Robert Conrad

The Milkman Who Threw Punches

Conrad Robert Falk was born in Chicago in 1935 and worked delivering milk before he turned twenty. He had a boxer's build and the jaw of someone who doesn't take no for an answer. In 1958 he signed a contract with Warner Bros, and his life changed completely because the studio was looking for faces that could keep up with the pace of the emerging television industry.

His first major role came in 1959 with the series Hawaiian Eye. He played a private detective who spent nearly as much time in the water as he did chasing criminals. The truth is his physical presence worked so well that the network decided to capitalize on his tough, youthful image for four seasons.

The audience bought his swagger right away.

But Conrad didn't want to be just a pretty face on the beach. He wanted real action and control over what he did on screen. During this period he began building a reputation as a difficult (or simply demanding) actor, a reputation that would stay with him through the following decades of his professional career.

A Four-Meter Fall and the End of the Spy Era

In 1965 he premiered The Wild Wild West, and the project made him a global star. He played James West, a secret service agent in the Old West who used high-tech gadgets to defeat outlandish villains. The series blended the spy genre with the western and demanded constant physical effort.

Robert Conrad never used stunt doubles for risky scenes. He jumped off balconies himself, galloped on horseback at full speed and choreographed every fight move. But in 1968 he suffered a serious accident during the filming of an episode after falling headfirst to the ground from a height of nearly four meters.

That blow fractured his skull and caused partial paralysis, forcing production to shut down for weeks. Doctors warned him to stop. But Conrad returned to the set with the same defiant attitude and finished the fourth season before the series was canceled over its excessive violence in 1969.

That nearly cost him his life.

After leaving his spy days behind, he tried his luck in European cinema and lower-budget productions. In 1972, he starred in Assignment Vienna, a series that lasted only eight episodes but helped him maintain his standing in the TV industry of the time.

The Black Sheep Squadron

His second major success came in 1976 with Baa Baa Black Sheep. In this production he played Major Greg Pappy Boyington, a real-life World War II pilot who led a group of misfits. Conrad found in this character the perfect vehicle for his competitive personality and his love of aviation.

The series stayed on the air until 1978 and earned him a Golden Globe nomination. During those years, his face was so popular that the battery brand Eveready hired him for a series of memorable commercials. In them, he appeared with a battery on his shoulder and challenged viewers to try knocking it off with one blow.

Nobody dared to throw the drum set.

In 1979 he took part in the ambitious miniseries Centennial, based on the novel by James A. Michener. He played French explorer Pasquinel and proved he could carry long-running historical dramas without always relying on bar fights. It was one of the roles he was proudest of years later.

During the eighties and nineties, his work focused on TV movies and small roles in films. In 1996, he appeared in the comedy Jingle All the Way alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger, playing a police officer. It was one of his last high-profile roles before he gradually stepped away from the spotlight.

A car accident in 2003 left him with permanent injuries to his right arm and drastically limited his mobility. Despite this, he hosted a weekly radio show called PM Show with Robert Conrad, which stayed on air until 2019. He died on February 8, 2020 in Malibu from heart failure at the age of 84 years old.