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Monday, April 9, 2007
From TV to Gwinnett County
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
James Corn is a video producer for Gwinnett County’s communications department.
His experience includes creating industrial and commercial films. He also worked free-lance for the now-defunct TV program “In the Heat of the Night.”
We asked Corn if he ever rubbed elbows with Carroll O’Connor and Howard Rollins, the stars of the show. “Yeah,” Corn replied. “Howard Rollins was crazy, definitely crazy.
“Not in a bad way. He was just a bizarre kind of guy,” Corn said. “He would do strange things on set.” Corn said one time, Rollins wore his pajamas on set. Corn said O’Connor “was fantastic. He always said ‘hey’ to you and he was always very personable.” The series, which ran from 1988 to 1995, was filmed in Covington. Rollins played a police detective and O’Connor played police chief of the fictional town of Sparta. Rollins was dropped from the show in 1993 after having been arrested several times on drug-related charges. He died in 1996 because of complications from lymphoma. O’Connor died of heart failure in 2001. Corn said he “didn’t particularly like doing ‘In the Heat of the Night.’” “It took too much time and the money wasn’t good,” Corn said. “The work wasn’t very challenging.”
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