Main characters Dr. Richard Kimble , 1965 The show's lead, and the only character seen in all 120 episodes, was Dr. Richard David Kimble (
David Janssen). Though Dr. Richard Kimble was a respected pediatrician in the fictional small town of Stafford, Indiana, he and his wife Helen Waverly Kimble were generally known to have been having arguments prior to her death. Helen's pregnancy had ended in a stillborn birth of a son, and surgery to save her life had also rendered her infertile. The couple was devastated, but Helen refused to consider adopting children as Richard wanted. On the night of Helen's murder, the Kimbles had been heard, earlier the same day, arguing heatedly over this topic by their neighbors. Richard later went out for a drive to cool off; as he was driving home, he nearly hit a man with only one arm, who was fleeing from the vicinity of the Kimble house. Richard then found that Helen had been killed, but no one had seen or heard Richard go out for his drive, or seen him while he was out, and no evidence showed that the "one-armed man" whom Richard Kimble saw ever existed. At his trial, Richard Kimble was unjustly convicted of Helen's murder and sentenced to death (method of execution not specified). After the train wreck and his escape from custody, Richard Kimble moves from town to town, always trying to remain unobtrusive and unnoticed as he evades capture and tries to find the one-armed man. He adopts many nondescript aliases, and toils at low-paying, menial jobs (i.e. those that require no identification or security checks, and bring about little social attention). In many episodes, he comes across a
damsel in distress or possibly a child in danger; he then chooses to put his anonymity at risk by aiding this deserving person. Another frequent plot device is for someone to discover Richard Kimble's true identity and use it to manipulate him, under the threat of turning him in to the police. Dr. Richard Kimble is smart and resourceful, and is usually able to perform well at any job he takes. (This sometimes leads to suspicion, as his educated demeanor is often very much at odds with the menial nature of the jobs he is forced to take.) He also displays considerable prowess in
hand-to-hand combat. In the episode "Nemesis", he distracts, then knocks out, a forest ranger, then quickly unloads the man's rifle to ensure he cannot shoot him if pursued. In the sixth episode, Richard Kimble revealed that he had served as a doctor in the Korean War. Richard Kimble's family makes scattered appearances throughout the series, most notably his sister, Donna (
Jacqueline Scott) and her husband, Leonard Taft (played by
James Sikking, Lin McCarthy and
James Anderson in different episodes;
Richard Anderson played Leonard Taft in the classic two-part final episode, "The Judgment"). Richard Kimble's family first appears in the 15th episode, "Home is the Hunted", wherein he returns to his hometown after reading in his hometown newspaper that his father, Dr. John Kimble (
Robert Keith), is retiring. Also introduced is Richard Kimble's brother Ray (
Andrew Prine). While Donna and John believed Richard Kimble's innocence, Ray was unconvinced and grew to resent Richard, as their association cost Ray his job and his fiancée; however, Ray becomes convinced of Richard's innocence during his stay. Also featuring are Leonard and Donna's sons, David (
Bill Mumy) and Billy (
Clint Howard); despite their appearance, though, only Billy (
Johnny Jensen) appears in the series' two-part finale "The Judgment" (in part two, Donna mentions temporarily moving Billy in with his brother to accommodate a visitor). Although the whole family was introduced, only Donna and her family reappeared in subsequent episodes. Ray was not mentioned again in the show, and the third-season episode "Running Scared" dealt with Richard Kimble and his sister Donna reuniting to grieve over their father's death. In "The Survivors", Richard Kimble re-establishes contact with Helen's family, the Waverlys, after learning that her father Ed (
Lloyd Gough) is facing bankruptcy over medical bills for his wife Edith (
Ruth White), who has developed a heart condition by obsessively clinging to Helen's memory and listening to
phonograph records she made before her death. Richard Kimble visits the family and stays with them, despite Edith's objections, and with help from Helen's sister Terry (
Louise Sorel) locates a secret bank account Helen kept for emergencies. He signs the account over to Ed, saving him financially, but his safety is compromised when Edith learns that Terry believes in his innocence (as does Ed, to a lesser extent) and is in love with Richard Kimble, and Edith threatens to report him to the police. Richard Kimble gently but firmly lets Terry down with a few well-chosen words that put an end to years of misguided thinking on Terry's part, and he soon leaves the house with Ed, who takes him to a remote bus stop where he can escape from the area. David Janssen's understated, compelling, sensitive portrayal skillfully captured the essence of Dr. Richard Kimble's plight. He won the
Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Drama in 1965, and was nominated in 1966. He was nominated three times for the
Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series (1964, 1966, 1967).
