Archive for the ‘Mannix’ Category

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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.

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

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.

Posted in 1970s, Books, Mannix, Movies, TV | Comments Closed

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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