C.C. Capwell : the patriarch

 By Alena Prime, Télé Star, 1987

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Charles Bateman is a veteran in the acting job. Native of California, he has been raised in San Diego, at two hundred kilometers in the south of Los Angeles. He was not really sure of what he wanted to do, only, at the beginning, to be a radio advertiser, and to do some production. But one day, whereas he was eating with a friend, a director, who warned him that they were looking for an actor for a role in a western show very popular at that time. "Why not ?" he answered, and he took the role.

He continuously worked after that : that year, he played in fourteen different TV shows ! The following year, he has been hired to play a police officer from San Diego in the show Man Hunt, then in Two Faces West, another show in which he played the part of two twin brothers : one was a cow-boy and the other a doctor. "It was a Herculean task, he remembers with a smile. I changed of costume forty times per day. One episode was shot in two days and a half ! We made thirty nine of it the first year !"

He then became the police lieutenant in Cannon, whose star was William Conrad. In 1976, he left Hollywood to go to New York, then Santa Barbara made him advances to play C.C. Capwell, the fourth one ! "The first one had had a heart attack. The second one did not make the deal. The third one found the dialogue too stupid and left the show. The fourth one was me."