This week marks the 36th anniversary of "The French Connection" bust which occurred in Marseilles. Roughly 937 pounds of heroin had been seized, valued at $100,000 in the currency of that time -- back when the dollar had real value.

By then, "The French Connection" had been released for four months and Gene Hackman was on his way to be voted Best Actor as Popeye Doyle, the NYPD detective who helped break the case. The real Doyle portrayed his own boss and the late Roy Scheider was Hackman's sidekick.

I portrayed myself as one of the reporters in the scene in which the Lincoln Continental is lifted off the ship, with police eager to strip it and search it for drugs. It was my movie "debut," and director Bill Friedkin told me to relax, hold the mike and "do your thing." The chase scene in the movie remains, along with "Bullitt," perhaps the finest ever filmed, culminating with Hackman's character shooting the murderous drug dealer at the top of the stairs of a distant subway train.

Tony Lo Bianco had a memorable role as the French drug dealers' American contact and Spanish actor Fernando Rey, who I was to know somewhat, was wonderfully cast as "Charnier" the lead French drug smuggler. Besides my one scene, my favorite is the one in which the criminals are dining in a fine French restaurant while outside, the two intrepid detectives, tailing them, are shivering in a doorway, munching on cold pizza an no doubt lousy coffee.

A bit of trivia: In "The French Connection II," directed by John Frankenheimer, Doyle is kidnapped by the drug dealers in France. Held prisoner, he keeps cursing Mickey Mantle. Years later, I found out why. Before the Korean War, Doyle had been a Yankee center field prospect who got drafted into the Army. In fact, he was at the top of the team's rookie depth chart. Mickey Mantle, whose arthritic knees kept him out of the service, was then a short stop. But when Doyle went into the Army and lost his baseball skills in Korea, Mantle was shifted in center field. The rest, as they say, is history.

If you haven’t seen “The French Connection” I highly suggest you rent it this weekend -- it's a great film.