LA private eye Joe Mannix, played by Mike Connors, wasn't your typical television detective.
He wore budget suits, couldn't care less what people thought of him, and lived by a set
of rules that he seldom if ever wavered from.
For eight seasons and nearly 200 Episodes, Mannix was the quintessential television private
investigator.
While there have definitely been 'cooler' PIs – Peter Gunn, Jim Rockford, Thomas Magnum
come to mind – nobody could take a beating and get right back up again like our man,
Mannix.
Plus, the series had one killer theme song- which always helps.
Created by Richard Levinson and William Link of "Columbo" fame and developed by Mission
Impossible's Bruce Geller, Mannix was as solid of a show as it was formulaic.
While it certainly was a series that suffered from many of the same plights that plagued
most episodic television dramas of it's day, there is still so much to love about it.
And we're willing to ber that there are quite a few things about the series that even now,
more than fifty years after it's debut, you probably don't know about.
Join Facts Verse as we take a closer look at some seriously HUGE details you missed
in Mannix.
So, grab a snack and put on your freshest plaid suit because this is one video that
you won't want to miss.
The I Love Lucy Connection
The late-great Lucille Ball helped bring Mannix into existence.
Lucy and Desi Arnaz's company Desilu productions produced the series, and since it went on
to air for eight seasons, it holds the honor of being the longest-running Desilu drama
series.
The second-longest, Mission: Impossible, ran for seven seasons, while the third longest,
The Untouchables, ran for just four.
Mike Connors landed his iconic role on Mannix after Ball's second husband and head of Desilu
at the time that Mannix was in development, Gary Morton, noticed his 1937 Bentley Convertible
parked outside his office.
The two struck up a conversation, and Morton suddenly remembered that he was looking for
some fresh blood to take the lead on his new detective series.
Realizing that Connors would fit the bill perfectly, he offered him the job.
After the show's first season failed to draw in the kind of numbers that CBS was hoping
for and they were considering giving it the ax, Ball personally fought for Mannix to be
given another season.
After agreeing to make a few tweaks to the plot, the series was saved from cancellation.
Originally, Mannix worked for a somewhat Orwellian surveillance company called Interact which
used computers to help crack cases.
In later seasons, he worked as a solo private eye using his people skills and fists to solve
cases.
With those changes implemented, season 2 saw Mannix's ratings improve dramatically.
In no time, it had managed to enter the top 10 shows on the air.
It Was The Last Desilu Show
Mannix was the very last series to be produced by Desilu Productions.
Lucille Ball sold Desilu in 1967 to Gulf+Western.
After that sale, the studio was renamed Paramount Television.
At the time of the sale, the other series that Desilu had in production were Star Trek,
The Lucy Show, Mission: Impossible, and of course, Mannix.
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And don't go anywhere just yet.
We've still got quite a few incredible Mannix facts to reveal that are probably going to
blow you away.
It Was Originally Going To Have Another Title
Remember how we mentioned that Mannix initially worked for that high-tech company, Interact?
Well, that's actually what the series was originally intended to be named as well.
It's a good thing that the series was eventually given the name that we all know it by today
because Ball likely wouldn't have been able to convince the network brass to keep the
show afloat for another season if it had still been named after the 1984-inspired LA-based
surveillance company.
Can you really imagine a show called Interact becoming the cultural icon that Mannix became?
We can't.
Gail Fisher Made History
Playing secretary Peggy Fair on Mannix from 1968 to 1975, Gail Fisher was one of the first
African-American women to have a regular role on a TV series.
Fisher ended up winning two Golden Globes and an Emmy Award for her role.
She was also the first African-American woman to ever win a Golden Globe.
Mannix's Army Buddies Were Always Causing Problems
Pretty much every television show from the 1960s eventually employed this same old plot
device.
The show's lead's old buddies would show up out of the blue and find a way to raise hell.
It's a television trope as old as time itself.
On Bonanza, it was Ben Cartwright's friends who galloped into the Ponderosa to get the
family mixed up in trouble.
Then on Star Trek it was Captain Kirk's brother who made an appearance just long enough to
get himself killed and trigger a plot that would be explored in a single episode.
On Mannix, it was Joe's old Korean War pals who showed up fairly regularly and stirred
up trouble.
They either had gotten themselves in some kind of trouble and needed his help or had
it out to kill the guy.
