Mannix Was the Man

Fisher gained screen time, and the show even skirted with -- gasp! -- an interracial romance.

See -- this also tended to happen a lot -- Mannix gets shot, right? And loses his sight because the bullet creases his left temple and, while not doing much physical damage, still shows him death! Heavy, baby!

"You live a dangerous and complex life," the optometrist tells him, in dialogue typical of the day. "You risk it constantly in your profession. To you, that's just an occupational hazard. But you're also a man, and a mortal. . . . In that split second, you felt death. Your eyes saw it, couldn't stand it, and they closed."

Mannix comes home from this diagnosis, blind, under serious medication, and what does he do?

He gets a drink, that's what! Like a MAN!

And right there with him is Peggy, in an orange miniskirt, an open blouse and hip little vest. She takes him for a walk on the beach, arm in arm.

He learns Braille and shows her his progress by spelling out "Hi Peggy" with his fingers.

She smiles and says, eyes flashing, in that bedroom voice, "Hi, Joe."

He regains his sight -- when he shoots the bad guy. (Mannix was so bad he could shoot people when he was blind.) Peggy rushes in, they embrace, and . . . and that was it. Kind of a downer. It was the early '70s. You could only go so far.

What happens to lost TV show legends? What happens to ghosts of pop culture?

Connors went on to work steadily in dozens of television roles, invested wisely and retired comfortably in Encino with his wife of more than half a century, Mary Lou Willey. He's 82 and has dinner with Robert Wagner a lot. Robert Reed, often appearing as Mannix's source at LAPD, went on to camp television history as America's Dad, Mike Brady, in "The Brady Bunch." He died from complications of AIDS in 1992.

Legendary composer Lalo Schifrin said in a telephone interview last week that the elegant music he composed for the show, a unique jazz waltz, is second only to his "Mission: Impossible" theme in popularity. People ask for it all the time, he says.