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Highway Patrol was a syndicated, fictional police action series produced from 1955 to 1959, concerning the activities of the highway patrol and their leader, Dan Matthews (who held no rank). Although filmed in and around the Los Angeles area, the state setting for the stories was never identified, and city and street names were fictionalized.
1956
After an elderly couple inadvertently help a murderous bank robber slip through a police road block, a restaurant manager spots the fugitive who uses the old folks to keep from getting caught.
Jerry Watts is the son of a millionaire and he's just been kidnapped and taken to an old shack high in the mountains. After a tip from a game warden brings the Highway Patrol, Jerry tries to escape to the officers, only to fall into a canyon severely injuring himself. The only way out is straight up.
Steve Talbot is a jewel thief who likes nice automobiles, and the Highway Patrol knows this. So Talbot flees capture after a job in an old junker. This gets him past the roadblocks but he soon is stranded on the side of the road. He hijacks a newly married couple pulling a trailer and Dan passes the trio through, not wanting harm to come to the civilians. But in passing the blockade, they unknowingly pick up a new rider.
A car that was involved in an accident is stolen and later found again, and just happens to match the description of one used in a bank holdup. Putting two and two together, Dan speculates that this was the getaway car and it's occupants must have escaped on foot, which is near a posh resort.
Reporter Sam Dalquist has gone missing. Dan has been looking for him because a two bit hood was found dead after getting a traffic citation driving Dalquist's car. The only lead Mathews has is that Dalquist was working on an exposé about a hood named Matlock and that may be where the writer will be found...dead or alive.
Hank Dooley's daughter has just died from typhoid fever, and Dooley is now searching for his farm hand Len Frazier who is the one who infected her, complete with rifle in hand.
Dan enlists the help of the leader of a local hot rod car club to assist in finding two robbers who use a souped-up car to get away from the Highway Patrol after each job.
Several criminals conspire to stage highway accidents prompting truck drivers to stop and help victims only to be assaulted and have their cargoes stolen. After discovering the hijackers are being tipped off by the owner of a roadside diner favored by truckers, Chief Mathews creates a ruse to force the crime ring into action with the hopes of capturing them.
An Army bazooka is stolen by two men who use it to capture the payroll from an oil drilling company.
The life of an ex-con is never easy, especially when cellmates show up expecting favors. Al Baldwin is a reformed criminal but suddenly has unexpected guests who hide out at his house while plotting their next crime. When that holdup goes bad, the cons hold Al's wife hostage until Dan and the Highway Patrol come to the rescue.
A woman suspects her husband is trying to kill her. Iris: Virginia Dale. George: Douglas Henderson. Mathews: Broderick Crawford. Ted: Robert Cavendish.
Mathews tries to prove the guilt of three holdup men---before the statute of limitations runs out. Mathews: Broderick Crawford. Eddie: Bing Russell. Wyatt: Mike Regan.
Mathews and the Highway Patrol investigate a rash of forged payroll-check cashings affecting merchants in and around Los Angeles.
Two brothers hijack a new-car carrier, planning to sell the cars to get cash to purchase a farm. When the driver dies from injuries sustained in the hijacking, they make a panic-stricken attempt to dispose of the evidence.
An ex-con wants to return money stolen in an armed robbery, but his erstwhile partner has other ideas.
Two convicts steal an airplane to escape from prison.
One member of a three-person holdup team impersonates a Highway Patrol officer in order to deceive robbery victims into thinking that they need not notify the Patrol themselves.
1957
Lab worker Harry Wells flees and aggressively avoids people, after being accidentally exposed to dangerous radioactive material.
Mathews tries flushing out two gunmen who are holding a farmer and his wife hostage. Mathews: Broderick Crawford. Ruttman: Tom Holland. Collins: Robert Swan. Martin: Ted Lehman. Jane: Gail Gregg.
Mathews investigates a businessman's accidental death. Mathews: Broderick Crawford. Foster: Joe Haworth. Tom: Pierre Watkins.
