'Laugh-In'/'Get Christie Love' Actress Teresa Graves and Her Tragic Death in a Fire: A Look Back

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In the late 1960s, actress Teresa Graves made her debut on TV's irreverent sketch show, Laugh-In, which also helped to launch the careers of those like Goldie Hawn, Ruth Buzzi, Joanne Worley, Judy Carne, and more.

Arriving on the NBC airwaves long before the network's Saturday Night Live (which debuted in 1975), Laugh-In, hosted by comedians Dan Rowan and Dick Martin, was the hip variety-type show of its era. Assuredly, go-go star dancing performed by Graves, as well as Hawn and Carne, was a highlight of the weekly series.

In the mid-1970s, Graves returned to television as a private detective Get Christie Love.

Following in the footsteps of Dianne Carroll, who was the first African-American actress to star in her own sitcom, Julia (NBC, 1968-1971), Graves with Get Christine Love became the first African-American actress to star in her own television crime drama.

Graves in Get Christie Love was ABC's answer to the popularity of blacksploitation feature films like Shaft, Superfly, and Cleopatra Jones.

Christie Back Story

The pilot for Get Christie Love initially screened as one of the network's very popular Movie of the Week series (which aired for a time on both Tuesday and Wednesday nights).

The Love film then gave birth to the short-lived TV series of the same name. When the show debuted in January 1974, it was originally produced by Paul Mason and featured Charles Cioffi as Love's boss, Lt. Matt Reardon. The following fall, which began its second season, things changed. Glen Larson (fired from The Six Million Dollar Man and future producer of the original Battlestar Galactica) took over as one of the producers, and actor Jack Kelly was cast as Love's new boss, Captain Arthur P. Ryan.

However, what made the original TV-movie Love pilot so exciting, was the way Graves karate-kicked the bad guys with such pizazz and personality.

When the series was revamped in mid-season, its fun aspects, action sequences, and general razzle-dazzle were nowhere in sight. This transpired mostly because Graves had become intensely involved in the Jehovah's Witness religion. As a result, the actress requested that the violence in the series be toned down.

But the ratings dropped, Get Christie Love was never the same again, and ABC canceled the series.

The Final Years

Soon after the cancellation of Get Christie Love, Teresa Graves herself left Hollywood. By October 10th, 2002, she was sleeping in the back of her mother's modest home (in a neighborhood a few blocks northeast of the Hollywood Park race track). A fire allegedly was then ignited from a space heater in the rear patio area of her house, and Graves was trapped in the flames.

Firemen later found her unconscious and she died at the hospital.

A vibrant talent, Teresa Graves died way too soon, on-screen and off.