The Lost *Kralicek* Script (Or: How I Beat Harlan Ellison on eBay)!

An unproduced Quinn Martin Productions script resurfaces…in my mailbox!

The late Boyd Monson as John Kralicek, in the only surviving still from Kralicek: The Widow Walks West (ABC, unaired 1965). A Quinn Martin Production… IN COLOR. Photo: Courtesy KMEX Archives / ABC-TV (recovered fragment).

Two years ago, when I was trying to figure out how to spend my book advance for Anarchy In The Studio, I was scrolling furiously through eBay. Hunting down a bootleg of The Invaders pilot (don’t ask!), I stumbled on a listing so weird it practically spit in my face. “Unproduced 1960s Detective TV Script — Possibly Tied to Ellison —QM Prod.” Starting bid? $9.99.

Quinn Martin Productions operated like the Ford Motor Company of prime-time crime. Every show—The Fugitive , The FBI , The Streets of San Francisco, and dozens more—rolled off the assembly line in four acts, an epilogue, and a thunderclap of moral consequence. Titles shouted. Narrators (well, I should say “narrator,” since it was always the metallic-voiced Hank Simms) boomed. Guest stars burned bright and died young—on screen, anyway. There were no accidents in a Quinn Martin hour, only choices and punishments. It was prestige pulp delivered with cigar smoke, Roman numerals, and a sense that justice might still be televised. For a kid growing up when TV had weight and wrists got slapped on the half hour, this was church.

But…“possibly tied to Ellison”?!

Harlan Ellison wasn’t just a writer—he was a hand grenade with a typewriter. He smashed genre boundaries, torched deadlines, and filed lawsuits like he was swatting flies. Television, to him, was The Glass Teat: a machine that pacified the masses while mangling art, and he made it his mission to bite the hand that fed him, then sue it for feeding him garbage. Whether scripting The Outer Limits, flaying network executives in those infamous columns, or barking at Phil Dick from across the science fiction gulch, Ellison made both the page and the screen twitch with urgency. He was cranky, brilliant, prophetic, and pathologically unafraid to burn a bridge before he crossed it. If this script bore even a trace of his cologne—ink, fury, and Aqua Velva—I had to have it.

The listing read, “Unproduced 1965 Quinn Martin pilot — script only. Never shot. Possibly intended as a mid-season replacement or shelved due to legal issues.” I contacted the seller. He had no provenance, but swore up and down it was from Ellison’s stash: “Came from a Hollywood storage unit cleared out after Ellison’s death, pulled from a mystery box labeled ‘ELLISON – STORAGE – DO NOT TOSS.’ It was buried under Spider Kiss rewrites, a mangled VHS of Starlost, memos from Gene Roddenberry, and a topless photo of Nichelle Nichols.”

I placed my bid. 30 seconds later, someone named “H.E_Pasadena” countered with $11. Eleven bucks. Really? So I bid twelve. They bid thirteen. It went like that till I won at seventeen ninety-nine. Shipping included. Two weeks later, it arrived in a padded envelope with Harlan Ellison’s name crossed out in Sharpie and the words “RETURN TO SENDER – DEAD” scrawled over it.

That’s how Kralicek: The Widow Walks West came into my life.

Script for Kralicek: The Widow Walks West (ABC, unaired 1965). Returned to sender after Harlan Ellison’s death, bourbon ring, Sharpie note, and righteous fury included.

I remember reading about Kralicek, a typical five act QM Production that oddly did not sell, though every third police/detective/private dick program in those days emerged from Martin’s frontal lobe. It starred Boyd Monson, who was the typical failed ‘50s matinee idol Martin (real name: Irwin Martin Cohn) loved to cast in his shows: chiseled jawline, heavily shellacked Jay Sebring version of Elvis’ old haircut (since these guys were too old for a Beatles ‘do), Sy Devore suit. He played John Kralicek, a hip, swingin’ Hollywood P.I. driving a ‘65 Mustang and living in his office. Yet those narrow lapels and razor-sharp creases remained immaculately pressed.

Kralicek wasn’t a hippie. He was the thing hippies warned you about.

