Criseyde's David Selby Site | Photo Gallery: Super Cops Interview

Modern Day Eastern Western

"The policeman of today is the cowboy of yesterday," says David Selby on the set of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's The Super Cops, in which he stars with Ron Leibman, the true story of two cops who wore uniforms to make it legal, but had to write their own rules for crushing crime in New York.

"The figure of the hero is as important in a police action story as it is in a western," says Selby. "To make a good motion picture of either genre, the actor must create a strong physical hero. Fortunately for us, The Super Cops were real in the persons of Dave Greenberg and Bob Hantz. Zap--what a pair!"

As policemen, Greenberg and Hantz earned the nicknames of Batman and Robin by making 600 heavy narcotics arrests in a period of three years in what is possibly the toughest area in the United States, the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn.

"A book reviewer of L. H. Whittemore's The Super Cops, upon which our film is based, said that if Greenberg and Hantz had been born in the Old West, they might have been called Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which is certainly true. Butch and the Kid wrote their own rules, too, didn't they? All the bravado and camaraderie of the West is certainly in Greenberg and Hantz, and all of the action in a John Ford, John Huston, or Henry Hathaway picture as well," David points out.

In the film which William Belasco produced and Gordon Parks directed, David Selby plays Bob Hantz, and Ron Leibman portrays Dave Greenberg.

"You should see us," says Selby, "and here are Ron and I busting through doors, diving into garbage dumps, falling down stairs, and crashing through windows.

"We leap through skylights, and from rooftop to rooftop, all under the mindful eyes of the two cops, Greenberg and Hantz, who are technical advisors on the film, and who actually did all those things in the same area in which we are shooting.

"The cop as a hero," David continues, "performs some of the same rough and tumble antics that the western hero does, and would be as equally at home with the boys in the back room.

"I haven't done a western yet, but if they re-made The Gunfight at O.K. Corral, I would be a logical participant, because all I have left to learn is how to fall off a horse," the actor says.

David Selby feels that Greenberg and Hantz are comic strip characters in action, but not in personality.

"They are certainly three-dimensional: true, honest, and fun, and, with it all, they should be afraid---but then I've discovered that they aren't, which is more than I can say for myself in these crazy situations which we play," David adds.

"These two guys have so much courage that they inspire courage which is a help. If I ever do get to do a western, I hope they're around."

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