Robert Conrad, Star of TV's 'The Wild Wild West,' Dies at 84
The Hollywood Reporter
By Mike Barnes, Duane Byrge
February 8, 2020
Renowned for doing his own stunts, he also starred on such
shows as 'Hawaiian Eye' and 'Baa Baa Black Sheep' and on the miniseries
'Centennial.'
Robert Conrad, the athletic, two-fisted actor who starred as
Secret Service agent James West and did his own spectacular stunts on the 1960s
futuristic CBS Western The Wild Wild West, has died. He was 84.
"He lived a wonderfully long life and while the family
is saddened by his passing, he will live forever in their hearts," family
spokesman Jeff Ballard told People magazine. No other details of his
death were immediately available.
Conrad, among the actors employed by Warner Bros. Television
to appear on the studio's stable of shows starting in the 1950s, first gained
attention for playing Tom Lopaka, a partner in a detective agency, on
ABC's Hawaiian Eye.
The Chicago native also was known for starring as real-life
World War II pilot Maj. Greg "Pappy" Boyington on NBC's 1976-78
period drama Baa Baa Black Sheep (later known in syndication
as Black Sheep Squadron), one of the first series created by
Stephen J. Cannell.
Conrad, though, always said that the performance he was most
proud of was his turn as the French-Canadian trapper Pasquinel in James
Michener's Centennial, the 16 1/2-hour, 12-episode miniseries
about the evolution of the American West that aired on NBC in 1978-79.
He said Michener was on the set during production and told
him that he "played the character better than he had written it,"
Conrad noted during a 2006 chat for the website The Interviews: An Oral History
of Television.
On The Wild Wild West, the lithe, blue-eyed
Conrad starred as a government agent, working for President Ulysses S. Grant,
who employed modern technology to combat villains in the 19th century. Jim
West, who wore his spiffy clothes a bit too tight, rode a champion horse and
had an eye for the ladies, was paired with Artemus Gordon (Ross Martin), a
master of disguise.
The show was "James Bond as a cowboy," and indeed,
series creator Michael Garrison had once owned the movie rights to Ian
Fleming's first 007 novel, Casino Royale. Wild Wild
West lasted four seasons, on the air from September 1965 through
April 1969, and attracted another legion of fans in reruns.
Conrad and stuntman Whitey Hughes usually choreographed the
show's acrobatic fights (the scripts gave them an amount of time to do them,
and they figured things out). Near the end of one season, Conrad said he almost
was killed when he fell 14 feet onto a cement floor; he suffered what he
described as a "six-inch linear fracture with a high temporal concussion."
Concerned that they would lose the star of their show, CBS
executives insisted a stunt double step in for Conrad, but that practice lasted
only a couple of episodes, and, after a summer of healing, he was soon back
"breaking things," just as he always did.
He was one of the few actors to have been inducted into the
Stuntmen's Hall of Fame.
"Ross Martin once said in an interview on the Johnny
Carson show, 'Robert does his own stunts, and I do my own acting,' " he
said. Asked if he took offense to that, Conrad replied: "I applauded it,
it was the truth. I did my acting tongue in cheek. I didn't take any of it
seriously. The last year, I didn't even read the scripts, I just read my part.
And it worked."
Conrad's ego and toughness also were on display during
the Battle of the Network Stars specials, where he more
often than not captained the NBC squad to victory. (He did lose one memorable
race to Welcome Back Kotter's Gabe Kaplan, getting caught down in
the stretch.)
And in three years as a popular Eveready pitchman, Conrad
stared into the camera and challenged anyone to knock a battery off his
shoulder.
"Come on, I dare you," he said.
Conrad Robert Falk was born on the South Side of Chicago on
March 1, 1935. His father, Leonard, worked in construction and became vice
president of the National Sugar Co., and his mother, Jacqueline, did PR and had
clients including Patti Page and Vic Damone.
He played running back in high school, thought about a
career as a boxer and, when he wasn't loading or driving a truck, sang in a
trio that performed in Chicago
hotels.
