Stereotypes die hard in Hollywood. One of the biggest fell like a ton of bricks on the set of Predator 2, the day Kent McCord's daughter came out to visit her father.
"A member of the crew came up to her, real excited," says McCord, "and said, 'I just heard your father swear on the set the other day. I just couldn't believe Jim Reed said that. I never would have believed he would use that word.'"
McCord is having a good laugh at the shock born of the veteran actor's longstanding reputation as the nice guy cop in the TV series Adam-12 and the clean-cut friend of Ricky Nelson on Ozzie and Harriet. And he is just as adamant in saying that his long overdue film outing, the role of Captain Pilgrim in Predator 2 is a shock of its own.
"This is closer to where I live as an actor than anything I've done on television," says McCord. "In a way, it's a role I've done hundreds of times. But it has also taken something I'm very associated with and taken it a step further."
McCord claims that how actors end up with parts has always been a mystery to him. How he got the part in Predator 2, though, was strictly family.
"My daughter works for [Predator 2 executive producer] Michael Levy and she knew they were having trouble casting this role. So, she mentioned my name and they said, 'Terrific!' I went in and was hired."
McCord offers that the idea of appearing in a major motion picture appealed to him. Once he perused the screenplay, the appeal turned to need.
"After I read the script, I knew the part of Pilgrim was something I really wanted. I looked at the way the character was drawn and I knew I could kick ass with this role. The public knows I've played cops before so they buy me as that. But this took the cop role much further than I've ever had the opportunity to take it. Pilgrim gave me the authority I've never had before."
McCord's initial take on Pilgrim was the "he's just a cop."
He explains: "The character I play is a very human kind of guy. I'm the human connection with Danny Glover amidst all the madness that's going on. I think you see the human side of Danny through our exchanges."
The actor's one regret is that while this character is integral to the film's proceedings, he isn't quite part of the adventure.
"I don't really get involved in a whole lot of action," he laments. "I wish I could have been out there shooting the guns and chasing this thing. The closest I came to getting involved in anything really heavy is near the film's end, when I come upon a subway car full of bodies that the Predator has torn up.
Probably the most dangerous part in this film for me was the scene at the funeral, where I had to pull Morton Downey, Jr. away from Danny. When we were filming the scene, we both slipped on the asphalt and went ass over teakettle onto the ground. It was really funny."
McCord's other recollections seem to confirm the impression of Predator 2 as a solid production.
"I found [director] Stephen Hopkins to have a real good vision in terms of how this picture should be made. He kept things real loose on the set, but he also kept things moving. Danny Glover was a joy to work with. I made the point of meeting him before we started filming, so we didn't have one of those awkward meeting-on-the-set situations, and I found him to be a very open man. And the first time I met Keven Peter Hall, he was a pretty striking figure without the Predator costume. With the costume on, he was totally imposing."
The actor who does survive the latest Predator slaughter, sees this epic as more than a violent action-adventure with SF overtones.
"There's a moral to this story and that is that violence begets violence. You're not beaten over the head with it; it's done with much subtlety, but the point does get across. I really like the fact that this isn't just another slasher film that doesn't say anything. What draws the Predator is the emotional heat and violence."
McCord's seven years on Adam-12 made the actor the unofficial expert on police matters during this sequel's filming.
"I'm probably the last person who would have to research police procedure," he chuckles, "and since most of the police stuff in this movie is the same sort of stuff we dealt with on Adam-12, people automatically assumed I would know if something was right or wrong. So, during the filming, Michael Levy would keep coming over to me and saying, 'Is this right?' or, 'Are we doing this correctly?'
"The differences between the police procedure in this film and Adam-12 are really subtle things. The only major difference is hardware. The guns are different and there's an emphasis on laser technology in Predator 2 that we obviously didn't have in Adam-12. But police work really hasn't changed that much in the last 100 years. We've taken the cops off horses and put them in cars, but they're still looking for the bad guys."
McCord's previous good guy genre outing was in the role of Troy in Galactica 1980, the short-lived follow-up to Battlestar Galactica. The actor recalls his Galactica odyssey began shortly before production commenced on the show's first incarnation.
