Archive for the ‘Mannix’ Category

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Obit watch: February 4, 2019.

Monday, February 4th, 2019

By way of Lawrence, THR obit for Julie Adams.

Edited to add: NYT obit.

She was most famous for “Creature from the Black Lagoon” (which I still haven’t seen). But her list of credits is extensive, including “McQ” and “The Last Movie”.

And she did a whole bunch of TV work: Jimmy Stewart’s wife on “The Jimmy Stewart Show”, guest shots on “Perry Mason”, “Ironside”, “The Bold Ones: The New Doctors”…

…and “Mannix”. (“Then the Drink Takes the Man”, “Little Girl Lost”). And she was the drunken wife of the dead scientist in the “Mr. R.I.N.G” episode of “Kolchak: The Night Stalker“.

(Oddly enough, she came up in passing Saturday night. The main topic of discussion was the annoying (to me, anyway) tendency of “Kolchak”‘s writers to kill off the more attractive women. The hot girl in the bathing suit in “Firefall”, the lab worker in “The Energy Eater”, the Air Force captain in “Legacy of Terror”, etc.)

As an administrative side note: I’ve been thinking about posting this for a while, but finally decided to make it explicit. If your IMDB credits include an entry for “Mannix”, you will automatically get an obit watch entry here. Please feel free to contact me with any omissions.

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Obit watch: February 2, 2019.

Saturday, February 2nd, 2019

NYT obit for Dick Miller.

This one goes out to Mike the Musicologist: Sanford Sylvan, noted baritone. He did a lot of work with John Adams: among other roles, he was the first Chou En-lai in “Nixon in China” and Leon Klinghoffer in “The Death of Klinghoffer”.

His recordings, many with Mr. Breitman, include programs of Schubert, Fauré, Jorge Martin and Virgil Thomson, as well as a luminous, delicate 1991 release, “Beloved That Pilgrimage,” which includes Theodore Chanler’s “Eight Epitaphs,” Barber’s “Hermit Songs” and Copland’s “Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson.” Mr. Sylvan took part in the New York premiere of Mr. Adams’s opera “A Flowering Tree” in 2009, and also performed contemporary works by composers like Peter Maxwell Davies, Philip Glass, John Harbison and Charles Fussell.

Finally, Captain Rosemary Mariner, United States Navy (ret.). She was one of the first six women to go through naval flight training, the first to fly an attack jet, and the first woman to command a naval aviation squadron. She also had a leading role in removing the restrictions on women flying combat missions.

When she retired from the Navy in 1997, Captain Mariner “had become one of the nation’s leading advocates for equal opportunity in the military,” Deborah G. Douglas wrote in “American Women and Flight since 1940” (2005).
Captain Mariner logged 17 landings on aircraft carriers and more than 3,500 flight hours in 15 different aircraft.

Posted in 1970s, History, Mannix, Movies, Music, Obits, Planes, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 31, 2019.

Thursday, January 31st, 2019

Lawrence sent me the “Variety” obit for character actor Dick Miller.

He was hella prolific. Among his credits: the pawn shop guy in “The Terminator”, the sleezy land developer in the original “Piranha”, “Gremlins”, “Chopping Mall”, “Twilight Zone: The Movie”…

…and a lot of TV guest shots, including “Police Squad!” (“In Color!”), “Dragnet 1967”, and, yes, “Mannix” (“Falling Star”, “The Cost of a Vacation”).

He also appeared in “W*A*L*T*E*R”, which is one of those curious side notes in television history.

Speaking of curious side notes, Meshulam Riklis passed away a few days ago at the age of 95. He was a prominent financier, but became somewhat famous in the 1980s for what happened after he married his second wife…

…Pia Zadora.

His devotion to Ms. Zadora included inviting Golden Globe Awards voters to private screenings of “Butterfly” (1982), a film he produced for her, and promoted her candidacy in a media campaign — all for someone considered a lightweight competing with the likes of Kathleen Turner, Howard E. Rollins Jr. and Elizabeth McGovern for best new star of the year in a motion picture.
When Ms. Zadora won the award — a shock in Hollywood and beyond — it was assumed that Mr. Riklis had somehow engineered her victory, although he and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which runs the Golden Globes, denied the accusation.

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Obit watch: December 21, 2018.

Friday, December 21st, 2018

Donald Moffat, noted actor.

Mr. Moffat was rarely accorded top billing. But when he played Falstaff, Shakespeare’s bravest coward, wisest fool and most ignoble knight, in Joseph Papp’s 1987 production of “Henry IV, Part 1” at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, he was the indisputable star. Mainly a comic figure, Falstaff, a sidekick to Prince Hal, the future King Henry V, embodies a depth more common to major Shakespeare characters.

…

On television, Mr. Moffat appeared as Dr. Marcus Polk in the ABC soap opera “One Life to Live” (1968-69), as Rem the android in the CBS science-fiction series “Logan’s Run” (1977-78) and as the Rev. Lars Lundstrom in “The New Land,” the 1974 ABC drama series about Swedish immigrants. He was also seen in episodes of “Mannix,” “Ironside,” “Gunsmoke” and “The Defenders.”

