This week in TV Guide: March 6, 1965

As my enforced series of encore presentations continues, we're up to an interesting issue: so interesting, in fact, that I've already encored it once. I promise you, however, that there's even more new in this week's look, along with some features you might recognize from the past.

The brooding visage of David Janssen graces this week's cover.  Janssen is in the second of four seasons playing Dr. Richard Kimball, the hero of the hit ABC series The Fugitive. As Arnold Hano notes, Janssen the actor shares many similarities with Kimball the fugitive, among which is a lack of comfort with his surroundings. His friend, novelist Bernard Wolfe , comments that "David is not a fanatically dedicated person. If he were, all this grueling work would have more meaning for him. But he is not dedicated. He has great doubts as to the ultimate aim of it all, as to where it is leading him."

Janssen in fact houses a number of torments: his heavy drinking, which Janssen claims has diminished while doing The Fugitive, but would always remain a part of his life; his ulcer (caused, Janssen wryly notes, by "thinking"); his heavy smoking (two to three packs a day); and the fatigue of his grueling schedule of 14-hour days filming a show in which he is in virtually every scene. When told that executive producer Quinn Martin "speaks grandly of five more years" of The Fugutive, Janssen dully replies, "Five more years? Contractually, I suppose I would have to put in five more years, but—" The Fugitive ran just about the right length of time; David Janssen, who died of a heart attack at age 48, died way too young.