Story copyright D. S. Brown. Images copyright to studio and Roxbury Entertainment.

ROUTE 66 was quickly conceptualized over lunch when producer Herbert B Leonard mused about what it would be like to meet up with a friend from his poor childhood. The rich and well educated friend would have presented an interesting character contrast to street scuffler Leonard.

Writer Stirling Silliphant developed a Mini Pilot "Four Sweet Corners" as an episode of NAKED CITY. George Maharis played the poor orphan Buz Murdock and Bobby Morris played the preppy Tod Stiles. Lack of response to the episode hindered Leonard from expanding the concept. He had to put up his own money to do a pilot. In the meantime, Bobby Morris had died. In a choice between Martin Milner and Robert Redford for the Stiles character, Milner won out. 

The show was to be called THE SEARCHERS. The movie of the same name made it necessary to change the title. ROUTE 66 was chosen as a title that imparted a sense of searching as well as a link with the popular highway.  Despite the show's title, Route 66 was rarely shown and the cities visited were frequently nowhere near the real Route 66.

Tod Stiles, Yale educated and privileged is friends with street smart orphan Buz Murdock who worked for Tod's father in New York. Tod's father dies with a failed business, leaving Tod with a Corvette. Tod is played by Martin Milner as a morally correct, but gregarious type. Buz is played by George Maharis as volatile and outspoken. Tod and Buz cross the country working part time, impelled to move onwards by an inner urge to roam.

The show was mainly written by Stirling Silliphant who pitted Buz and Tod against some eccentrics, some evil characters and always people trapped by situations stemming from their strong personalities. The repartee between Tod and Buz is light and humorous, but the dialogue quickly gets intense when they are thrust against a wide variety of characters and situations. Their backgrounds are different enough that they occasionally have friction over how they want to handle situations. The infrequent strains between them added drama to the show without playing against the established bond.

On location shooting added a dimension to the show at the time and also preserved divergent local color that is now lost in the homogenized country today.

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The image on the cover was created using a still of Buz and Tod crossing a river on a ferry in the premiere episode, "Black November". The road was added into the background and the entire image was colorized. Interestingly, the choice for colorization matches the actual color of the Corvette used in the pilot. In later episodes they changed to a Beige Corvette because it made lighting easier.

The first volume of Season One contains the first half of the thirty episodes in the first season of the show.

The show faltered when Maharis contracted hepatitis in the second season. He missed a few episodes. The third season began before he was fully recovered and by mid season he had to drop out, forcing the show to replace him with Glenn Corbett. The idea was to pair Milner with another volatile character, but Corbett didn't have the same chemistry with Milner and the show ended partway through the fourth season, in early 1964.

The last episode's location served as the gathering place for a Corvette show that reunited Maharis and Milner for an autograph signing session. The event was covered by Mike Mueller for the now defunct NOSTALGIC CARS MAGAZINE, March 1988. The actors are posed with a red Corvette, even though the show cars were blue and beige. Aside from the wrong color car, Maharis' character Buz wasn't present in the final episode. No one minded that the details were wrong. The crowds were pleased to meet the two actors and autograph signing went on for hours.

The popularity and fond memories of the show combined with the revival of interest in the old highway itself spurred a remake of the series in 1992. The show had the son of Buz inherit a Corvette: this time it was red. The new show lasted a few episodes in the summer and got cancelled.

A nice history and episode guide to the original show finally appeared in 2007.