Robert Conrad
1935-2020
The Departure Lounge has been filling up so rapidly of late that I am having a difficult time keeping up with those notables who are leaving us.
Today we note the passing last week of actor Robert Conrad at the age of 84. Conrad racked up 80 acting credits in his career, mostly in television. His last credit came in 2002 in some forgettable movie called "Dead Above Ground." He starred in a number of television series of consequence such as "77 Sunset Strip", "Hawaiian Eye", and "Ba Ba Black Sheep", but he is most notable, to me anyway, for the role of James West in a very good television show called "The Wild Wild West."
In the show, which ran for 104 episodes from 1965-69, Jim West was a James Bond-type US government agent who fought off all sorts of weird and mysterious villains in the 1880's using all sorts of high-tech, for the late 19th century, gadgets and gewgaws, assisted by his sidekick and master of disguises, Atremus Gordon, played with hammy gusto by Ross Martin. It was a fun show, and one thing was almost always certain: there would be at least one scene within each show where ultimate tough guy West/Conrad would be shown without his shirt on. I think this usually happened in everything that Conrad did.
After the acting gigs dried up for him, Conrad cashed in on his tough guy persona by doing all those "I dare you to knock this off" Eveready battery commercials.
IMDB also notes that in 1974, Conrad appeared in an episode of "Columbo" titled An Exercise in Fatality. At some point today, I am going to check through some of my Columbo DVD box sets to see if I have that one. If I do, I plan on watching it today. I'm betting that Conrad and his chiseled torso will appear shirtless at least once in the episode.
RIP Robert Conrad.
The episode is called "An Exercise In Futility". Watched it a while ago because he was on it.
ReplyDeleteHis birth name is Falk.