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Trek guest actors in maybe surprising roles

50th anniversary viewing turned up Phillip Pine as a con man in the Season 3 premiere of Ironside, "Alias Mr. Braithwaite" (September 18, 1969).
 
Diana Muldaur and Roy Jenson on back-to-back episodes of 'Mannix' marathon on DecadesTV. I'd never seen the first season of 'Mannix' before now. Here Mannix works for a private detective firm called Intertect and reports to Joseph Campanella. It's only starting with the second season does it switch to the format that I'm familiar with; although it could be explained that he got tired of working for Intertect and set out on his own. It has been mentioned that he doesn't like following the rules during the course of several episodes.
 
I don't think they ever mentioned why Mannix's format changed, they just went and changed it. Nobody cared a lot for such explanations back then. IIRC, Doris Day had a sitcom where she was a widow with two children in one season, then a single woman living on her own the next, with no explanation!
 
Craig Huxley and Roger Perry are both in the episode of Lancer that H&I is airing as I type this. Craig is playing a schoolmate of higher-billed guest Ronny Howard.
 
It's only starting with the second season does it switch to the format that I'm familiar with; although it could be explained that he got tired of working for Intertect and set out on his own.

And got rid of the super-agent-fictiony custom faux roadster Olds Toronado in favor of a more subtly hot-rodded Dodge Dart.

The episode when Mannix's boss (Campanella) goes nutty from the pills he's taking and they have to fight is hilarious!
 
I don't think they ever mentioned why Mannix's format changed, they just went and changed it. Nobody cared a lot for such explanations back then. IIRC, Doris Day had a sitcom where she was a widow with two children in one season, then a single woman living on her own the next, with no explanation!
@Harvey and I have discussed this. Mannix was not doing well and so got seriously retooled to get a second season.
 
@Harvey and I have discussed this. Mannix was not doing well and so got seriously retooled to get a second season.

Here's a source that goes into a little detail (and has lots of other great tidbits about the show, which I must confess I've never seen, but plan on getting around to):

Mannix was a bubble show in 1968, and rather than scrap it or try to fix the stillborn Mannix/Wickersham conflict, Geller and CBS opted to revamp the format as a traditional—some might say generic—detective drama. A sarcastic Levinson imagined the network meeting that okayed the format change: “‘What have you got?’ ‘A private eye who solves cases.’ ‘Brilliant!’” Campanella was let go and Schiller was replaced by Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts, veteran screenwriters (White Heat; Midnight Lace) with good taste in directors and guest stars and a knack for intricate stories. Connors and the new producers agreed to discard Joe Mannix’s hard-edged, wisecracking Intertect-era persona and try for a rarer strain of romanticism. Now Mannix would love the ladies and lose them, would confront his estranged father (a central California vintner, stubborn like Joe Mannix and of Armenian heritage like Connors, played by Victor Jory in a pair of episodes), would play the white knight when Peggy or his old pals or girlfriends got into trouble. Instead of Wickersham and his computer, Mannix would spar with a steady rotation of recurring cops (including Robert Reed as Lt. Adam Tobias, a guest star whose banter with Connors was so free-wheeling and enjoyable that Mannix brought him back whenever he could get free of his regular gig as dad to The Brady Bunch). Goff and Roberts made sure to commission a couple of episodes each season in which Mannix was shot or blinded or—as in “The Mouse That Died,” a riff on the 1950 film D.O.A.—dosed with a slow-acting poison. It was shameless Emmy bait, and it worked surprisingly well. Mannix netted a slew of nominations (including four for Connors, two for best drama, and a win for Fisher, a showing that was only possible in an era when action shows had crowded out most serious dramas off the air), and an even bigger haul at the Golden Globes.
 
Here's a source that goes into a little detail (and has lots of other great tidbits about the show, which I must confess I've never seen, but plan on getting around to):

Interesting article. It makes me curious about the show. Too bad only a couple of its video clips still work. But for the purposes of this thread, I'll note that one of them features Susan Oliver.

I liked this bit: "Goff and Roberts went on to create Charlie’s Angels, proving that no talent, no matter how skilled, could produce quality work in the employ of Aaron Spelling." :lol:
 
Interesting article. It makes me curious about the show. Too bad only a couple of its video clips still work.
It's on MeTV at 2 a.m. on weekdays.

I liked this bit: "Goff and Roberts went on to create Charlie’s Angels, proving that no talent, no matter how skilled, could produce quality work in the employ of Aaron Spelling." :lol:
Mod Squad begs to differ.
 
If you read a black & white reprint of a comic, you're still getting the story and art.

A cut-down episode isn't the full story. And accelerating it and making it look like video ruins the look and pacing, so it's artistically compromised too. When I tried to watch The Invaders on MeTV, I couldn't get through the the first act, since the acceleration was so off-putting.
 
^Yeah I would agree. MeTV (and Antenna, and Cozi) are pretty egregious in their cutting. I've noticed in shows I'm familiar with like Perry Mason and The Rockford Files and Magnum that they cut out actual plot points, like how they get a bit of information or a lead in their investigation. Then you're wondering, why are they talking to that guy in that bar? Very annoying. A show like Mannix shortened three or four minutes? No thanks.

My library has all the DVDs, that's how I saw it.
 
William Schallert again being omnipresent. This time in a episode of Rat Patrol entitled The Bring 'Em Back Alive Raid as a German scientist.
 
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