During the 1970's, Local 728 member Art Frantz was on the set lighting crew for the popular television series "Columbo" starring Peter Falk. These are some of his pictures that were shot while on location in Newport Beach for for a four day shoot that lasted four weeks!
As Art recalls, "On this particular episode, we went to Newport Beach for a 4 day shoot & wound-up going for 4&1/2 weeks.
Rumor was Peter was trying to get out of his contract. He was tight with the director Patrick McGoohan.
We were bused to Newport on Mondays & would return to LA on Fridays.
On Fridays we would check-out of the motel in the morning & wash up in one of the apartment units in the afternoon before leaving.
One Friday we had a pretty good size wrap and we all got pretty dirty. But we all rushed to this one particular apartment, washed quickly and got in the van.
As we started to leave we did a head count and found we were missing Rex Lott.
One of the guy yells “Leave him and lets go home!”. I said “hang on” and went to the room. And there was Rex drying off from a shower.
He says “what's the matter, are the guys upset?“ I said "damn right and I’m going to tell them you want to finish the TV program you're watching.” I went back to the van and a minute or two later, Rex comes running out barefoot with his shirt over his arm. One of the guys comments “Rex if you had a brain you’d be dangerous.”