Mike Connors, who was the star of Mannix, has died. He was 91.
In its way, the show was a bit of a pioneer. It was the first show to give a black woman, Gail Fisher, a starring role (who went on to be the first black woman to win an Emmy).
For my money, there hasn't been a P.I. on the tube who has been cooler than Mannix. Mannix took a lot of punishment, being one of the few TV detectives to routinely get the shit beaten out of him. Some of it was real, for Connors dislocated his shoulder and broke his wrist while filming the pilot. Mannix drove a Dodge Dart, a car that somebody who worked hard for a buck might have driven.
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4 comments:
We like to watch the rerun channel (since most contemporary TV is lousy). I hadn't seem Mannix back in the day, but it's pretty good and yes, there's ALWAYS a fight where he gets his ass beat.
"During the course of the series, he is shot and wounded over a dozen separate times, and knocked unconscious around 55 times."
They don't make me like they used to.
Dale
Dodge Dart with a slant six in it will run for basically ever...
-Doug in Oakland
This had a 340 LA V8, not a slant six, Doug. The 340 was basically a punched-out 318 with a forged steel crankshaft rather than the normal cast nodular iron unit and forged pushrods, connecting rods, and pistons, topped by a 4-barrel carburetor and a hot cam. Good engine, but it was a high compression high performance engine so you wouldn't expect the durability of a slant six, which was ridiculously understressed. Chrysler eventually cancelled the engine after emission controls took their toll, the 360 took its place in most applications though the 360 wasn't exactly a high performance engine.
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