Mike Connors, who broke free of years of supporting roles in the late 1960s when he was cast as a maverick private investigator in “Mannix,” a CBS series that went on to enjoy an eight-season run, died on Thursday in Los Angeles. He was 91.
His son-in-law Mike Condon said the death, at a hospital, was caused by complications of leukemia, which had been diagnosed a week earlier, The Associated Press reported.
In the series, which had its premiere in 1967, Mr. Connors played Joe Mannix, a Korean War veteran of, like Mr. Connors, Armenian descent who sleuthed his way around Los Angeles with flashy cars and a penchant for citing Armenian proverbs.
Unlike many a smooth TV private eye, Mannix took his lumps. The Washington Post, tabulating the wear and tear the character withstood over eight seasons, found that he had endured 17 gunshot wounds and 55 beatings that left him unconscious.
The violence drew criticism in some quarters, but “Mannix” became the most popular crime series on television in an era punctuated by comedies like “All in the Family” and “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In.” Mr. Connors became one of the highest-paid television actors of the 1970s, and the role brought him four Emmy Award nominations and a Golden Globe Award.
“Mannix” was also notable for providing one of the first leading roles on a regular series to an African-American performer: Gail Fisher joined the show in its second season as Mannix’s secretary, frequent damsel in distress and occasional potential love interest. She died in 2000.
Mr. Connors was born Krekor Ohanian on Aug. 15, 1925, in Fresno, Calif. He served in the Air Force during World War II, then enrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he played basketball (and earned the nickname “Touch” on the court). His plans to study law were interrupted when the director William A. Wellman saw him on the basketball court and encouraged him to try acting. One of his first film roles was in Wellman’s 1953 adventure film “Island in the Sky.”
Under the name Touch Connors, he also appeared in several forgettable films (“Swamp Women,” “Flesh and the Spur”), many of them for the director Roger Corman, and at least one enduring film: “The Ten Commandments” (1956).
He bounced between film and television for much of this time and was a guest star on several series (eventually changing his first name to “Michael” and then to “Mike”) before landing a lead role in 1959. The show was “Tightrope,” in which Mr. Connors played an undercover agent with one revolver in his shoulder holster and another hidden behind his back. It received good ratings but was canceled after one season; excessive violence was cited as a factor, one that would surface again when CBS cast him in “Mannix.”
By the end of its eight-season run, “Mannix” earned Mr. Connors a salary of $40,000 an episode. He used his fame to publicize a then-underreported chapter in Armenian history by narrating “The Forgotten Genocide,” a 1975 documentary about the targeted killing of hundreds of thousands of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. He would later narrate another Armenian-themed documentary, “Ararat Beckons,” by the same director, J. Michael Hagopian.
One more crime series lay in Mr. Connors’s future — “Today’s FBI,” which lasted one season on ABC in 1981 — and he later was guest-star on several shows, including an episode of “Diagnosis: Murder” in which he and several of his “Mannix” co-stars reprised their characters. He also appeared on a 2007 episode of “Two and a Half Men.”
He is survived by Mary Lou Wells, his wife of 67 years; one daughter; and one granddaughter.
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