For some folks, it was The Honeymooners. For others, it was Star Trek or Batman.
For me, it was Leave It to Beaver.
For so many of us of the Baby Boomer generation, there seems to be a favorite television show that we remember for decades after the show ceased to be shown. For Jim Inglis, it was Burke’s Law.
Burke’s Law starred Gene Barry as millionaire Amos Burke and featured his faithful chauffer, Henry, and their unusual “squad car,” a 1962 Rolls Royce Silver Cloud II. The story revolved around Burke, who even though rich, took the job of being chief of homicide in the LA Police Department. The car played a significant role as it chased down criminals. It even had an on-board telephone, which was quite a novel idea in the 1960s. Inglis never missed an episode, and the theme song stayed in his head into adulthood.
“When I got older and started to collect cars, I sought to find the whereabouts of the Burke Rolls Royce,” says the Florida resident. “But California-based Four-Star Productions, who produced the show, was long gone; tracing the license plates proved fruitless; and star Gene Barry was living in a life-care facility.”
But Googling Burke’s Law Rolls Royce put Inglis in touch with a trail of former owners. When the trail ended, the car was in a garage in Vero Beach, Florida, just 60 miles north of Inglis’s Palm Beach home.
After a short negotiation, he owned the Rolls.
“After 45 years, my long awaited dream has come true,” Inglis says. “It’s a 35,000-mile original car, and that’s just the way I plan to keep it.”
Case closed!
As a kid, Jim Inglis never missed an episode of Burke’s Law, a TV show about a fictional detective who drove a Rolls Royce. As an adult, many years later, Inglis searched for, discovered, and purchased that very same Rolls! JIM INGLIS