Mike Connors | 'Mannix' star, 91
Mike Connors, 91, who starred as a hard-hitting private eye on the long-running series Mannix , died Thursday at a Los Angeles hospital from complications of leukemia that had been diagnosed a week earlier.
Mike Connors, 91, who starred as a hard-hitting private eye on the long-running series Mannix, died Thursday at a Los Angeles hospital from complications of leukemia that had been diagnosed a week earlier.
Mannix ran for eight years on CBS beginning in 1967. Viewers were intrigued by the tall, smartly dressed, well-spoken detective who could mix it up with the burliest of thugs and leap on the hood of a racing car to prevent an escape.
"Up until Mannix, most private investigators were hard-nosed, cynical guys who lived in a seedy area and had no emotions," Mr. Connors theorized in 1997. "Mannix got emotionally involved. He was not above being taken advantage of."
Mr. Connors' movie and TV career stretched from the 1950s to 2007, when he had a guest role on Two and a Half Men.
He made his film debut in 1952's Sudden Fear, which starred Joan Crawford. Other films included Island in the Sky, The Ten Commandments, and a remake of Stagecoach.
Mr. Connors, born Krekor Ohanian in 1925, in an Armenian community in Fresno, Calif., served in the Air Force during World War II and attended UCLA on a basketball scholarship, where he played under legendary coach John Wooden. - AP