After Kralicek tanked, Monson drifted through dusty Cinecittà shootouts in titles like Gunlaw ’68 and A Coffin for Cassidy before vanishing somewhere outside Rome. Rumor has it he grew a beard and joined a leftist theater troupe. Others say he opened a fondue place in Sherman Oaks. He faded away once Aqua Net stopped manufacturing The Ultimate Hold.

Like Monson, the supporting cast may have briefly burned, but their flame never got too bright before it was extinguished. None of them even rate an IMDb page—not even Monson. Like Kralicek’s star, Roosevelt Major was another underperforming 1950s contract player with a strong name invented by his manager and Bryllcreemed good looks designed to drive teenage girls wild. Elodie Cochran and Linda Bombardier were classic sexy ingénue types—eye candy, walk-ons, almost starlets. Neither made enough of an impression to threaten peers like Sharon Tate, Jill St. John or Terri Garr.

Funny how the Special Guest Stars all glittered more brightly than the series regulars. King Hell character actor Martin Balsam was the Mark Of Quality. If he showed up onscreen—cop, Fed, cab driver, guy with a file folder—you knew the script might still be trash, but he’d elevate it to Shakespearean exceptionalism just by walking into frame. Robert Loggia didn’t just play grizzled cops and mobsters. He defined them. He didn’t chew scenery—he sandblasted it.

Stella Stevens invented that whole “sexy ingénue type” we just lionized. But she was also its warning label. She weaponized it. She was the original mold, before they started sanding off the edges for TV. Beneath the curves and the come-ons was calculation. You got the feeling she knew exactly what she was doing…and so did you. That’s what made her dangerous. Cochran and Bombardier must’ve cowered in their trailers when Stella’s heels clicked on set.

By the time this pilot rolled around, Edd Byrnes was on the tail end of his “Kookie, Kookie, lend me your comb” fame. But that image stuck like greasepaint. Basically the original Fonzie, Kookie began as a juvenile delinquent on an episode of 77 Sunset Strip (the initial claim-to-fame for future Quinn Martin staple Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.). But Kookie proved so popular with teens, he was made a permanent character in a neutered form: “a reformed hood who parked cars rather than stole them,” as writer Gene Sculatti put it in his essential book, The Catalog of Cool. Kookie was the prototype for the postwar beach punk—slicked hair, popped collar, eyes full of shiftiness. Not a greaser. Not a hippie. A smiling threat in pastel slacks.

Post-77 Sunset Strip, Byrnes embodied another Quinn Martin archetype Sculatti pinpointed in his book: The California Windbreaker Hood. Not your standard street tough, the CWH didn’t wear leather, didn’t shout. He loitered in diners and carports, flipped a comb like a coin, and grinned while the cops turned their backs. He was polite to your mom and keyed your dad’s Cadillac. And so as not to make sponsors and network executives evacuate their bowels on sight, they put him in a windbreaker, preferably light blue. Not the black leather jacket that signaled threatening otherness through the 20th century, from Brando to the Ramones.

The seller was wrong about the Kralicek script remaining unshot. A solitary 16mm print sat for years in a KMEX vault after ABC execs passed on it, before it was tragically lost in a fire. And now I held the script.

It reeked of nicotine and bourbon, a brown coffee cup ring bleeding in the corner. Scrawled in the margins in bold Sharpie: “This is beneath me. But it’ll sell. –HE” Then I saw the writing credit: “Cordwainer Bird.” This was Ellison’s famous “I’m disowning this” credit, especially on TV projects he felt were mangled (e.g., Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Starlost). Ellison himself described using “Cordwainer Bird” primarily for television, with occasional magazine use “as a lark.”

“But primarily (and I suppose most infamously) I use it in television,” he continued, “when somebody’s screwed up my work, changed my screenplay, and I don’t think it represents my intent or best efforts, I take my name off, and I substitute the nom-de-plume ‘Cordwainer Bird.’ It’s a pseudonym registered with the Writers Guild in Hollywood, and it’s an open secret that the appearance of Bird is me disavowing that butchered job by ‘flipping them the bird’ or saying ‘It’s for the…’”

This really was The Great Man’s work. It felt appropriate. I was writing a book about ‘70s punk rock and just won an auction Ellison might’ve stabbed me over. Pure anarchy. If he knew I had this script, Ellison would rise from the grave, sue me, and edit the manuscript mid-lawsuit.

