During the 1980s, TV viewers were obsessed with two New York City police detectives whose contrasting lives captivated audiences: Christine Cagney, a driven single woman portrayed by Sharon Gless, and Mary Beth Lacey, a dedicated married mother played by Tyne Daly. This groundbreaking, award-winning drama series, "Cagney & Lacey," broke new ground for women in television. In an era before social media, office workers eagerly gathered around the "water cooler" the next day to discuss the dramatic revelations and plot twists from the previous night's episode.
In celebration of my recent interview with the talented Emmy Award-winning actress Sharon Gless, who brought Christine Cagney to life, I've curated a fascinating list of trivia and intriguing facts about this iconic police procedural series. Dive in and discover why "Cagney & Lacey" remains a cherished classic!
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“Cagney & Lacey” was set in the fictionalized Manhattan's 14th Precinct (known as "Midtown South").
This groundbreaking television series ran from March 25, 1982, to May 16, 1988 on the CBS television network for seven seasons. It revolutionized the portrayal of women in law enforcement on television.
The screenplay for the pilot was originally written in the 1970s for a feature film that never materialized. After the success of “Charlie's Angels”, producer Barney Rosenzweig shopped an edited version of the screenplay as a possible television series. It took many years for the script to be produced, because the networks felt that there was no audience for a realistic show about female detectives.
Loretta Swit played Christine Cagney in the television movie that inspired the series. Swit couldn't continue in the role due to her contract with M*A*S*H, so Meg Foster took over the role of Christine Cagney. After the first season, Sharon Gless won the role, and played Cagney for six years.
Tyne Daly was already an accomplished actress when she took on the role of Mary Beth Lacey. She appeared on screen several times, including roles in “The Enforcer”(1976) and “Zoot Suit “(1981).
Sharon Gless gained recognition for her role in the TV series “Switch” (1975-1978) co- starring with Robert Wagner and Eddie Albert.
The show was cancelled at the end of the 1982-83 season due to low ratings. In response, viewers wrote to CBS, protesting the cancellation. This effort, combined with the show's increasing ratings during the summer reruns, prompted the network to reverse the decision. Although the cast members had just been released from their contracts, they were soon brought back to work on the show. The series was reinstated in March of 1984, and ran until 1988.
From season two onwards, the Emmy for Best Actress in a Drama Series went to one of the stars of this show. Tyne Daly won the award four times and Sharon Gless won twice.
With viewer ratings at millions an episode at its peak, the show garnered a total of 36 Emmy Nominations and 14 wins for “Cagney & Lacey” during the course of the series
Lieutenant Albert Samuels was played by Al Waxman, whose birth name was Albert Samuel Waxman.
Executive producer Barney Rosenzweig was married to co-creator Barbara Corday when the series started. They eventually divorced, and Rosenzweig later married Sharon Gless.
Cagney and Lacey's badge numbers, as they appear in the opening credits, are 73D and 763. However, in some episodes, Cagney's badge number is 790, and Lacey's is 340.
Although the series was set in New York exterior scenes were mostly filmed in Los Angeles. This is fairly obvious as many scenes were filmed in some of the seedier downtown Los Angeles neighborhoods that were used to replicate Manhattan. Additionally when the Lacey's move to their house in the Fresh Meadow section of Queens, it is clear that the neighborhood they move into doesn't resemble anything found in Queens but rather resembles suburban Los Angeles neighborhoods.
The show was taped at Lacy Street Production Center 2630 Lacy Street in Los Angeles. The old brick warehouses on Lacy Street were converted into the show's precinct squad room.
Sidney Clute was 65 when the series began, many years past the likely age a detective like him would have retired at.
Marty Kove who played one of the bumbling cops in the landmark slasher movie; 1972 “Last House on The Left”;, would go on to star on Cagney and Lacey for 7 seasons, as well as the Cobra Kai Sensai in “The Karate Kid”. His working name in the 80s onward was Martin Kove. (He changed it from Matt).
Throughout the series run the characters would occasionally travel to New York to film some exterior establishing shots that would be edited into later episodes.