Similarly, in one 1975 episode, Bill Bixby, who would later play the human form of The
Incredible Hulk, played one of Mannix's fishing buddies, Tony Elliott.
Bixby directed that episode which was entitled 'The Empty Tower' as well as three others
from the series final season.
Mike Brady Was An LAPD Cop
The father figure of TV's most famed blended family, Mike Brady, played by Robert Reed,
had a real-life side gig when he wasn't acting working for the LAPD as a police officer.
On Mannix, he was given a recurring role from 1969 to 1975 as Lieutenant Adam Tobias.
The Mannix Crossovers
Desilu show's often featured famous guest stars.
In 1971, Mike Connors appeared on an episode of Here's Lucy titled 'Lucy and Mannix Are
Held Hostage'.
A couple decades later, Connors would reprise his role as Mannix on a 1997 episode of Diagnosis
Murder.
That episode 'Hard-Boiled Murder' actually served as a sequel to the 1973 Mannix episode
'Little Lost Girl'.
Joe Could Take A Beating
Throughout the series, Mannix found himself repeatedly stabbed, shot, beaten, ran off
the road, and assaulted in a great deal of other inventive ways.
In total, he was shot almost 20 times and knocked out at least 50.
While filming the series pilot episode, Mike Connors actually dislocated his shoulder and
broke his hand.
Buffalo Springfield Made A Guest Appearance
While it seems like an unlikely pairing, Neil Young and the other band members of Canadian-American
classic rock outfit Buffalo Springfield made a cameo appearance on an episode of Mannix
titled 'Warning: Live Blueberries" in 1967.
Young and company can be heard playing the song 'Bluebird' in that episode.
Other stars that made appearances on Mannix include John Denver, Neil Diamond, Hugh Beaumont,
Eve Plumb, Tom Selleck, William Shatner, and Adam West - although the full list is ridiculously
long.
Mike Connors Sued Paramount And CBS Over Royalties
In May of 2011, shortly before the series was re-released on DVD, Connors filed a suit
with the LA Superior Court claiming that CBS Television Studios and Paramount never paid
him the royalties that he was promised.
The case was eventually settled out of court later that year.
Johnny Carson Inadvertently Got Mannix Canceled
When Mannix wrapped up its eighth season, it was still in the top 20 in the Nielsen
Ratings.
Plans had been made for the ninth season, but those never ended up panning out.
Connors had been told at a CBS network party a week before the network was going to release
their 1975 fall schedule that the show was all but guaranteed to be picked up.
Obviously, however, that didn't end up happening.
Connors was left without a job because of reasons entirely out of his control.
Rival network ABC was struggling with their late-night viewership.
NBC had their immense talk show The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson at 11:30, and CBS
was doing well with The CBS Late Movie.
Everything that ABC tried to do to dial up their late-night ratings didn't seem to be
helping.
The Dick Cavett Show flopped, so then they came up with ABC's Wide World Of Entertainment
– a programming block that included everything from live rock concerts to comedy news shows
to mystery films, but that didn't work either.
So in 1975, ABC decided to essentially give up and just air re-runs.
At that point, they didn't have any better ideas.
They even started airing hit shows from other networks, including NBCs Police Woman, and
since Paramount took control of Mannix after Desilu changed hands, they planned on airing
episodes of that as well.
Paramount saw no problem with letting ABC air a few episodes of their show, but apparently,
no one informed CBS about their decision.
When CBS found out that Mannix was heading over to another network to air as re-runs,
the network execs turned on the show.
They figured that if their hit series was re-running on another network, it would cheapen
the appeal of having new episodes on theirs.
So, in a rather hastily made decision, they chose to scrap the show entirely.
Mannix has remained in syndication ever since it wrapped up its initial 8 season run, although
CBS Television Distribution only offers a package of 130 episodes to local stations.
The first and eighth seasons are not offered with that package, and nor are several episodes
from the seventh season.
If you want to binge-watch the entire series, you'll either have to buy the complete Mannix
series box set on DVD, which came out in 2017, or wait for it to eventually come to a streaming
service like Paramount+.
As of right now, however, there is no place to stream or rent the series online.
What are some of your favorite episodes of Mannix?
And how do you think Joe Mannix stacks up against other iconic television private investigators
like Thomas Magnum and Perry mason?
Let us know in the comments.
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