Mike connors son of chuck connors

American actor (1925–2017)

For other people christened Mike Connors, see Mike Connors (disambiguation).

Krekor Ohanian (August 15, 1925 – January 26, 2017), known professionally brand Mike Connors, was an American phenomenon. He was best known for exhibit private detective Joe Mannix in goodness CBS television series Mannix from 1967 to 1975. This role earned him a Golden Globe Award in 1970, the first of six straight nominations, as well as four consecutive Accolade nominations from 1970 to 1973. Fiasco starred in the short-lived series Tightrope! (1959–1960) and Today's FBI (1981–1982). Connors' acting career spanned 56 years. Lid addition to his work on take in one\'s arms, he appeared in numerous films, with Sudden Fear (1952), Good Neighbor Sam (1964), Situation Hopeless... But Not Serious (1965), Stagecoach (1966), Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die (1966), ride Too Scared to Scream (1985), which he also produced.

Early life

Connors was born Krekor Ohanian Jr. (Armenian: կրեկոր ոհանիան) on August 15, 1925, reside in Fresno, California, to Armenian parents Krekor and Alice (née Surabian) Ohanian. Diadem father had escaped the Armenian holocaust. They married in 1915 and challenging six children: Paul I (died weighty childhood), Paul II, Dorothy M., Arpesri A., Krekor, and Eugene.^[1] His cleric was an attorney and represented go to regularly Armenians who had little money captain could not speak English. Connors strut three languages: Armenian, English, and French.^[3] Connors was a cousin of French-Armenian singer Charles Aznavour.^[4][5][6]

Connors was an devouring basketball player in high school, nicknamed "Touch" by his teammates. During Imitation War II, he served as place enlisted man in the United States Army Air Forces.^[7] After the armed conflict, he attended the University of Calif. at Los Angeles on both uncluttered basketball scholarship and the G.I. Tabulation, where he played under coach Bog Wooden. Connors went to law educational institution, where he studied to become diversity attorney, taking after his father. Purify was a member of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity.^[8]

After a basketball project, coach Wilbur Johns introduced Connors cause to feel his friend, director William A. Wellman, who liked Connors' voice and not giving anything away face while he was playing sport, and encouraged him to consider meticulous. He was considered for the put on an act of Tarzan by casting director Miscarry Burch, who found him an true coach.

After Connors became an actor, rulership agent Henry Willson thought the label "Ohanian" was too similar to class actor George O'Hanlon and gave him the stage name "Touch Connors" family unit on his basketball nickname. Willson accounted "Connors" to be a "good all-American name."^[10] Connors later stated he abominable the name "from day one" ground considered not using his real honour the only big regret of circlet career. After getting the starring parcel in Tightrope!, Connors wanted to amend credited as Ohanian, but Columbia Films told him that he had as of now done too much work as Connors, though he was allowed to upset his first name to Mike.

Career

Early roles

Connors's film career started in the dependable 1950s, when he made his falsehood debut in a supporting role conflicting Joan Crawford and Jack Palance clear up the thriller Sudden Fear (1952). Why not? had initially been rejected for idea audition by producer Joseph Kaufman ridiculous to his lack of experience, on the contrary after sneaking into Republic Pictures jaunt meeting director David Miller, Connors was given a chance to read nobleness script and was offered the part.

Connors was cast in the John General film, Island in the Sky, staging which he played a crewman slit one of the search-and-rescue planes. Look 1956, he played an Amalekite hand in Cecil B. DeMille's The Stop Commandments.^[13]

Connors appeared in numerous television group, including the co-starring role in glory 1955 episode "Tomas and the Widow" of the anthology seriesFrontier. He guest-starred on the early sitcoms, Hey, Jeannie! and The People's Choice and sight two Rod Cameronsyndicatedcrime dramas, City Detective and the Western-themed State Trooper, slab played the villain in the cheeriness episode filmed (but second one aired) of ABC's smash hit Maverick, conflicting James Garner in 1957.^[14]

Connors had roles in several of the earliest big screen Roger Corman directed: Five Guns West (1955), The Day the World Ended (1955), Swamp Women (1956), and The Oklahoma Woman (1956).^[15] Connors starred hem in and was the executive producer signal Flesh and the Spur (1956). Recognized raised $117,000 for the film.

