass,” wrote Jon Burlingame, “had an appropriately stealthy feel, and he filled many moments in Cat’s hangout (a nightspot called the Casa del Gato, for House of the Cat) with Latin jazz.” Those club numbers – usually soundtracking the episodes’ “happy-ending” codas – had more of a then-in easy “bossa nova” groove about them rather than flat-out Latin jazz. But Latin jazz is certainly prevalent elsewhere in the series.

Schifrin himself even makes an uncredited cameo as house pianist at Casa del Gato in the series’ sixth episode, “None to Weep, None to Mourn.” None of the other musicians on the soundtrack are known, but according to David Meeker’s Jazz at the Movies, veteran drummer Stan Levey is on percussion (Levey also plays on such soundtracks as Munster, Go Home, The Odd Couple, and Rosemary’s Baby).

Other “Cat” episodes were scored by Gerald Fried (“To Bell T.H.E. Cat,” and the obviously non-Schifrin “A Hot Place to Die” and “A Slight Family Trait,” both of which were notably filmed on location, mostly away from the Paramount backlot) and Ruby Raksin (“The Long Chase”).

Like “Peter Gunn” before it, “T.H.E. Cat” is packed with cool, jazzy music, courtesy of Schifrin. Since the Cat is part owner of a nightclub appropriately called Casa del Gato, there is always music in the air. Sometimes it’s nice jazz-combo stuff (similar to “A Song for Cathy” from Bullitt) and sometimes a lovely female croons in front of the trio on stage. But it’s always worth listening to. A good deal of the episodes allow the listener to do just that, too: there is often little dialogue in these scenes.

The series didn’t last long enough to elicit a soundtrack for “T.H.E. Cat.” But here is a beautifully-crafted audio track of music cues from the series, courtesy of YouTuber Fish Man – who has done a lot of valiant work in this regard – with most of the dialogue edited out (listen for the superbly funky four-second title-card cue that the show used to cut to or from commercials at the 16:23 mark):

It is worth noting that “Cat” star Robert Loggia would cross musical paths with composer Lalo Schifrin again in the forgotten 1969 film Che! – which scores a bucket-spilling 23% on Rotten Tomatoes’ “Popcornmeter” – and the two-part 1975 “Mannix” episode “Bird of Prey” – which also features a source cue that is a variation of “Stacey’s Bolero” from Schifrin’s score to the 1968 dud Sol Madrid – the last of only eight “Mannix” episodes Schifrin scored.

IV.

The only known recording of Schifrin’s “T.H.E. Cat” theme that was publicly released is by trumpeter Al Hirt, or as he was billed at the time, Al “He’s the King” Hirt. The song is one of many then-current TV themes on Hirt’s album The Horn Meets “The Hornet,” released in December 1966.

Hirt adds his signature New Orleans growl to Schifrin’s theme, over top of Frank Hunter’s attractive big-band chart. It’s not nearly as cool or as exciting as Schifrin’s original, still it serves as a worthy memento of the otherwise furtive theme. But the Hirt album also offers up all sorts of other intriguing connections worth noting.

While The Horn Meets “The Hornet” is not a soundtrack, per se, Hirt himself actually played Billy May’s “Flight of the Bumblebee”-esque “Green Hornet Theme” for the series, a show that, like “T.H.E. Cat,” ran for all of one season – 26 episodes – between September 1966 and March 1967.

Hirt is pictured on the album’s cover with Van Williams, the handsome Green Hornet himself. But Bruce Lee, the Hornet’s trusty sidekick, Kato, was also reputed to have been helping Robert Loggia, himself proficient in karate and jujitsu, to choreograph fight scenes in “T.H.E. Cat” at the very same time.

(Schifrin, of course, would go on to score Lee’s best-known work in 1973’s Enter the Dragon. During that time, Lee helped train Schifrin in the martial arts, too, and the two wound up becoming fast friends.)

The Horn Meets “The Hornet” was preceded by the August single release of the “Green Hornet Theme” (which only reached number 126 on the charts) and the November single release of “(Theme From) The Monkees,” which never charted.

“The Monkees” single, though, was backed with a non-album track titled “The Evil One,” by none other than Lalo Schifrin, a number which seems to mash up Schifrin’s “The Pendulum,” from the 1965 soundtrack to the Matt Helm movie Murderer’s Row, with “The Getaway,” from the 1969 album release of More Mission: Impossible. “The Evil One” may well be from a Schifrin soundtrack, but it has not surfaced on any other known recording.

Even more notably, only six months before the release of The Horn Meets “The Hornet,” Al Hirt had recorded a full album of Lalo Schifrin arrangements (and two Schifrin originals that appear nowhere else) for a full album called Latin in the Horn. This album, which surprisingly yielded no singles, is, in this listener’s opinion, among the very best of Hirt’s vast RCA output between 1961 and 1970.

Likely recorded shortly before Schifrin’s “T.H.E. Cat” recording sessions and assigned a catalog number that precedes The Hornet record, Latin in the Horn was not issued until May 1967. Perhaps because of the true glut of Hirt product on RCA appearing during those years, the positively lovely Latin in the Horn failed to curry much notice and never found its way out of the 130s in its brief June 1967 stay on the LP charts. But this is the one to horn in on.

In a final crossover note, Schifrin would update no less than four arrangements on Al Hirt’s Latin in the Horn for the 1997 and 2001 Epic/Legacy CD reissues of his own 1976 CTI album Black Widow (featuring bonus tracks that were previously unreleased on the original vinyl release.)