While Cagney & Lacey was lauded for dealing with some of those subjects that others wouldn't touch, which also included abortion and breast cancer, it was criticized as well. Some stations refused to air certain episodes.
John Karlen, who played Harvey, Mary Beth Lacey's husband, also played Willie Loomis in the 1960's gothic soap opera, "Dark Shadows." His friend Kathryn Leigh Scott who he met on "Dark Shadows" had a minor guest role on an episode of "Cagney & Lacey."
Sidney Clute passed away after filming 11 episodes of the 1984-1985 season. The producers included his name and picture during the opening credits of every episode after his death as a tribute.
The beginning of the sixth season saw the arrival of Manny Esposito (Robert Hegyes), a young, street-savvy detective who became veteran Al Corassa (Paul Mantee), new partner. Hegyes is best known for his portrayal of high school student Juan Epstein on the 1970s sitcom, "Welcome Back Kotter".
The show had a strong and loyal female audience. There was a significant rise applications to join the police by young women who identified with the characters in the show and media reviews tended to be positive once the Sharon Gless/Tyne Daly duo had become established.
Actor Dick O'Neill played a recurring role as Cagney's alcoholic father, Charlie Cagney, a former NYPD officer who regaled her with stories of the old days; Christine later fought alcoholism as well.
One of the most impactful developments in the series was the exploration of Christine Cagney's battle with alcoholism. Producer-writers acknowledged viewer feedback that highlighted how Cagney often turned to alcohol in stressful moments. In a powerful two-part performance, Sharon Gless vividly depicted Cagney’s descent into severe alcohol abuse. This storyline not only affected the series' trajectory but also transformed its historical context and the portrayal of social issues, personal struggles, and police drama.
Depicting Cagney’s alcoholism hit particularly close to home and helped Sharon Gless face her own personal challenges. Gless wrote candidly about her own struggles with alcoholism in her 2021 memoir “Apparently There Were Complaints”.
In the fourth season, Mary Beth becomes pregnant; she and Harvey welcome in a baby daughter, Alice Christine, in the fall of 1985. Alice Lacey was played by alternating twins Dana & Paige Bardolph from 1985 to 1987, with toddler Michelle Sepe taking over for the seventh season.
The show ended up running for 7 seasons and was finally canceled after CBS kept moving it around the schedules resulting in audience drop-off.
Four “Cagney & Lacey” made for TV movies starring Gless & Daly were made and broadcast in the mid 1990s, the last of them being in 1996. The movies were “Cagney & Lacey: The Return” (1994),” Cagney & Lacey: Together Again” (1995), “Cagney & Lacey: The View Through the Glass Ceiling” (1995), and “Cagney & Lacey: True Convictions” (1996).
Following the conclusion of “Cagney & Lacey,” Tyne Daly and Sharon Gless have reunited onscreen three times: all three times playing different characters. Daly guest-starred in an episode of Gless's 1990 series "The Trials of Rosie O'Neill"; Gless then guest-starred in 2003 on an episode of Daly's TV series "Judging Amy", while Daly appeared in 2010 in an episode of Gless's series "Burn Notice".
Sharon Gless, Tyne Daly and Barney Rosenzweig still regularly receive correspondence telling them how the series changed the viewer's life, and more recently from the original viewers' children, who still consider the program to have contemporary relevance to their lives.
In 2018 CBS commissioned a pilot show for a re-boot of the series. Sarah Drew and Michelle Hurd were cast as the two leads but the network eventually decided not to go ahead with a full series after viewing it.
In the television show “Brooklyn Nine-Nine”, Lieutenant Terry Jeffords' twin daughters are named Cagney and Lacey.
Some facts are taken from IMDB & Wikipedia.
Don't miss the chance to listen to my fascinating interview with ‘Christine Cagney’ herself, Emmy Award-winning actress Sharon Gless, on the two latest episodes of Hollywood Obsessed podcast!
Click the links below to listen now!
Episode 101 - HERE
Episode 102 - HERE