So here it is, rescued from storage purgatory, bidding war bruised, and possibly still cursed: Kralicek: The Widow Walks West. What you’re about to read is a genuine artifact of a television timeline that forked and then vanished. A dusty Quinn Martin procedural where trenchcoats swing wide, guest stars clutch their secrets, and justice barrels down Sunset in a Mustang. It’s got swagger, it’s got Old Spice and Groom & Clean, and it’s got Ellison’s fingerprints all over it—mostly in the form of rage.

What follows is the full pilot script, presented exactly as I received it (minus scorch marks and a dried coffee ring or two). Cue the narration. Cue the brass stabs. Cue the thunderclap. And most of all, cue Hank Simms.

---

KRALICEK
“The Widow Walks West”
A Quinn Martin Production
Written by Cordwainer Bird

---

ANNOUNCER (HANK SIMMS):
KRALICEK! In Color! A Quinn Martin Production! Starring Boyd Monson as JOHN KRALICEK! Also Starring Elodie Cochran, Roosevelt Major, and Linda Bombardier! With Special Guest Stars: Martin Balsam, Stella Stevens, Robert Loggia, and Edd Byrnes as VINCE LAMARR!
Tonight’s episode: The Widow Walks West!

---

ACT I: THE DAME AND A BULLET

Exterior – Los Angeles, 1965 – Morning.
Sunlight filtered through smog like divine punishment. Over this, the brassy theme blares, crashing through a freeze-frame credit sequence:
- BOYD MONSON grips a revolver in a Sy Devore suit.
- STELLA STEVENS turns, gasps.
- ROBERT LOGGIA slams a drawer closed.
- EDD BYRNES throws a punch and grins.
- ELODIE COCHRAN types angrily.
- Title card: “Act I: The Dame and a Bullet”

Interior – Kralicek Investigations, Downtown.
JOHN KRALICEK sits behind a battered desk. Jay Sebring ducktail flawless, Sy Devore suit speckless, tie crooked like a threat. You can hear the chiseled jawline every time someone utters his name. He’s reading the Racing Form upside-down.

NADINE GRAHAM (Elodie Cochran), his secretary, breezes in without knocking.

NADINE:
Widow. Waiting room. Real classy type. She’s got gloves, cheekbones, and a story that smells like gun oil.

KRALICEK:
Does she cry pretty or loud?

NADINE:
Both, probably. And she’s got a file. Labeled “For Kralicek. Only if I’m dead.”

KRALICEK:
That’s how I get most of my reading these days.

Enter VIVIAN ST. CLAIR (Stella Stevens). Long black veil. Walks like a woman who never learned how to run. She sets a leather file on the desk.

VIVIAN:
My husband died with secrets. Military ones. The kind that make men rich… or corpses.

KRALICEK:
And you think that envelope’s the difference?

VIVIAN:
No. I think you are.

Cut to exterior – a convertible parked outside. VINCE LAMARR (Edd Byrnes), California windbreaker hoodlum, watches from behind the wheel, flipping a switchblade comb.

ANNOUNCER:
Act I… The Dame and a Bullet.

---

ACT II: WHEN THE WIND BLOWS WEST

Interior – The Tropicana Lounge – Night.
Saxophone. Cigarette smoke. VIVIAN sings torch songs now. She used to tour with Julie London. Now she hides coded lyrics in sheet music.

KRALICEK watches from the bar, nursing something brown in a glass. VINCE LAMARR leans on the wall like he owns it. Nobody invited him.

LAMARR:
You’re looking at her like she’s a clue.

KRALICEK:
She is a clue. I just don’t know to what.

LAMARR:
Then you’d better start digging. Before someone else fills the hole.

Outside – alley behind the Tropicana. A man lies face-down in garbage. A federal agent. Dead. Clutching a stamped file folder and a lighter engraved with the words TO RON, WITH TRUST.