…

“All the Dead Were Strangers“. He also did shots on the good “Hawaii 5-0”, “Mission: Impossible”, and “The Six Million Dollar Man”, among many other TV credits. (Seasonally appropriate: he was “Dr. Chandler” in the horribly misguided adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke’s “The Star” for the 1985 “Twilight Zone”.)

Among Mr. Moffat’s better-known film roles were as Garry, the station commander, in John Carpenter’s “The Thing” (1982), about an extraterrestrial monster that terrorizes researchers in Antarctica; as Lyndon B. Johnson in Philip Kaufman’s “The Right Stuff” (1983), about America’s first astronauts; and as an arrogant corporate lawyer in Costa-Gavras’s “Music Box” (1989), about a Hungarian immigrant accused of having been a fascist war criminal.

And “President Bennett” in “Clear and Present Danger”.

For the record, since I’m a little behind: Penny Marshall.

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Obit watch: November 19, 2018.

Monday, November 19th, 2018

Katherine MacGregor.

She was most famous as Harriet Oleson, Nellie’s mother on “Little House on the Prairie”. But she did have a bit of a career before that: an uncredited role in “On the Waterfront”, guest shots on “Emergency”, “Ironside”…

…and, yes, she was in two episodes of “Mannix”: “The World Between” and “Run Till Dark”.

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Obit watch: September 16, 2018.

Sunday, September 16th, 2018

Some from the past day or two:

David Yallop, author and journalist. He was perhaps most famous for In God’s Name: An Investigation Into the Murder of Pope John Paul I which argued that the Pope “had been poisoned by a cabal connected to a secret Masonic lodge that had infiltrated the church and the Vatican Bank.”

Peter Donat, character actor. He was Mulder’s father on “The X-Files”, but he also did a lot of theater: “Over the years he played Cyrano de Bergerac, Prospero, Shylock, King Lear and Hadrian VII.”

Also:

He worked regularly in television, guest-starring on series like “The F.B.I.,” “Hawaii Five-O,” “Mannix,” McMillan & Wife,” “Hill Street Blues” and “Murder, She Wrote,” on which he played three different roles over several seasons. On “Dallas,” he portrayed a doctor who treated the notorious Texas oilman J. R. Ewing (Larry Hagman) after he had been shot in a famous cliffhanger episode in 1980.

Walter Mischel, of “marshmallow test” fame.

In a series of experiments at Stanford University beginning in the 1960s, he led a research team that presented preschool-age children with treats — pretzels, cookies, a marshmallow — and instructed them to wait before indulging themselves. Some of the children received strategies from the researchers, like covering their eyes or reimagining the treat as something else; others were left to their own devices.
The studies found that in all conditions, some youngsters were far better than others at deploying the strategies — or devising their own — and that this ability seemed to persist at later ages. And context mattered: Children given reason to distrust the researchers tended to grab the treats earlier.

…

In the late 1980s, decades after the first experiments were done, Dr. Mischel and two co-authors followed up with about 100 parents whose children had participated in the original studies. They found a striking, if preliminary, correlation: The preschoolers who could put off eating the treat tended to have higher SAT scores, and were better adjusted emotionally on some measures, than those who had given in quickly to temptation.
The paper was cautious in its conclusions, and acknowledged numerous flaws, including a small sample size. No matter. It was widely reported, and a staple of popular psychology writing was born: If Junior can hold off eating a marshmallow for 15 minutes in preschool, then he or she is headed for the dean’s list.

Posted in 1970s, Books, Geek, Mannix, Obits, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

More quaint and curious volumes of forgotten lore.

Monday, July 16th, 2018

Half-Price Books had another coupon sale this week, and I picked up a few things that I feel like documenting here.

I picked up a lot of “popular culture”…stuff, I’d say, though other people might call it “crap”. Specifically, I got:

Of course, I wouldn’t be me if I hadn’t picked up some gun books, too…

(more…)

Posted in 1970s, Books, Guns, Hoplobibilophilia, Mannix, Movies, O'Connor, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 17, 2018.

Thursday, May 17th, 2018

Joseph Campanella, noted actor. He was in everything: most notably, he was Joe Mannix’s boss at Intertect during the first season of “Mannix”. He was also one of the lawyers in “The Lawyers” portion of “The Bold Ones”, appeared several times on “Mama’s Family”, and…well, if you’ve heard of it, he was on it at some point.

Glenn Branca, avant-garde composer.

Mr. Branca’s compositions often used massed amplified guitars of various kinds — soprano, alto, tenor and bass — to give his sound the same breadth as that of an orchestra.
Many of his works are meant to be performed at high volumes, partly so that the overtones of his amplified guitars would linger and pile up, creating a phantom layer of harmony beyond what the musicians were playing, and partly as a purely tactile element, meant to both envelop and physically shake his listeners.

Posted in 1970s, Mannix, Music, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 16, 2018.