After standing outside theaters to drum up publicity for
1956's Giant (his mother had been dating a Warner Bros.
executive, and Conrad bore a resemblance to the recently deceased James Dean),
he thought he might try acting.
He attended Northwestern
University, majoring in
theater arts, and became friends with Rebel Without a Cause actor
Nick Adams, who got him a part in Juvenile Jungle (1958).
For a TV show, Conrad landed a gig as a Native American who
gets shot and falls off his horse. He fell backward, risking great injury.
"That established me as having the talent to do stunts," he said.
"So when there was a speaking role associated with a stunt, they'd hire
me. You got two for the price of one."
During rehearsals for a fight sequence on the Warner
Bros./ABC series Maverick, Conrad told his actor he was about to
tussle with, " 'You're getting too close, you're getting too close,'
" he recalled. "I said to the director, 'Why don't you double him?'
He said, 'We don't have a double for him, he's going to have to smack you.' I
said, 'If he does, he's going to regret it.'
"So we rolled cameras, and sure enough, he hit me, and
I hit him back. That went out to one of the executives, and one of them said,
'I like that kid.' And then they put me under contract."
He played Lopaka, who was half-Caucasian and half-native
Hawaiian, for four seasons on Hawaiian Eye, which also starred
Anthony Eisley and Connie Stevens. (Lopaka also appeared on crossover episodes
of another exotic WBTV show, 77 Sunset Strip.)
After starring with Marisol in the 1964 Spanish movie La
nueva Cenicienta (The New Cinderella), Conrad was playing 'Pretty
Boy' Floyd opposite Adams in Young
Dillinger (1965) when he headed over to CBS after lunch to test for a
new show, The Wild Wild West.
Very quickly, Conrad got a phone call saying he had been
hired and was to start work the following Monday in Sonora, California.
(He also said he turned down a chance to play Larry Hagman's part on I
Dream of Jeannie.)
Conrad said he trained in karate during the first season
of Wild Wild West, and as the series went on, he wore blue
underwear so that when his tight pants ripped during fights, the audience
couldn't tell.
With television violence coming under fire from politicians
in the wake of the 1968 assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King
Jr., Wild West West was canceled despite drawing a 33 share
of the audience in its 1968-69 season.
Conrad said Baa Baa Black Sheep was axed
because it was deemed too violent as well. "I got a double hit," he
said.
Wild Wild West, of course, was refashioned as a
1999 movie, with Will Smith passing up a chance to star in The Matrix
to portray Jim West. Conrad called the remake "horrible" and
"pathetic" and gladly accepted the Razzie Award for the film.
Conrad also starred on other short-lived series
including The D.A., Assignment: Vienna, The
Duke, A Man Called Sloane, High Mountain
Rangers and High Sierra Search and Rescue; hosted Saturday
Night Live (musical guest: The Allman Brothers) in 1982; and played
John Dillinger in The Lady in Red (1979) and a Richard Nixon
confidant in the 1982 NBC telefilm Will: The Autobiography of G.
Gordon Liddy.
CLONRAD, Robert (Conrad
Robert Norton Falk)
Born: 3/1/1935, Chicago, Illinois,
U.S.A.
Died: 2/8/2020, Malibu, California,
U.S.A.
Robert Conrad’s
westerns – director, actor, singer:
Bat Masterson (TV) – 1959 (Juanito)
Colt. 45 (TV) – 1959 (Billy the Kid)
Lawman (TV) – 1959 (Davey Catterton)
Maverick (TV) – 1959 (Davie
Burrows)
Temple
Houston (TV) – 1964 (Martin
Purcell)
The Wild Wild West (TV) -1965-1969 (James West) [singer]
The Bandits – 1967 (Chris Barrett) [director, writer]
Centennial (TV) 1978-1979 (Pasquinel)
The Wild Wild West Revisited (TV) – 1979 (Jim West)
More Wild Wild West (TV) – 1980 (Jim West)
Samurai Coboy (TV) – 1994 (Gabe McBride)
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