Magnum Mania!

Watching some of the Mannix marathon this weekend, on Decades TV. Last night, I tuned in a episode, and Jane Merrow was a guest star. Today I turn it on, and the very first episode I watch guest stars John Hillerman! I know you can look up all their acting roles, but it's fun to be surprised by Magnum PI alum on old TV shows!

Limited Engagement

Tom Selleck makes a brief appearance with one or two lines in Mannix. Look out for episode 22 of Season 8.

Hillerman was in three episodes of Mannix:

Season 6 "Light and Shadow," he had a small role as a shady celebrity journalist.

Season 7 "Silent Target," he plays the head of a "pool" of hit men living in a house in the desert. He has no mustache in this one, which is always a bit startling.

His last role on Mannix was Season 8 "Search for a Dead Man." This is one of my favorite roles of his. He is a hit man again, but a different one this time, and when his apparent victim disappears, he hires Mannix to find out what happened to the guy. This requires Hillerman to play a role within a role; he starts out as a cold, calculating hit man, then the hit man puts on an act for Mannix, behaving like a timid, nervous salesman who claims to have seen someone shot, but couldn't find the body. He is playing a character who is playing another character, which is not an easy thing to do: he has to be convincing enough that we will believe Mannix would be fooled, but still fake enough to fit our idea of what someone being fake would sound like. This requires walking a very fine line as an actor and he pulls it off really well. He does a similar thing in the feature film "The Nickel Ride," where his character, a mobster, oozes false sincerity.

The man is inimitable and irreplaceable...

Hillerman was in 8 episodes of Ellery Queen with Jim Hutton. It was a pretty good show from 75-76.
And Magnum's Murder by Night is reminiscent of the ending of Ellery Queen where all of the suspects were in one room to find out who the killer was.

Watching "Magnum Force" 1973, Harry is on a stakeout at the Cost Plus World Market, when a robbery attemped is made. The robber with the shotgun, doing all the talking(that Harry shot) looked familar! Looking up the credits, he wasn't even a billed actor, but it gave his name, Robert Feero. Who played "Dolphie Crenshaw", on the 1983 Magnum, P.I. episode, "...By It's Cover"! Sadly he passed in 2011.

MagnumILWU wrote:Watching "Magnum Force" 1973, Harry is on a stakeout at the Cost Plus World Market, when a robbery attemped is made. The robber with the shotgun, doing all the talking(that Harry shot) looked familar! Looking up the credits, he wasn't even a billed actor, but it gave his name, Robert Feero. Who played "Dolphie Crenshaw", on the 1983 Magnum, P.I. episode, "...By It's Cover"! Sadly he passed in 2011.

Ah, yes. Magnum Force



And Harry at his best.





And he was one of the Borellian Nomen on a Blood Hunt in Battlestar Galactica (the original) in The Man with Nine Lives. And one of his fellow Borellians was Lance LeGault (Buck Greene).

Now I'm watching, The Wild Wild West-"The Night of the Grusome Games" 1968, and Robert Ellensrein is on it. He played Saul Greenberg in "Never Again...Never Again", from season one! He passed in 2010 at 87!