"I received a call from Glen Larson one day and he said, 'I want you to take a look at something.' He took me out to Universal and showed me the show's props and special FX, explained the show's concept and said he wanted me to do it. I said, 'Terrific!'"
Unfortunately, McCord and Larson's enthusiasm was not shared by ABC, and what McCord describes as "a squabble between the network and the studio in which the network won," resulted in the actor missing the battlecruiser. But when Battlestar Galactica fell victim to big budget and low ratings, McCord was given a second chance.
"Universal and ABC felt it was too good an idea to let go. They really wanted to make it work, "reports McCord. "But they needed a way to economize, and so, when they came up with the idea for Galactica 1980, they decided to let us find Earth so they wouldn't have to spend so much money on sets.
"Glen called me again, I went through the whole audition process again, and for a second time the network turned me down. They hired another person, but discovered, after one day of shooting, that they weren't happy with him. Glen called me the Friday after they started shooting the pilot and said he was tired of screwing with the network and that I was going to do the show whether they liked it or not. He told me to go down to wardrobe and there would be the pilot script waiting for me."
McCord remembers that, on the surface, the second attempt at Galactica had real potential. "Glen's idea was to do something along the lines of The Day the Earth Stood Still, in which Barry Van Dyke and I were these peacemakers who come to Earth with the knowledge and powers to create either a peaceful or warlike situation. I felt a show with that premise was really worth doing."
"ABC jumped back into it and started demanding that we put kids in the show so that we could attract a young audience. I told anybody who would listen that we made Adam-12 in a way that kids picked up on without having to do things to attract a kid audience. But the network wouldn't listen, and I felt, by the time it got to the point where we saw alien kids playing baseball, that much of the show's original premise had been stolen from us."
Adding insult to injury was Larson's penchant for pompous dialogue.
"Glen wanted to add a sense of otherworldliness to the characters and so we were given a lot of stilted, almost Shakespearean dialogue. I kept telling Glen that it sounded awfully stilted to me but, as long as he bought it, I would continue to do it."
McCord relates that Galactica 1980 was a logistical nightmare. The pilot, originally intended for two hours, was suddenly expanded to three. The consensus was that Galactica would re-enter the ratings race as a fall release.
"But the network came to Glen only a couple of weeks after the pilot's completion and said they wanted it for a mid-season replacement. That meant we had to rush scripts and shows together. It got so crazy that, at one point, we were shooting three different shows at the same time.
"There was one day that was just nuts. We were shooting on a soundstage with 50 extras, and they came down at noon with eight pages of dialogue and told us we had to learn these pages and be on another soundstage at four to shoot scenes from other episode that had nothing to do with the scenes we had been shooting. It was a mess."
McCord had a much happier fantasy trip in the Monsters episode titled "Rain Dance," in which the actor portrayed a swindling dealer in Indian artifacts who runs afoul of a gargoyle.
"Monsters was fun to do, and I was surprised, given the limited budget and shooting schedule, how well the episode came together. It was particularly challenging for me because I don't get to play the heavy too often, and that show gave me the opportunity to be really bad," he says.
McCord has had his share of prime small screen successes, beginning with a four-year stint on Ozzie and Harriet in 1961 and a seven-year ride as Officer Jim Reed on Adam-12. As a contract player with Universal, Kent McCord has also appeared in a number of TV movies. But the veteran actor is candid enough to admit that appearing in Predator 2 is a big break.
"Career-wise, this movie is definitely going to open some doors for me. Doing Adam-12 for seven years gave me the opportunity of picking and choosing what I wanted to do. But in hindsight, I really let many things get by that I should have looked at in a different light.
"I was under contract at Universal so my employment was basically taken care of. My time there was a wonderful experience for me and I have few regrets. But know that if I had been out on the street and had my ear to the ground, more opportunities might have come my way.
"But I really have no complaints," says the actor. "I've had a good career to this point, and as far as I'm concerned, it can only get better.