Monday, April 16th, 2018

It was another busy weekend: birthday dinner, BAG day (post forthcoming), lots of running around…so let us get caught up.

Art Bell, noted radio host.

For more than two decades, Mr. Bell, who was 72 when he died April 13 at his home in Pahrump, Nev., stayed up all night talking to those people on the radio, patiently encouraging them to tell their stories about alien abductions, crop circles, anthrax scares and, as he put it, all things “seen at the edge of vision.”

I used to listen to a lot of late night radio, but my time preceded Art Bell. I know someone whose job requires them to drive in sometimes late at night, and back in the day they were an Art Bell listener.

Tim O’Connor, character actor. He had a long-running role on the “Peyton Place” TV series, and also did guest shots in just about everything. (Including “Mannix”.)

Milos Forman, one of the great directors. (“Amadeus”, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”)

And finally, R. Lee Ermey. Borepatch.

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Obit watch: regular edition, November 1, 2017.

Wednesday, November 1st, 2017

Jack Bannon passed away last week.

He was one of those knock-around actors: he had credits on “Love Boat”, “Kojak”, “Mannix”, “Petticoat Junction”, “Beverly Hillbillies”, and lots of other television shows.

But he was best known to me as “Art Donovan” on “Lou Grant”.

Nostalgia is a moron, but I loved that show when I was in high school, and the DVDs are on my Amazon wish list. Memory tells me that there was less eyeball bleeding liberalism in the series than you’d expect from a show starring Ed Asner, but it was a long time ago…

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Obit watch: September 1, 2017.

Friday, September 1st, 2017

Richard Anderson.

Yes, yes, we all remember him as Oscar Goldman. But he knocked around in a whole bunch of other stuff before “Six Million Dollar Man” and “Bionic Woman”. Every now and then, we’ll be watching something at Lawrence’s and say, “Hey, wait, is that…yes, it’s Oscar Goldman!” (Yes, he was in “Tora! Tora! Tora!”, just like everyone else in Hollywood.) He did guest spots on “Mannix”, “Mission: Impossible”, the good “Hawaii 5-0”, “T.H.E. Cat”, and he was a regular on “Perry Mason”. He was in “Kitten With a Whip”. And Chief Quinn in “Forbidden Planet”.

I hate to reduce the man to one role, no matter how famous it was. But I do think this is one of the great TV show openings of all time.

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Obit watch: January 27, 2017.

Friday, January 27th, 2017

Mike Connors.

He served in the Air Force during World War II, then enrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he played basketball (and earned the nickname “Touch” on the court).

…

Under the name Touch Connors, he also appeared in several forgettable films (“Swamp Women,” “Flesh and the Spur”), many of them for the director Roger Corman, and at least one enduring film: “The Ten Commandments” (1956).

…

By the end of its eight-season run, “Mannix” earned Mr. Connors a salary of $40,000 an episode. He used his fame to publicize a then-underreported chapter in Armenian history by narrating “The Forgotten Genocide,” a 1975 documentary about the targeted killing of hundreds of thousands of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. He would later narrate another Armenian-themed documentary, “Ararat Beckons,” by the same director, J. Michael Hagopian.

Serdar Argic, call your office, please.

One more crime series lay in Mr. Connors’s future — “Today’s FBI,” which lasted one season on ABC in 1981…

I remember liking that show. Doesn’t look like it has ever had a DVD release, and I can’t tell if it streaming anywhere. But the opening is on YouTube.

Remember when TV shows had openings? And theme music?

Posted in 1970s, History, Mannix, Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: September 7, 2016.

Wednesday, September 7th, 2016

Leslie H. Martinson, noted television and film director.

His output in the ’70s included “Ironside,” “Love, American Style,” “The Brady Bunch,” “Room 222,” “Mannix,” “The Six Million Dollar Man,” “Barnaby Jones,” “Wonder Woman” and “Dallas.”

His film credits included the 1966 “Batman”.

Anna Dewdney, author of the “Llama Llama” children’s books, passed away far too young. This makes me choke up a little bit:

In lieu of a funeral, Dewdney asked that people read to children, Penguin said.

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Travel day.

Wednesday, May 28th, 2014

Light blogging ahead. And just when it seems things are picking up, too.

The good news is, I’m going to get my yearly Smith and Wesson fix. I’ll report in as time permits.

In the meantime, the most recent “100 Episodes” column on the A/V Club site is devoted to “Mannix”, a series that is just at the fringes of my memory, and that I’d love to see again. (I’ve been watching for the DVDs to show up used, but haven’t had any luck yet.)

Mannix was too smooth, too ’70s to qualify as neo-noir, but more than anything else on television it did echo the flavor of its era’s most unsentimental crime novelists, authors like Ross Macdonald, John D. MacDonald, Richard Stark.

Beyond the shout out to three of my favorite crime novelists, this is a swell survey of what made “Mannix” interesting; I commend it to your attention.

Posted in 1970s, Admin, Clippings, Guns, Mannix, TV | Comments Closed

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