Robert Conrad

Right

... there's a, an episode where [laughs] Alan Hale, Jr. is, uh, the co-agent with Robert Conrad, and it ends with, uh, "Thanks a lot, Stan.

Uh, uh, you know, hey, what are you gonna do? Oh, you know something? I was thinking about taking some time off.

I don't know.

Uh, my dad grew up with Dan Haggerty as one of his best friends, so I spent a lot of time at Dan's Malibu beach house in the colony when I was-- my parents were divorced, back and forth between Minnesota and summers in LA with my dad.

And Dan knew everybody at the time, you know, people from, everybody from Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, and Baa Baa Black Sheep with Robert Conrad.

And anyhow, just a, a, a flow of people fall- flowing in and out of that house.

My dad was a stunt coordinator on the original Starsky and Hutch TV show, and his buddy Kenny played, um, Starsky's, uh, stunt double, and my dad created a lot of those, uh, stunts that they did back then.

Okay, that makes sense.

And then the narrative jumps to 1795 with the introduction of a French fur trapper named Pasquinel, played by Robert Conrad, and his Scottish trading partner, Alexander McKeag, played by Richard Chamberlain.

Okay, I have to jump in here because I understand the instinct to get to the recognizable actors, I really do, but cutting the foundational geological history, eh, feels like a massive thematic misstep to me.

How so?

It is literally the heart of darkness.

When Jo- when Robert Conrad wrote the book Heart of Darkness, it was a ferry trip, uh, through the Democratic Republic [laughs] of Congo, right?

Yeah.

Deepest, darkest Africa.

... don't believe...

Oh, I'm sorry, Joseph Conrad, you're right.

B- Robert Conrad's the actor [laughs] who is in Baa Baa Black Sheep.

I'm sorry, guys.

Um, a lot of it is very much pre-planned.

In Battle of the Network Stars, you weren't scripting any, I mean, none of the interactions, so stuff like Gabe Kaplan and Bob Conrad was just naturally coming out of the competition.

Yeah, that actually, probably there, that was the one moment that made Battle of the Network Stars happen, was the Conrad, Gabe Kaplan race in the first one.

Right.

And no, it was not planned.

It just was one of those things that the competitive nature from Conrad and Kaplan came out, and we just went with it.

And it's funny, for those of you who don't know, Bob Conrad was a really macho actor.

He'd been in, um, Wild Wild West.

[laughs]

But I think Robert Conrad in the '60s had a claim to the wild, wild west.

Okay.

[laughs] Okay.

We are back, and this seems like a good time to discuss Dr. Franklin Perrine, played by Ross Martin.

super famous for his role of Artemis Gordon alongside Robert Conrad's Jim West in 104 episodes of The Wild Wild West in the late 1960s, and later reprised that role in the follow-up 1979 TV movie The Wild Wild West Revisited and 1980s More Wild Wild West.

He was nominated for a 1969 Emmy for his performance.

Other fun appearances we always enjoy mentioning.

And

it was led by Robert Conrad, who played marine aviator Pappy Boyington.

And the program really brought warbirds, and especially the Corsair, into living rooms across the country.

So along with seeing these great airplanes, It kind of inspired a new generation of Warbird enthusiasts.

I don't think at the time, um, I have been told by a few people that, um, the guy who played TJ Wiley, I can't remember his, his name.

Um, he, he became a pilot later on and, um, Billy Oak told me, and actually, no, that's, that's not correct.

I believe Boynton, I believe, uh, Robert Conrad was a pilot at the time.

And actually there was a few times he might've flown.

The television series came in the late 1970s.

Robert Conrad played Boyington.

Two seasons, network drama, the kind of show that simplifies everything it touches and makes it look inevitable.

Boyington was publicly ambivalent about it.