Mannix Was the Man

Gail Fisher largely vanished.

Shortly after the series ended, she was arrested for drugs. She got divorced. Work dried up.

It took four years before she worked again -- and that was a guest appearance on one episode of the ultra-cheesy "Fantasy Island," according to her bio on the Internet Movie Database. Another four years and another guest cameo on "Knight Rider."

She did a god-awful independent film called "Mankillers" and a bit role in the 1990 TV movie "Donor." She was 54 years old. She developed diabetes and emphysema and, according to IMDB, never worked again.

In 2000, the National Enquirer asked Connors if he'd go with a reporter to deliver flowers and cards from well-wishing readers. He said sure.

"It was really sad," he says. "I hadn't seen her in years. She was in a nursing home over on Olympic Boulevard. She was using a wheelchair." She died in December. She had fallen into such obscurity that, other than the Enquirer, no other media outlet reported her death for another month -- not even her hometown paper back in New Jersey, not even "Jet," the magazine focused on black America.

Her ashes were scattered in the Pacific, the same ocean by which she once walked arm in arm on the beach with handsome Mike Connors, and the sunlight had played upon her face and her smile and her future had looked so bright.

Los Angeles is a land of lies.

The only way to see one of television's great detectives now is on tapes somebody made during its run on TV Land. They are dubs and the quality is lousy, but you get the snazzy opening theme in that three-quarter waltz, the right hand of the pianist carrying the theme. Trapped in time, Mannix goes sprinting across a suspension bridge in Long Beach, tie flapping over his shoulder. His name spells out in rectangular boxes on the screen, M-A-N-N-I-X, over shots of him jumping out of a car, swimming, driving a race car or swirling a blonde around in the sunlight, her skirt twisting above her hips. Days were tough there at 17 Paseo Verde, what with gunfire, exploding cars and hit men trying to cancel your oxygen supply.

But it also had Peggy's smile, the convertible out front, the .38 in the top right-hand desk drawer, the promise of a date for dinner. A man could take it in, tie loosened, Scotch in the crystal decanter, smokes in the soft pack.

The rest of the 20th century hadn't happened yet.

It was a good life.