Looking Back on Chatsworth Through the Flickering Eye of Television

Back before CSI, before Hill Street Blues, before Adam-12, before Dragnet, the magic box in the living room flickered with the black and white adventures of Broderick Crawford as Chief Dan Mathews in Highway Patrol.

The 156 episodes ran from 1955 to 1959.  It was one of the first shows to leave the studio and actually film on location. And this week the Chatsworth Historical Society screened Hired Killer, a half-hour episode filmed in Chatsworth in 1957.

Many landmarks seen on screen still remain, including the Chatsworth Cleaners on Devonshire Street, looking almost as it does today. There was the old Chatsworth train station, not today's modern depot... And a colony of railroad-worker bungalows near where the Munchbox now stands... And you could see Chatsworth Tire... And lots of open land now filled with buildings, and lots of buildings that went to the wrecking ball long ago.

As Broderick Crawford would say into his police radio before climbing into his lumbering 1957 Mercury, "That's 10-4, 10-4."

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You can find some old Highway Patrol episodes here.