Mike Connors
Mike Connors (born August 15, 1925) is an American actor best known for playing detective Joe Mannix in the long-running CBS television series, Mannix. Before that, he had played a crime-fighting investigator, wielding a .38 handgun hidden in his back, in another CBS series Tightrope.
In 1956, still billed as Touch Connors, he played an Amalekite herder in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments starring Charlton Heston.
He appeared in numerous television series, including the co-starring
role in the 1955 episode “Tomas and the Widow” of the NBC western anthology series Frontier. He appeared in two Rod Cameron syndicated crime drama, City Detective and the western-themed State Trooper, and played the villain in the first episode filmed (but second one aired) of ABC-TV’s smash hit Maverick opposite James Garner in 1957. He also appeared on two other syndicated series, The Silent Service, based on true stories of the submarine section of the United States Navy, and Sheriff of 
Cochise, set about Bisbee, Arizona.
Connors thereafter launched his own series: (1) CBS’s Tightrope (September 8, 1959–September 13, 1960), (2) CBS’s Mannix (September 16, 1967–August 27, 1975) and (3) ABC’s Today’s F.B.I. (October 25, 1981–August 14, 1982). His Tightrope series was very popular in Mexico during the early 1960s, so the local recording company Discos Orfeon released a 45 rpm single of Connors sung in Spanish.
Connors’ long history of police and military roles very possibly was the reason he was chosen to play Air Force Colonel Harrison “Hack” Peters in Herman Wouk’s 1988 World War II-based miniseries “War and Remembrance”.
He currently lives in Encino, California.