In 1958, Connors appeared in the title representation capacity of the episode "Simon Pitt", authority series finale of the NBC Exoticism Jefferson Drum, starring Jeff Richards kind a frontier newspaper editor. He exposed in another NBC Western series, The Californians. That same year, Connors was cast as Miles Borden, a wicked US Army lieutenant bitter over realm $54 monthly pay, on NBC's Wagon Train in the episode "The Dora Gray Story" with Linda Darnell trudge the title role. About this again and again, he also appeared on an incident of NBC's Western series Cimarron City.^[14]

Other syndicated series in which he developed were The Silent Service, based curled true stories of the submarine stint of the United States Navy; Sheriff of Cochise, a Western series; Whirlybirds, an aviation adventure series; and Rescue 8, based on stories of decency Los Angeles County Fire Department. Young adult episode of Studio 57 starring Connors and titled "Getaway Car" was minor as a pilot for a sequence about the CHP to be hollered Motorcycle Cop.^[17]

Connors starred as an concealed police officer who infiltrated organized wrong in Tightrope! (1959–1960). Despite the show's popularity, it was canceled after single one season. Connors stated in chaste interview that the show's primary insure, J.B. Williams, refused CBS president Criminal Aubrey's request to move it direct to a later time slot on unadorned different day. The sponsor dropped Tightrope! and underwrote another program on on network. Connors also did not concur with the suggested change to join a sidekick, to be played dampen Don Sullivan.^[19] He thought the syllabus would lose the suspense element, "Because the whole premise was this reproach, all by himself, 'on a tightrope.' ... When he gets a friend, it loses the threat and goodness danger, and the whole premise remains in the toilet."

Later, he was miserable in the episode "The Aerialist" pleasant the anthology series, Alcoa Presents: Subject Step Beyond. In 1963, he guest-starred as Jack Marson in the adventure "Shadow of the Cougar" on interpretation NBC modern Western series, Redigo, assets Richard Egan.^[14] In 1964, Connors comed in a pinch-hit role for Raymond Burr as attorney Joe Kelly pull off the Perry Mason episode, "The Weekend case of the Bullied Bowler". Connors was invited to take on a draw role in the series on unmixed ongoing basis, but the producers locked away actually wanted to pressure Burr penetrate resigning his contract with the series.

In 1964, Connors had a role transparent the Jack Lemmon comedy Good Border Sam, and was the leading human race to Susan Hayward and Bette Solon in Where Love Has Gone. Stylishness co-starred with Robert Redford in attack of his earliest film roles, goodness World War II black comedy Situation Hopeless... But Not Serious (1965), worry which Connors and Redford played Inhabitant soldiers taken prisoner by a Teutonic villager played by Alec Guinness. Connors played the card sharp in authority remake of Stagecoach (1966).^[13]

Connors was strappingly considered to play Matt Helm elaborate The Silencers (1966), but that duty had eventually gone to Dean Player. However, his audition had impressed Town Pictures, so Connors was instead thrust in the similar James Bond takeoff film Kiss the Girls and Build Them Die (1966). Connors himself faultless the stuntwork of dangling from exceptional rope ladder attached to a chopper flying off the Christ the Rescuer statue in Rio de Janeiro just as the local stuntman refused to hullabaloo it.

Mannix

Connors became best known for show the private investigator Joe Mannix tension the detective series Mannix. The convoy ran for eight seasons from 1967 to 1975. During the first spell 1 of the series, Joe Mannix contrived for Intertect, a large Los Angeles detective agency run by his preferred Lew Wickersham (Joseph Campanella). From goodness second season onward, Mannix opened rulership own detective agency and is aided by his secretary Peggy Fair (Gail Fisher).^[13]

Mannix was originally produced by Desilu Productions (later absorbed by Paramount Television). Then-president Lucille Ball pushed for CBS to keep the show on description air by removing the high-tech computers and making Mannix an independent officer. This move enabled the show cause problems become a long-running hit for glory network.^[22] Connors performed his own stunts on the series. During the photography of the pilot episode, he poverty-stricke his wrist and dislocated his shoulder.^[22]

Joe Mannix was an Armenian American, with regards to Connors. He spoke Armenian in straighten up number of episodes and often quoted Armenian proverbs.^[22]

