Mannix

[Luther's nephew Dobie]

There is a book "And Now, Back to Mannix" by JoAnn M. Paul for anyone interested.
The Joe Mannix character appeared in  Here’s Lucy, “Lucy and Mannix Are Held Hostage" (1971), a Bob Hope Special(1973) and Diagnosis: Murder, “Hard-Boiled Murder”(1997).
Somebody online claimed the Bob Hope skit with Mannix has appeared on You Tube from time to time but I have yet to spot it.

By the way, both of Mike Connor's kids appeared in the first episode of Mannix.
I recently saw that episode on MeTV but I don't recall the kids, maybe their scene was edited out for more commercials by MeTV?
It's not unusual for stars to sneak their kids into their series or movies. That's John Wayne's very young daughter riding on the donkey in the last scene of The Alamo.
Maybe the most famous instance was the very last scene of "In the Good Old Summertime"(1949). It was a shot of then baby Liza Minnelli, daughter of Judy Garland
and the film director Vincent Minnelli.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pancho - "Cisco always keeps away from two things, weddings and funerals. One is the beginning of the end and the other is the end of the beginning."
..."The Ciso Kid" TV series

[Little Garwood]

I take it the classic-tv-loving masses of Magnum-Mania will have loads to write about the Mannix binge they just watched…

…but not here.

Tragic Mannix indifference aside, Jo Ann Paul is a lifelong Mannix fan, and a good writer, too. I’d read her posts on the Home Theater Forum for years as she expressed herself so well regarding Mannix and his era. I really should buy her book. However, I’ve held off because what Mannix needs, in addition to Ms. Paul’s erudite cultural and mythological Mannix analysis, is a definitive behind-the-scenes episode guide of the series.

I do hope we get one someday, but I’m not holding out any hope.

[Little Garwood]

“I've never really understood it myself," says actor Mike Connors, who became one of the highest-paid stars on television (earning a then-stratospheric $40,000 per episode) at the height of the show's Top 10 heyday. "We had a better average [rating] than 'The Rockford Files' or 'Hawaii Five-0' over eight years. And yet it's like it never occurred, it never existed, it never happened."

Mannix having become seemingly forgotten in the decades since its 1975 end only adds to my fascination for it.

Mannix didn’t do “comedy episodes.” In fact, I don’t believe it even had a humorous bone in its 1967-75 body, whereas other shows before and since Mannix would dopily wink at its audience during their humorous or intense sequences, but Mannix would unblinkingly throw out batsh!t crazy scenes that one had to accept on their own terms.

I think you’re on to something. Comedy from the silent era can still be hilarious and rewatchable. Straight drama can seem dated in my experience.

Any humor in Mannix is of the wry, Film Noir variety (Robert Mitchum’s gallows humor in Out of the Past comes to mind). Sometimes ol’ Joe will crack a crooked smile, but his “humor”, such as it is, seems akin to the world-weary individualist who can barely muster a smile because of everything he’s seen or endured. I can only imagine the things Mannix saw and did during the Korean conflict and that doesn’t even include the antics of the platoon of absolute psychos who later tried to kill him!

[Luther's nephew Dobie]

“I've never really understood it myself," says actor Mike Connors, who became one of the highest-paid stars on television (earning a then-stratospheric $40,000 per episode) at the height of the show's Top 10 heyday. "We had a better average [rating] than 'The Rockford Files' or 'Hawaii Five-0' over eight years. And yet it's like it never occurred, it never existed, it never happened."
Mannix having become seemingly forgotten in the decades since its 1975 end only adds to my fascination for it.
Mannix didn’t do “comedy episodes.” In fact, I don’t believe it even had a humorous bone in its 1967-75 body, whereas other shows before and since Mannix would dopily wink at its audience during their humorous or intense sequences, but Mannix would unblinkingly throw out batsh!t crazy scenes that one had to accept on their own terms.

I think you’re on to something. Comedy from the silent era can still be hilarious and rewatchable. Straight drama can seem dated in my experience.

Any humor in Mannix is of the wry, Film Noir variety (Robert Mitchum’s gallows humor in Out of the Past comes to mind). Sometimes ol’ Joe will crack a crooked smile, but his “humor”, such as it is, seems akin to the world-weary individualist who can barely muster a smile because of everything he’s seen or endured. I can only imagine the things Mannix saw and did during the Korean conflict and that doesn’t even include the antics of the platoon of absolute psychos who later tried to kill him!

Garwood,
I appreciate your Mannix/Mitchum angle, it is spot on. Since you first pointed it out, I get a big kick out of all the men Mannix served with trying to bump him off.
Maybe he was a lousy CO or the company cook.
Mitchum is one of my all time favorite stars, what Bruce Willis pretended to be, Mitch actually was.

I have been trying hard of late to imagine what current star could take on the role of a rebooted Mannix. I know Jay Hernandez is looking for work but I'd still bet on another network
picking his series up, with only 20 more episodes to get to the magic 100.
What do you say Garwood, would Mannix fly in the 2020's?