A mentally disturbed man murders women who seek husbands through "Lonely Hearts" clubs.
A stolen helicopter enables a dangerous lifer to escape from a prison work detail.
Three farmers are stubbornly determined to risk their lives in order to collect a reward offered for the capture of a wounded fugitive.
1958
A protection racket results in murder when a railroad yard worker refuses to continue making payments.
A husband and wife team rob couriers with large amounts of cash, then kill them so that there will be no witnesses.
1955
A hardened criminal, whose personality belies his viciousness, escapes from prison, killing a guard. Dan Mathews swings into action, and as the man commits one ruthless act after another to break through the trap closing in on him, it becomes apparent that there's almost a personal conflict between the two men - that ends only when they meet face to face in the final scene.
An expensive, giant computer, one of the twentieth century wonders, which does a tremendous amount of administrative work in just hours, is ingeniously 'kidnapped' from an electronics company by two men. The firm's owner is told to get $100,000 from his bank at two o'clock the next day and wait for instructions. A helicopter chase helps Dan stop the men from collecting the ransom or getting away.
Systematic traffic checks and increased patrols begin on a high accident freeway. Hoping to determine causes and cures, Dan questions drivers who get too many citations there. One man refuses to accept Dan's safety philosophy. When his license is suspended, his wife drives him to an important business meeting. En route, her eyeglasses break and he takes over at the wheel. Encountering a traffic check, he panics and flees, resulting in a severe accident in which his wife is critically injured. He learns the hard way - and too late - what Dan had earlier tried to impress upon him.
An uninvolved man happens to be in the company of two brothers who hold up a diner and kill its owner. Fearing the police and terrified of the vengeance he may expect from the criminals, he flees. As Dan searches for him, one man winds up dead, two critically wounded, and the man who a few short hours ago was an average law-abiding citizen is harried to the point where he is willing to shoot it cut with the police - until Dan manages to show the error of his ways.
Dan Mathews and his officers assist a county sheriff in closing down a club that offers illicit gambling.
A series of fraudulent insurance claims is discovered after Dan Mathews and his officers learn that the "accidental" death of a migrant worker was actually a homicide.
Dan Mathews has reason to suspect the worst when a courier with a criminal record disappears with $31,000 after an automobile accident.
Dan Mathews must cope with a family's effort to protect an emotionally fragile young woman who fled after striking a pedestrian with her car.
Car thieves purchase wrecked vehicles and transfer the VIN plates to stolen ones in order to escape detection.
A patient parolee decides the time is finally right to attempt the recovery of $250,000 stolen in an armored car robbery.
Two bikers (Clint Eastwood as 'Joe Keeley', John Compton as 'Nick West') ride stripped-down Harleys into town and stop at a cafe. They are shocked when the cafe owner (Jack Edwards as 'Bernie Sills') confronts them with a shotgun and orders them to leave. As his wife calls the Highway Patrol her husband provokes the bikers, until Nick takes the gun from Sills and punches him. The bikers jump on their bikes and roar out of town. When Sills learns his wife has called the law, he hides the gun and lies to the responding motorcycle cop, telling him the cyclists started the trouble. The cop takes off after the bikers, only to be struck and killed by a trucker who runs a red light. Broderick Crawford’s ‘Chief Dan Mathews’ quickly sorts truth from fiction and arrests the café owner for assaulting the bikers. A nice (albeit unlikely) twist on the ‘bad guy bikers’ trope!
An alert boy is able to give Dan Mathews information that provides a critical break in the pursuit of a recidivist thief.
A Highway Patrol officer is murdered while pursuing a car stolen from a lonely bookstore owner.
Two thieves attempt to steal valuable paintings and demand ransom of $500,000. but they are forced to commit murder when the plan goes awry.
A poor prospector arouses suspicion when he suddenly begins paying off long-standing debts from a large roll of new $100 bills.
Broderick Crawford
Dan Mathews
Art Gilmore
Narrator (voice)
