Let’s wish a happy birthday to Roy Huggins, who would have been 101 today. This child of Littell (a onetime timber town west of Chehalis) went on to become a famed television producer. He created such beloved programs as “Maverick,” “77 Sunset Strip,” “The Fugitive” and “The Rockford Files.”
I’m not sure many people in Lewis County know about our connection to Huggins, but it’s certainly a link we should claim with pride.
He only lived here as a child, but he retained memories, both happy and sad, of growing up in Littell, Chehalis and Doty.
Did his formative influence in the sometimes still wild west of Lewis County help shape his rugged, wry characters such as Bret Maverick and Jim Rockford? It’s hard to say. Here’s what we know.
Roy Marshall Huggins was born on July 18, 1914, in Littell (at the intersection of today’s Highway 6 and the Willapa Hills Trail).
His father, Edward, worked as a saw filer, and by all accounts was good at this exacting mill work. A handsome and charming man, the elder Huggins told his son, “Always be your own person. Be original, one of a kind.”
Unfortunately, Edward Huggins was a drinker, which weakened his health. He died of pneumonia during a trip to Tacoma while young Roy was only 2.
Roy’s mother, Belle, was left a widow. She bought a boarding house in Chehalis to support her young family. Unfortunately, the boarding house was uninsured and burned to the ground in the middle of the night shortly after the end of World War I.
Roy never forgot that night in Chehalis.
“I remember being held in someone’s arms, watching it burn. I have never forgotten how it looked and could paint an accurate picture of it today,” he later said, according to a 2014 biography by Paul Green.
Roy’s mother moved to Portland to learn the hairdresser’s trade (the “Permanent Wave” was the vogue in those days.) While she studied there, Roy and his three siblings moved to Doty to stay with their uncle and aunt, Frank and Sadie Crawford, along with their daughters, Pauline and Ione. While in West Lewis County, Roy also became attached to a woman named Stella who helped care for him.
Despite the death of his father and his mother’s forced absences, Roy had a happy childhood in Lewis County.
“I was a very happy little kid, adored by two much older sisters who thought I was the best-looking kid alive. So did I,” he later said. “I always felt secure and well-loved.”
When his mother became established in Portland, Roy moved down with her and his time in Lewis County ended. He went on to military school. He became a novel writer and a creator of early television hits. He wrote some 350 scripts and stories in his career, many under the pseudonym John Thomas James (after his three sons).
He also is immortalized in a bit of Tinsel Town legal lingo as the creator of what became known as the “Huggins Contract.”
While working for Warner Bros. television, Huggins was denied credit and financial compensation as creator of several programs, including “Maverick” and “77 Sunset Strip” due to studio trickery.
Huggins later found a way to ensure he received credit, along with legal and financial benefits, that come with the shows he would go on to create. By the mid-1960s he had distilled this into a standard part of his contract.
“I was getting paid my royalty and my fee whether I did the show or not. If I conceived the show, and got it on the air, anyone could produce it and I would still get paid just as if I was doing it. ... That became known as ‘the Huggins Contract.’ Every producer in television would say ‘I want the Huggins contract,’ and some of them got it,” Huggins said in a 1998 interview with the Archive of American Television.
That “Huggins Contract” ensured that when he created “The Fugitive,” he reserved rights that he would later exercise to allow the 1993 film version with Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones.
Huggins died in 2002, and was remembered as a giant in the television industry.
Among the many friends and fans who eulogized him was James Garner, who rose to stardom portraying the gambler Bret Maverick in the role Huggins created in “Maverick” and who went on to work with Huggins in another starring role as detective Jim Rockford.
“I’ll be forever in his debt,” said Garner, who died a year ago this weekend, a day after what would have been Huggin’s 100th birthday.
So from here onward, let’s remember the great Roy Huggins whenever we take note of the sons and daughters of Lewis County who have gone on to add life and zest to our world.
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Brian Mittge’s community column appears each Saturday. He’d be happy to have James Garner play him in a biopic. Drop him a line about other little-known locals who made good at brianmittge@hotmail.com.