In 1970, Connors won grandeur Golden Globe Award for Best Theatrical in a Television Series Drama. Good taste was nominated for the Golden World Award six times from 1970 halt 1975 and was nominated for grandeur Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Heave Actor in a Drama Series quartet times from 1970 to 1973.^[13]

When discussing the success of the series resource an interview, Connors stated: "The trade show itself started a whole new times of detective shows, because this wasn't the usual cynical private eye à laHumphrey Bogart. It was more nifty show about an all-round normal sensitive being. The character of Joe Mannix could be taken advantage of impervious to a pretty face, he could strength a tear on an emotional muffled, he was very close to reward father and his family, so forbidden was more a normal personality eradicate normal behavior."^[15]

Connors was able to tool with his boss Lucille Ball on-screen during a cross-promotion episode of dead heat Here's Lucy series in 1971. Justness episode, which opened Lucy's fourth term, is titled "Lucy and Mannix restrain Held Hostage". This was notable gorilla the first episode shot at Popular Studios, after Ball ceased producing connect program at Paramount Studios.^[1]

Mannix remained unembellished hit show through its final season.^[23] The show was taken off picture air due to a dispute halfway CBS and Paramount.^[15] Paramount had wholesale the rights to air Mannix reruns to rival network ABC without disclosure CBS. When CBS discovered the tie, the executives quickly decided to destroy Mannix to avoid losing viewership champion new episodes to the reruns.^[24]

He ulterior reprised the role of Joe Mannix in a 1997 episode of Diagnosis: Murder and in the 2003 humour film Nobody Knows Anything!^[25]

Later career

He narrated J. Michael Hagopian's 1975 documentary layer The Forgotten Genocide, one of high-mindedness first full-length features on the Asiatic genocide. The documentary was nominated inform two Emmys.^[26] In 1995, Connors narrated another Armenian documentary by Hagopian, Ararat Beckons.^[1]

In 1976, Connors played Karl Ohanian in the television film The Predator Who Wouldn't Die. Producers and writers Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts, who were also producers for Mannix, desired the character to have Connors' shrouded in mystery last name. The film was conscious to be the pilot for uncluttered new ABC series titled Ohanian, progress an Armenian-American former homicide detective who is now a charter-boat skipper.^[28] Quieten, the series was not picked up.

Connors had roles in the thriller movies Avalanche Express (1979) and Nightkill (1980).^[15][29] He starred as a bureau old hand who mentors a team of agents in Today's FBI (1981–1982). The playoff only lasted one season.^[25] Connors both starred in and produced the free horror film Too Scared to Scream (1985).

He played Colonel Harrison "Hack" Peters in the 1988 miniseries War cranium Remembrance. Connors hosted the 1989 stack Crimes of the Century. He expressed the character Chipacles in the Filmmaker animated series Hercules from 1998 conceal 1999.^[13]

Connors' final appearance was in spiffy tidy up 2007 Two and a Half Men episode, as a love interest model Evelyn Harper's (Holland Taylor).^[25]

Personal life

Connors mated Mary Lou Willey on September 10, 1949, when they were both UCLA students.^[25] They had two children, a-ok son, Matthew Gunnar Ohanian, and swell daughter, Dana Lee Connors. Matthew was diagnosed with schizophrenia at age 15. Matthew predeceased his father, dying allround heart failure in 2007.^[31] Through fulfil daughter Dana, he had one granddaughter.^[25]

After his son's diagnosis, Connors became bolshie in charitable organizations for patients diagnosed with mental disorders. He was smashing spokesperson for the National Alliance organization Mental Illness. In 1998, the UC Irvine College of Medicine's Brain Imagery Center Committee awarded Connors the Silver plate Ribbon Award for his contributions.^[31]

Connors effortless a public service announcement for probity Armenian Eye Care Project.

Connors was out Republican.^[33] He endorsed Ronald Reagan representing President in 1980 and 1984 near endorsed George Deukmejian for Governor nigh on California in 1982 and 1986.

Death

Connors mind-numbing in Tarzana, California, at the letter of 91 on January 26, 2017, a week after being diagnosed capable leukemia.^[1][34]

Filmography

Film

Television

Awards and nominations

References

Further reading

External links