Lt. Philip Gerard Dr. Richard Kimble is pursued by the relentless Stafford police detective Lt. Philip Gerard (Barry Morse), a formidably intelligent family man and dedicated public servant. Gerard directly appears in 37 episodes and also in the main title sequences of all 120 episodes; Barry Morse is also listed in the closing credits of almost all episodes, even those in which he does not appear. Barry Morse portrayed Gerard as a man duty-bound to capture Kimble. Guilt or innocence was of no consequence to Gerard, whose own beliefs have been stated as follows: In "Never Wave Goodbye: Part I", he states again, "The
law pronounced him guilty, not me." In "Nightmare at Northoak" and "Wife Killer", he states with certainty that the one-armed man does not exist and that Kimble is guilty; in "Corner of Hell", even after his own Kimble-like experience, he still scoffs at the existence of the one-armed man. ("Still the same fairy tale", he says.) He also tells Kimble, "The truth is, you're still guilty before the law." Contributing to Gerard's obsession with re-capturing Kimble is the personal responsibility he feels for Kimble's escape, which happened while he was in Gerard's custody. As he remarks to
an LA police captain in "The Judgment: Part I", the show's penultimate episode, "I've lost a lot of things these past four years ... starting with a prisoner the state told me to guard." Parallels can be seen between Gerard's pursuit of Kimble and the pursuit of
Jean Valjean by
Inspector Javert in
Les Misérables, though Javert never lets go of his obsession to follow the letter of the law, and hunts down his fugitive, even killing himself when he discovers that he cannot reconcile his tenets with the mercy Valjean shows him. Gerard, though, was portrayed externally as a man like Javert, but internally as more of a thinking man who could balance justice and duty. According to some of those who worked on the show, these parallels were not coincidental. Stanford Whitmore, who wrote the pilot episode "Fear in a Desert City", says that he deliberately gave Kimble's nemesis a similar-sounding name to see if anyone would recognize the similarity between "Gerard" and "Javert". One who recognized the similarity was Barry Morse; he pointed out the connection to
Quinn Martin, who admitted that
The Fugitive was a "sort of modern rendition of the outline of
Les Misérables." •
Claude Akins •
Martin Balsam •
Peter Brocco •
Charles Bronson •
Richard Carlson •
Michael Conrad •
Tim Considine •
Patricia Crowley •
Ossie Davis •
Ruby Dee •
Gabriel Dell •
Sandy Dennis •
Angie Dickinson •
Melvyn Douglas •
James Farentino •
Anne Francis •
James Frawley •
Betty Garrett •
Mark Goddard •
Gloria Grahame •
Lee Grant •
Arthur Hill •
Steven Hill •
Earl Holliman •
Ronny Howard •
Dean Jagger •
Brian Keith •
DeForest Kelley •
Diane Ladd •
Hope Lange •
Carol Lawrence •
Ruta Lee •
Jack Lord •
Kevin McCarthy •
John McGiver •
Vera Miles •
Greg Morris •
Bill Mumy •
Carroll O'Connor •
Susan Oliver •
Warren Oates •
Jerry Paris •
Larry Pennell •
Slim Pickens •
Donald Pleasence •
Percy Rodriguez •
Mickey Rooney •
Kerry Rossall •
Bing Russell •
Diana Sands •
Pippa Scott •
Vin Scully •
William Shatner •
James Sikking •
Rudy Solari •
Frank Sutton •
Pamela Tiffin •
Brenda Vaccaro •
George Voskovec •
Jessica Walter •
Jack Warden •
Fritz Weaver •
Robert Webber •
Tuesday Weld •
Jack Weston •
William Windom •
Lana Wood ==Production==