Viewed yesterday morning: S4 E7 of the tv show Columbo — “An Exercise in Fatality”, originally aired 9/15/74, with four members of the bank of reliable actors with prodigious portfolios that I’ve called the Acting Corps (four plus series star Peter Falk, playing Lt. Columbo) appearing in the early moments of the show, in which character Milo Janus is depicted as a cocky fraudster running a chain of gyms, confronted by one of his defrauded franchisees, Gene Stafford. It is quickly clear that one of these men will be murderer and one victim, but unclear which will be which: Janus richly deserves to get offed, but on the other hand, he’s bastard enough to dispose of Stafford as a mere obstacle in his path.
The plot is nicely balanced between these two possibilities, but I should have realized from the casting how the scene would play out; both characters were cast from the Acting Corps, but Janus is played by a high-recognition, star actor (Robert Conrad), while Stafford is played by character actor Phil(ip) Bruns, who had a supporting role, at one time or another, in virtually every American tv series there was then, so always seemed vaguely familiar but not identifiable.
The character Stafford was then doomed, because the actor playing him was dispensable. Not only was Robert Conrad a star, he was also an incandescent actor: body-proud (displaying his muscular torso and remarkable buttocks), high-masculinity (energetic and athletic, tough, frequently sweaty, giving off a whiff of testosterone), and intense. No director would kill off a property like that in the first few minutes of a 90-minute show.
I originally intended to post about four of the actors from this episode — Conrad, Bruns, Pat Harrington, Jr. (who I recognized and identified immediately), and Gretchen Corbett (who was familiar but not identifiable) — but I quickly accumulated a lot of material about Conrad, so I’m giving him a posting all of this own; I’ll do the other three in a separate posting.
The murder. From Wikipedia on “An Exercise in Fatality”:
Renowned exercise guru Milo Janus (Robert Conrad) runs a chain of successful gyms. His charm is not enough to calm the anger of franchise owner Gene Stafford (Philip Bruns), who has found out how Janus overcharges his franchises for equipment and supplies, depositing the profits in offshore bank accounts. When Stafford threatens to organize other victims of Janus and to go public with a class action suit, Janus kills him. He makes it look like Stafford was working out, trying to lift weights too heavy for him, with the result being that the barbell fell and crushed his windpipe. … Gretchen Corbett plays Janus’s secretary, and Pat Harrington, Jr. plays a shifty business associate of Janus.
From the episode, a minimally clothed Janus offers a drink to the perennially rumpled Columbo:
(#1) This one’s all about Conrad’s torso; meanwhile, Columbo is working at finding the fatal flaws in Janus’s carefully devised misdirections
Conrad’s bio. From Wikipedia, the summary:
Robert Conrad (born Conrad Robert Norton Falk; March 1, 1935 – February 8, 2020) was an American film and television actor, singer, and stuntman. He is best known for his role in the 1965–1969 television series The Wild Wild West, playing the sophisticated Secret Service agent James T. West. He portrayed World War II ace Pappy Boyington in the television series Baa Baa Black Sheep (later syndicated as Black Sheep Squadron). In addition to acting, he was a singer and recorded several pop/rock songs in the late 1950s and early 1960s as Bob Conrad. He hosted a weekly two-hour national radio show (The PM Show with Robert Conrad) on CRN Digital Talk Radio beginning in 2008.
Restless, sometimes reckless, driven to activity, literally prolific (he had eight children with two wives), attention-demanding, but also affiliative and charming. So, an interestingly complex person. But he gets a posting of his own because of his performances of body display, of which #1 is a mild sample.
Displaying the male body. Conrad was mostly given to two extravagant body displays: of his shirtless, usually exertion-sweaty, muscular torso; and of his amazing male buttocks, usually enclosed in specially tailored tight pants.
Who was that shirtless man? From my 4/1/15 posting “Movies and tv: Troy McClure, Troy Donahue, Robert Conrad”:
oh my, Conrad in The Wild Wild West on television, who was regularly subjected to shirtless bondage and, often, whipping.
(#2) Conrad posing for the camera; I think the eye-narrowing was supposed to project sexual interest, but doing it only with one eye is unfortunate; the glistening body is achieved by chemical means (you probably don’t want to hear about the details of body photography any more than those of food photography)… He appeared shirtless in (I think) every single episode [of The Wild Wild West], usually being tortured in one way or another and glistening with sweat … If you’re gay, it was the best soft porn to be found on commercial television.
The bodywork in #2 is interestingly calculated to achieve a lean, muscled, but entirely natural-looking appearance: the goal of a male model, not a body-builder. The idea is to offer men a body to aspire to, one that other men will admire and that, oh by the way, women (or gay men, as the case might be) will find desirable. This is not an easy effect to manage, and once perfected takes constant work to maintain. Conrad was no doubt favored by nature, but he worked on his shirtless perfection for most of his life.
See my manly ass walkin’ away. Again, he was no doubt favored by nature, and his buttocks were probably formed by physical labor and sports, but at some point he realized (or learned) that his ass was hot — a prime-grade index of masculinity — and he went to work on that too. Eventually it became famous.
From the INTO (queer culture) site, the piece “Hot hot hunks: An appreciation of Robert Conrad’s legendary butt”, by Henry Giardina on 9/14/22, with this summary judgment:
(#3) In action on The Wild Wild WestI am far from the only person to have fallen under the spell of Robert Conrad’s incredible butt. He is spoken about elsewhere on the Internet in reverent tones as possessing what is possibly the finest ass in Golden Age TV history.
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