[Chris109]

Garwood,
I appreciate your Mannix/Mitchum angle, it is spot on. Since you first pointed it out, I get a big kick out of all the men Mannix served with trying to bump him off.
Maybe he was a lousy CO or the company cook.
Mitchum is one of my all time favorite stars, what Bruce Willis pretended to be, Mitch actually was.

I have been trying hard of late to imagine what current star could take on the role of a rebooted Mannix. I know Jay Hernandez is looking for work but I'd still bet on another network
picking his series up, with only 20 more episodes to get to the magic 100.
What do you say Garwood, would Mannix fly in the 2020's?

I recall somewhere that John Wayne got his signature walk from Mitchum.

[Luther's nephew Dobie]

Garwood,
I appreciate your Mannix/Mitchum angle, it is spot on. Since you first pointed it out, I get a big kick out of all the men Mannix served with trying to bump him off.
Maybe he was a lousy CO or the company cook.
Mitchum is one of my all time favorite stars, what Bruce Willis pretended to be, Mitch actually was.

I have been trying hard of late to imagine what current star could take on the role of a rebooted Mannix. I know Jay Hernandez is looking for work but I'd still bet on another network
picking his series up, with only 20 more episodes to get to the magic 100.
What do you say Garwood, would Mannix fly in the 2020's?

I recall somewhere that John Wayne got his signature walk from Mitchum.

Boy oh boy, what Don Rickles could do with a set up line like that.
Chris, you my be right but I don't know that the Duke would purposely adopt a walk more akin to Liberace's sashaying about. Besides, Mitchum didn't remotely walk like that, he'd
never have survived those years riding the trains as a hobo during the Depression.

[Little Garwood]

I have been trying hard of late to imagine what current star could take on the role of a rebooted Mannix. I know Jay Hernandez is looking for work but I'd still bet on another network
picking his series up, with only 20 more episodes to get to the magic 100.
What do you say Garwood, would Mannix fly in the 2020's?

Great question. What is the zeitgeist of today? I know I’ve droned on about this before, but here is what I wrote about what made Joe Mannix special:

“Joe Mannix was the private investigator who represented the "Silent Majority" during the tumultuous late Sixties and early Seventies. He reflected their beliefs, concerns, and represented what the "Greatest Generation" hoped to be. Joe was straight and narrow in that he worked closely with the police, never broke the law, yet had a fierce sense of independence, which was something that used to be commonplace in the American character. Mannix also saw the Counterculture in a balanced, if not completely sympathetic way.”

What would today’s Joe Mannix represent?

In 2012, there was a movie of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. In 1998, there was Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The former did not resonate at all, not even as an exercise in nostalgia. It didn’t have anything to do with the time in which it was made. Timeless concepts are essential to art but so is being representative of the time in which it is created.

Fear and Loathing, while a cult hit (I even have the Criterion DVD), it in no way connects to anything in 1998 or now. It may work as a sentimental journey (trip?) for those who claim to have “been there” circa 1971.

[Chris109]

And the other thing about Mannix: He always got the crap kicked out of him but managed to come back even stronger. "During the show’s eight-year run, Mannix was shot almost twenty times, stabbed, beat up, run off the road and knocked unconscious at least 50 times."

But eventually CBS, possibly corncerned about ongoing complaints about the show’s violence, did what various hoods and thugs never quite managed. They cancelled Joe’s ticket in the mid-seventies.

But by then, the airwaves were alive with a new, slightly hipper (or at least more colourful) breed of TV dicks. Blind dicks (Longstreet), fat dicks (Cannon), con artist dicks (Rockford), grumpy ex-cop dicks (Harry O), and even old dicks (Barnaby Jones). Mannix’s own producers, Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts, would even return, with an even more successful show, featuring bimbo dicks (Charlie’s Angels).

---from the Thrilling Detective

[Pahonu]

And the other thing about Mannix: He always got the crap kicked out of him but managed to come back even stronger. "During the show’s eight-year run, Mannix was shot almost twenty times, stabbed, beat up, run off the road and knocked unconscious at least 50 times."

But eventually CBS, possibly corncerned about ongoing complaints about the show’s violence, did what various hoods and thugs never quite managed. They cancelled Joe’s ticket in the mid-seventies.

But by then, the airwaves were alive with a new, slightly hipper (or at least more colourful) breed of TV dicks. Blind dicks (Longstreet), fat dicks (Cannon), con artist dicks (Rockford), grumpy ex-cop dicks (Harry O), and even old dicks (Barnaby Jones). Mannix’s own producers, Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts, would even return, with an even more successful show, featuring bimbo dicks (Charlie’s Angels).

---from the Thrilling Detective

That second paragraph is great!

I’ve read a lot from Thrilling Detective but missed that quote. The website has that massive alphabetized list of all fictional detectives that is impressive to say the least.

[Little Garwood]

Just don’t read The Thrilling Detective’s write up on Magnum…he’s not a fan.

[Pahonu]

Just don’t read The Thrilling Detective’s write up on Magnum…he’s not a fan.

I’ve read it. To each his own, I suppose.

I did find a link on that website to this excellent write-up about Harry-O that I hadn’t read before.

https://crimereads.com/harry-o-tv-private-eye-series/

As many know here, MPI isn’t actually my favorite detective series My favorite is The Rockford Files… and my next favorite is Harry-O. Let the flogging commence.

