Abstract
television's The closed its last case. Inspector Erskine is still chasing crooks before the news or late at night in reruns, but when Quinn Martin taped the final show and turned Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., Philip Abbott, and William Reynolds loose to grow fat on their residuals, it was the end of one of the most remarkable partnerships in the history of American popular culture. As a government patron of the arts, there have been few rivals to J. Edgar Hoover. For 40 years1 his F.B.I. public relations office, the Crime Records Division,2 helped produce radio shows, comic strips, pulp magazines, movies, and television programs dedicated to the greater glory of the G-man. J. Edgar Hoover's courtship and conquest of the entertainment industry left in its wake a bizarre collection of memorabiliaG-man bubble gum cards and coloring books, decoder rings and Junior G-man badges, souvenir fingerprint cards and machinegun targets-a treasure trove for the nostalgia collector. And a treasure trove for the historian. Hoover's G-man was a most peculiar type of secret cop, an undercover man who got front-page
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