In 1994, television viewers checked into Cook County General Hospital for the first time, beginning a 15-season run that would turn ER into one of the biggest dramas in television history.
ER premiered with a two-hour pilot on NBC on Sept. 19, 1994, 32 years ago today. Created by author Michael Crichton, the medical drama originally starred Anthony Edwards as Dr. Mark Greene, George Clooney as Dr. Doug Ross, Sherry Stringfield as Dr. Susan Lewis, Eriq La Salle as Dr. Peter Benton and a young Noah Wyle as medical student John Carter. Julianna Margulies, whose nurse Carol Hathaway was originally written not to survive the pilot, went on to become another central member of the cast.
But the roots of ER stretched back another two decades.
Crichton first wrote the screenplay in 1974, drawing on his experiences as a medical student working in a busy emergency room. After Crichton and Steven Spielberg collaborated on 1993’s Jurassic Park, the pair returned to the old screenplay. Spielberg ultimately saw its potential as a television series rather than a feature film. Remarkably, the script used to film the ER pilot remained virtually unchanged from what Crichton had written 20 years earlier.
Viewers responded almost immediately. ER finished its first season as television’s No. 2 show, then climbed to No. 1 the following season. At its height, the series was averaging more than 30 million viewers, while the season 2 episode “Hell and High Water” drew a staggering 48 million viewers.
The show ultimately ran for 331 episodes before signing off on April 2, 2009. Along the way, its revolving ensemble included Gloria Reuben, Laura Innes, Alex Kingston, Maura Tierney, Goran Višnjić, Ming-Na Wen, Mekhi Phifer, Parminder Nagra, Linda Cardellini, John Stamos and Angela Bassett, among many others.
More than three decades after the premiere, Kingston, who joined ER as Dr. Elizabeth Corday, believes the series has aged remarkably well.
“I love ER even though I was in it. I think it really holds up,” Kingston told The Times of London, crediting the show’s then-unusual handheld camerawork with creating its sense of urgency. “When you watch it now, it doesn’t look dated.”
Wyle, meanwhile, has returned to emergency medicine on television with HBO Max’s award-winning drama The Pitt. Earlier this year, he reflected on the difference between making the two shows at dramatically different points in his life.
“Getting to The Pitt from a place of experience and wisdom has made the experience better for me in some ways than ER was,” Wyle told The Times, adding that he couldn’t say whether The Pitt itself was a better show.
For ER, the numbers speak pretty loudly on their own. The series earned 124 Primetime Emmy nominations, winning 23, including Outstanding Drama Series, and remained on NBC until 2009.
Thirty-two years after those emergency-room doors first swung open, ER remains one of the defining medical dramas of its era.
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