Enter LT. SAM KOBRINSKY (Robert Loggia), trench coat like a second skin. He lights a cigarette and doesn’t look at the body.

KOBRINSKY:
One of ours. Off duty. No gun drawn.

KRALICEK:
He was carrying intel on LaMarr. You want this case solo?

KOBRINSKY:
I want it solved. You get one leash, Kralicek. Snap it, and I pull the badge you don’t wear.

Cut to close-up on VINCE LaMARR smiling into a car mirror, adjusting his windbreaker collar.

ANNOUNCER:
Act II… When the Wind Blows West.

---

ACT III: THE FED, THE FLASK, AND THE FILE

Interior – Federal Records Room – Day.
Agent RONALD GREY (Martin Balsam), square-jawed and suit-armored, opens the file from the dead agent’s coat. Pages redacted into blackout poetry.

KRALICEK watches, arms folded, leaning too hard into the metaphor.

GREY:
LaMarr’s name is in there five times. Once in Saigon. Twice in Vegas. And once… tied to your widow.

KRALICEK:
Nobody stays a widow for long in this town.

GREY:
Especially not the ones with access to encryption keys and missile test dates.

Interior – Kralicek’s Office.

NADINE lays out photographs from the file. One shows Vivian in Capri, smiling beside an unknown man.

NADINE:
That’s not her husband. That’s a CIA shadow named Lucas Trent. Disavowed in ’63.

KRALICEK:
She’s not grieving. She’s covering a cover. Damn.

Cue match cut: Vivian walking into Union Station, veil off, hair up, holding a suitcase and nothing else.

ANNOUNCER:
Act III… The Fed, The Flask, and The File.

---

ACT IV: DEADLINE AT DUSK

Exterior – Los Angeles River Bridge – Sunset.

Kralicek confronts Vivian as the shadows get longer than the storylines.

KRALICEK:
You ran. You left the body, the file, the truth. What are you hiding now?

VIVIAN:
A country that doesn’t protect its own. A lover that didn’t lie. And maybe… myself.

A shot rings out. VINCE LaMARR stands atop the overpass, silenced pistol in hand.

KOBRINSKY arrives in time to return fire. LaMarr falls. Not dead. Just gone.

KOBRINSKY:
You always attract the worst kind of men, St. Clair.

VIVIAN:
Not always. Sometimes, I find someone worse.

Freeze-frame: Kralicek staring at her, expression unreadable.

ANNOUNCER:
Act IV… Deadline at Dusk.

---

ACT V: THE WIDOW WALKS WEST

Exterior – Union Station – Morning.

Vivian walks the platform alone, same suitcase, different ticket. She boards a train headed for nowhere.

Interior – Kralicek’s Office.

NADINE types a report as Kralicek returns, bruised but standing.

NADINE:
You gonna tell the Feds?

KRALICEK:
I’ll tell ’em what they want to hear. Then I’ll tell ’em what they can’t forget.

NADINE:
That’s gonna be a long conversation.

KRALICEK:
Good thing I poured coffee.

Exterior – Train window.

Vivian stares out. She’s not smiling. But she’s not crying either. The truth left town before she did.

ANNOUNCER (HANK SIMMS):
This has been… KRALICEK… A Quinn Martin Production.

[FREEZE FRAME on Boyd Monson, lighting a cigarette in the rain, mohair still perfect, unreadable as ever.]

END.

DISCLAIMER:

Kralicek: The Widow Walks West is a work of satire and fiction. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental—or the result of genre archetypes gone rogue. Names, characters, places, and incidents are used fictitiously, even when they borrow from the grit of actual history. This piece was created with affection, irreverence, and no intent to defame, distort, or disturb the dead (though we wouldn’t be surprised if Harlan Ellison still sues us from the afterlife).

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This isn’t just nostalgia. It’s the kind of pilot script only TV’s weirdest timeline could cough up: Ellison’s fingerprints scrawled in Sharpie, Quinn Martin’s prefab thunder repurposed into satire. It’s pulp, prophecy, and piss-taking, all bound together in a single doomed reel.

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