Entertainment
My Macho Man, '60s, Retro Summer Begins With Joe Mannix, Jim West And Peter Gunn
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Published: June 3, 2008
This summer, I want to ride down the streets of Los Angeles in an Oldsmobile convertible with Joe Mannix at the wheel.
He'll be wearing a plaid sports coat, smoking a cigarette and talking on a big, old car phone (so cool in 1967).
His secretary, Peggy, will have been kidnapped again.
Not to worry. He'll rescue her soon enough, but not before he roughs up some thugs, downs a Scotch on the rocks and kisses off a leggy dame.
Oh, Mannix, your simple crime-fighting ways are so quaint in this age of "Law & Order" and "CSI."
Eventually, every TV show ever made will be on DVD. Finally, for fans of the 1960s action series, the first season of "Mannix" is being released today.
CBS and Paramount finally gave in to requests from "Mannix" fans, who have been begging for this for years.
The boxed set features the first 24 episodes, plus an interview with star Mike Connors, 82.
Now my retro summer is almost complete. I'm still waiting for "77 Sunset Strip" to be released so I can have a perfect '60s macho man retro night.
Until that happens, I can still slip back to a time when television "drama" consisted of a fistfight, a shootout or a car chase about every 15 minutes.
But instead of watching an entire boxed set of one series, I'd create my own lineup with episodes from three series. Spread over the summer, this beats those tedious reality shows.
My '60s-man night would start with post-Civil War spy Jim West chasing down weirdo supervillains on "The Wild Wild West," followed by the suave Hollywood detective on "Peter Gunn" and "Mannix."
Yeah, I know "The Wild Wild West" was set in the 1870s, but it was so 1960s. West (played by cocky Robert Conrad) was just a cowboy version of James Bond. The square-jawed hero had an arsenal of hokey gadgets; he snared beautiful but easily disposable women; and he saved the country from outlandish schemes.
From 1958 to 1961, Craig Stevens starred as Peter Gunn, the tall, dark and well-dressed troubleshooter. He was a martini-sipping, jazz-loving, well-heeled detective who hung out at the swanky Mother's nightclub.
These manly oldies are a good prelude to "Mad Men," AMC's stunning study of 1960s manhood that returns on July 27. "Mannix," which ran from 1967 to 1975, would have been the kind of show that the guys on "Mad Men" would have loved.
Mannix wore a coat - lots of loud sports coats, in fact - and a tie.
In the first season, he was a maverick employee of the Intertech detective agency, which relied on computers and cold calculation to solve crimes. But Mannix was a man of action who would rather use his fists and gun to bring down the baddies.
By the second season, he was the traditional lone-wolf detective with a faithful secretary, Peggy, played by Gail Fisher in one of the first co-starring roles for a black woman in the 1960s.
Mannix was the kind of guy who could get whacked on the head in every episode and never suffer brain damage. He was wounded more than a dozen times, but he had no visible scars. He also had no politics, no hang-ups, no regrets and suffered no consequences. Those really were the good old days.
With DVDs, you can have more than one good old night. How about a retro Western night with "Rawhide," "Maverick" and "Wagon Train"? Try a retro spy night with "Mission: Impossible," "The Avengers" and "The Prisoner." Or get a retro sci-fi blast with "The Invaders," "Lost in Space" and "The Outer Limits."
And just for giggles, how about an Irwin Allen cheesy special effects and implausible plots night with "Land of the Giants," "Time Tunnel" and "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea"?
TUNE IN TONIGHT
30 Days, 10 p.m., FX
Morgan Spurlock created a cottage industry when he lived on food from McDonald's for 30 days in "Supersize Me." On his weekly series, he spends 30 days in a wheelchair, 30 days with coal miners, 30 days with animal rights activists, etc.
Doo Wop's Greatest Hits,
8 p.m., WUSF, Channel 16
Doo-wop groups from the 1950s and 1960s perform, including The Platters, The Dixie Cups, The Flamingos and more.
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