[Sans-Culotte]

The Rockford Files was created by Roy Huggins, who also created Maverick. Many of the plots for Rockford were recycled from old Maverick scripts.

[schurmann]

“The Rockford Files was created by Roy Huggins...” [Sans-Culotte, post 13]

Primary creator was Stephen J Cannell.

He also created The A-Team (original TV version) and The Greatest American Hero.

[Rockingham]

Huggins had a wide and deep influence on American TV. He got his start as a professional writer by copying out by hand one of Raymond Chandler's detective novels and then writing and publishing a short story in that style in the Saturday Evening Post. That got Huggins his first screenwriting job. And, as Huggins freely acknowledged, the cynical, wise-cracking, stubbornly honest Jim Rockford was a direct adaptation of Chandler's Philip Marlowe, with a dose of Maverick thrown in.

Mercifully, unlike the slow writing, alcohol-fueled, and unhappily married Chandler, Huggins was a happy and solid family man of responsible habits, even temperament, and prodigious output. Moreover, Huggins' shrewd bargaining and far-sighted contract demands became standard for many scriptwriters, which improved their compensation and status.

This in turn helped to trigger a wave of quality TV shows beginning with The Sopranos. The key innovation was that the writer-creator got both a large and secure share of the profits and creative control, demands first won by Huggins. As it happens, Sopranos creator David Chase worked for Huggins as a scriptwriter and wrote and produced about two dozen episodes of the Rockford Files -- including an episode in 1979 that sent Jim Rockford on a trip to New Jersey to deal with a couple of mobsters.