Since I was a kid I’ve watched Adam-12, the realistic police show that ran in the U.S. from 1968 to 1975. I still watch it often, having seen some episodes, who knows, 10 times? Maybe 20. A couple of episodes always make my head explode because James Lydon’s in them, like the one in season 7 when Malloy goes to a halfway house to secure a place for an aging ex-con.

OK, very quickly the backstory: Adam-12 chronicles the experiences of Officer Pete Malloy, played by Martin Milner, who trains young Probationary Officer Jim Reed, played by Kent McCord. The kid’s a rookie in season 1 and a wily pro by season 7. At the time the series was made, Milner had been kicking around as a player in various theatrical features and TV shows and had the lead in the popular series Route 66 from 1960-64. McCord was a newbie when Adam-12 began, a find of the series executive producer, Jack Webb. You can still see Kent McCord at autograph shows today, looking great in his 70s. Milner died in 2015 at age 83; Lydon is still with us at age 98.

So, anyway, in this episode, playing the operator of the halfway house is Lydon, whose career went back to child roles in 1939. Most famously, during the war years then-Jimmy Lydon played the title character Henry Aldrich—teenaged son in the all-American Aldrich family (made famous on Broadway and radio)—in a number of feature film adventures for Paramount Pictures. Then in 1946 Lydon was cast in a very big and high-profile film, Life With Father, which would become one of the major hits of 1947, directed by Michael Curtiz and starring William Powell and Irene Dunne.

Making his onscreen acting debut as one of the sons in Life With Father was Martin Milner, then age 15, playing John Day, younger brother of Clarence Day, Jr., played by Lydon.

I cut my teeth on Life With Father. I’ve seen Life With Father so many times I can recite all the lines before the actors have a chance to spit them out. And so, every time I see this episode of Adam-12, when Jimmy Lydon walks out a middle-aged man to shake hands with cop Martin Milner after they had once played brothers onscreen in a very big picture, my mind is blown thinking about the history these two shared on that Burbank set, and what must it be like to see each other again?

They were witnesses as volcanic Mike Curtiz, suave leading man Bill Powell, and elegant Irene Dunne worked together day after day. They experienced the pressure as Jack Warner attempted to transition Broadway’s immensely popular hit Life With Father to the screen with the rights-holders breathing down the filmmakers’ necks every day.

What do you think about when you’re Jimmy Lydon with 150+ acting credits and lots of additional work as a producer, and you’ve got a small speaking part in an Adam-12 as an act of kindness from EP Jack Webb, and you’re working with this guy Milner who was once just a kid with no experience and played your little brother in Life With Father? Is it just another four hours on the Universal lot? Hey, how’s it going, Marty? Or do you look at Milner and the memories come cascading back, boom, boom, boom, and he’s still 15 and you’re 23 again and teleported to the Warner lot in its 1946 heyday. Here they are in 90 seconds working together as brothers in Life with Father.

We know Martin Milner and Kent McCord had become good friends by this time, so did Milner introduce Lydon by saying, “Hey, I watched this guy kiss Elizabeth Taylor!” Who wouldn’t be impressed by that? Thinking about all this made me revisit Alan K. Rode’s epic Michael Curtiz biography, which details the difficult production of Life With Father, the 72^nd picture in the career of Curtiz and so just a tiny bump in the road for the titan. In it, Lydon gave some great quotes about working in that particular pressure-cooker.

Did Jimmy and Marty share a nostalgic laugh about the time Curtiz drove Lydon and Taylor through take after take of a key scene and on take eight Liz burst into tears and fled to her dressing room with Curtiz in hot pursuit screaming obscenities that he intended to be an apology? “Sonoffabeech, Elizabeth! Don’t cry!” ranted Curtiz. Lydon, at age 90, tells this story in an onstage Q&A with Rode that’s available on YouTube.

Taylor was then age 14 and rocketing to stardom as reflected in the attention she received in the lavish Life With Father pressbook that suggested promotions for the film—many of them involving the natural beauty of Elizabeth Taylor. Jack Warner had traded for her from MGM at great expense even though she had already gained a reputation for being high-strung—her whatever it was, 15 minutes of screen time had cost Warner $350,000 and the services of his contract player Errol Flynn, used by MGM in That Forsyte Woman.

You can see why my head explodes every time, because all these thoughts cascade through my mind witnessing the simple interaction of two actors in a scene shot in 1974 during the last season of Adam-12.

Author’s Note: Next time we’ll continue the countdown to release of Warrior: Audrey Hepburn and look at the reasons Audrey decided to take on a gig for UNICEF. It was, for her, no easy choice.