Man-Nix

(Props to Monty)Or

Dead Mannix Walking

Or

Touched

Mike Connors, best remembered as an undercover FBI agent tagging along with escaped women prisoners to recapture diamonds in the swamp in the MST3K’ed “classic” Swamp Diamonds, has died of leukemia at the age of 91. A high school standout basketball player, where he earned the nickname, and occasional screen name, “Touch,” Connors played briefly at UCLA under John Wooden, where his expressive face gained notice and he found work in a bunch of cheapie Westerns and thrillers before ending up as a crewman trying to find John Wayne’s downed plane in Island in the Sky. His big break came in 1967 with Mannix, with Connors first the old-school oddball in a high-tech detective agency, then as the more traditional solo PI. The show was non-descript and stuck to the formula, with Mannix’s quirks consisting of a trove of Armenian proverbs to sum up any circumstance and a tendency to get his ass kicked in every episode, by one estimate getting shot 17 times and knocked unconscious 55 times over the course of the series. Connors became one of the top paid stars on TV, and scored 4 Emmy nominations and a Golden Globe win. His last role was as a love interest for Holland Taylor on Two and a Half Men before we knew her preferences were younger and with firmer breasts.

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