[Chris109]

Just don’t read The Thrilling Detective’s write up on Magnum…he’s not a fan.

I’ve read it. To each his own, I suppose.

I did find a link on that website to this excellent write-up about Harry-O that I hadn’t read before.

https://crimereads.com/harry-o-tv-private-eye-series/

As many know here, MPI isn’t actually my favorite detective series My favorite is The Rockford Files… and my next favorite is Harry-O.
Let the flogging commence.

[Pahonu]

Just don’t read The Thrilling Detective’s write up on Magnum…he’s not a fan.

I’ve read it. To each his own, I suppose.

I did find a link on that website to this excellent write-up about Harry-O that I hadn’t read before.

https://crimereads.com/harry-o-tv-private-eye-series/

As many know here, MPI isn’t actually my favorite detective series My favorite is The Rockford Files… and my next favorite is Harry-O.
Let the flogging commence.

[Luther's nephew Dobie]

I have been trying hard of late to imagine what current star could take on the role of a rebooted Mannix. I know Jay Hernandez is looking for work but I'd still bet on another network
picking his series up, with only 20 more episodes to get to the magic 100.
What do you say Garwood, would Mannix fly in the 2020's?

Great question. What is the zeitgeist of today? I know I’ve droned on about this before, but here is what I wrote about what made Joe Mannix special:
“Joe Mannix was the private investigator who represented the "Silent Majority" during the tumultuous late Sixties and early Seventies. He reflected their beliefs, concerns, and represented what the "Greatest Generation" hoped to be. Joe was straight and narrow in that he worked closely with the police, never broke the law, yet had a fierce sense of independence, which was something that used to be commonplace in the American character. Mannix also saw the Counterculture in a balanced, if not completely sympathetic way.”
What would today’s Joe Mannix represent?

In 2012, there was a movie of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. In 1998, there was Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The former did not resonate at all, not even as an exercise in nostalgia. It didn’t have anything to do with the time in which it was made. Timeless concepts are essential to art but so is being representative of the time in which it is created.
Fear and Loathing, while a cult hit (I even have the Criterion DVD), it in no way connects to anything in 1998 or now. It may work as a sentimental journey (trip?) for those who claim to have “been there” circa 1971.

"What would today’s Joe Mannix represent?"
Going by your take, I don't think many people under 25 would understand Joe the man or as a representation. So no 21st century Mannix for us.

Fear and Loathing's 1980 predecessor had Bill Murray starring as Hunter S. Thompson in Where The Buffalo Roam. I saw it in a movie theater
on Rt.1 in Menlo Park(the burg that Edison first electrified). Two minutes after sitting down we were getting a contact high from all the weed
being smoked. That might have been the height of Thompson's fame, every college wanted him to appear.
John Belushi - as Thompson tells it - took Fear and Loathing as his personal guidebook on how to behave. HST repeatedly told him Gonzo writing
is fiction that tells truths better than a factual recounting, but no sane person would behave as the fictionalized HST did in the book, that amount of
drugs will kill you. Belushi wouldn't listen and died. It's all fun and let's party hardy but - as you noted - anyone in 1980, now or in 1998 looking to relive it thru a sentimental journey
or trip by watching the movie should leave it at that.
Guy I grew up playing with next door got in to the heavy drugs, drifted off in the early 70's and 25 years later Jack shows up on my doorstep.
No teeth - after taking heroin the body wants to eject it so you keep throwing up till the acidic bile from your digestive areas comes up, sitting in your mouth and degrading
your choppers, by which time you are so high you don't notice - and laughingly showing me his needle tracks. Walking skeleton or "skels" as NYC cops term it.
He also reeked of a sour odor, that was the high alcohol content in his body. The stale stench oozed out of his pores.
They found Jack dead a few years later, drowned face down in 6 inches of water, too high to roll over face up.
So Belushi and Carrie Fisher and the rest reveling in the hard drugs - they destroyed her face, she looked older than her mom Debbie Reynolds - and how cool that scene was can
go "fock" themselves. Oh and throw in slob director John Landis, whose movie shoots were always notorious for the oceans of cocaine but claims he was an innocent, and
who unbelievably beat his manslaughter charges in the death of Vic Morrow. Hollywood is indeed a company town.
I am sorry to get on my soapbox Garwood, this is the Mannix thread, I am done now and will behave.

[Little Garwood]

Good post, Dobie. The thing about Hunter S. Thompson is that he could seamlessly insert himself into a story yet not actually interfere with the story he was writing. This is a balancing act the hacks on Vox and The Daily Beast will never achieve. Speaking of drugs and the counterculture, I don’t think Cheech and Chong’s drug-culture humor has aged very well.

I take a decidedly dim view of the 1960s counterculture. I feel it was rooted in selfishness, not freedom or “consciousness expansion”, but I suppose it’s a topic for another thread or perhaps another forum.

Mannix held a balanced view of the counterculture, but after a few glasses of his office Scotch I’m sure he could have been persuaded to truly express his viewpoints, which I tend to believe wouldn’t be of the “in favor of” variety.