Mannix Was the Man

Meanwhile, the rest of the gang has been pretty much rescued from oblivion by DVD, that pre-"Hill Street Blues" generation of stand-alone cops and anti-hero private dicks who bend the law to save the day: "Kojak," "Columbo," "Banacek," "Baretta," "Police Woman," "Starsky and Hutch," "Mission: Impossible," "Hawaii Five-0," "The Rockford Files," "Ironside," "The Streets of San Francisco" and, coming this Christmas, "The Mod Squad." (Peggy Lipton, we love you!) Even -- and this is hard to believe -- the sixth season of "Magnum, P.I." was rolled out on DVD earlier this month for Memorial Day, because Magnum had been, in the story line, a Vietnam vet.

But no "Mannix." Who had been in Korea.

It is to weep.

DVD releases of old television shows have become something of a national pop culture library, and why something as cool as "Mannix" remains MIA is a minor mystery perhaps only the detective at 17 Paseo Verde himself could solve.

The people at Viacom, part of the corporate structure that oversees the rights to the show, politely referred us to a spokeswoman for their partners at Paramount, who very politely did not return our repeated calls for two weeks. Spokeswoman Brenda Ciccone finally offered in an e-mail that CBS, yet another branch of the shop, has the rights, and it might issue the show next year. We called CBS and got no return calls. We went back to Ciccone, asking who decided what shows get picked and how.

She replied via e-mail that it was "honestly all very complicated." Consumer demand just isn't enough! "Legal rights, music clearances, availability of supplemental material and access to talent for new interviews or commentaries" also go in the consideration. (Um, we kind of knew that anyway, but that's their story and they're sticking to it.)

"That's pretty much what I've heard from them for years," laughs Connors.

This is a shame, because Mannix was great, just great -- one of the last unapologetically masculine and completely unrealistic American icons, at least in the myths we tell ourselves on television. Cops and detectives got cute or complicated later on, and there really hasn't been much on television like it since.

It debuted at a turbulent time in American culture, 1967, and Joe Mannix was pretty much a modernized Lone Ranger -- no wife, no kids, no pets, no political views, no close friends. He was hip enough to listen to jazz and to mock himself as "a hard-boiled detective in the classical tradition," but traditional enough to wear a coat and tie and to have good manners.

And there was Gail Fisher as Peggy Fair, the husky-voiced secretary! She even shared top billing, the only actor other than Connors named in the opening credits. Her primary job description seemed to be getting kidnapped.

For the era, when television was the Great White Way, a black actress in a major role was extraordinary.

"Peggy was like the bright girl from church who got that good job," remembers Clarence Page, the Chicago Tribune's Washington columnist, who watched her as a love-struck teen, then wrote a farewell column to Fisher when she died years later. "You know, she was that girl who was the first to get hired in a white guy's office, and if she didn't do well, nobody else was going to get hired, either. She was representing."