On what would have been his 88th birthday, Daveland is celebrating actor Robert Conrad. Devastatingly handsome, the Chicago born actor charmed the ladies, despite his diminutive height of 5'8". Who says size matters?
According to Conrad in an interview, his resemblance to the late James Dean kickstarted his career:
I did a show after the filming of “Giant” and because of my resemblance they wanted publicity to publicize the show. They didn’t think that it would draw an audience because of the death of the young star, so they wanted some hype. They had a man on the street interview. I had seen the show and I raved about how good the show was and then they did the resemblance thing and I was on the show every night for a week.
A vintage shot of Grauman’s in Hollywood stands-in for the theater in Chicago that Conrad worked at.
Dean played a part again when Conrad visited his grave:
People in Indiana saw [the show in Chicago] and they wanted to do “The James Dean Story” and they contacted me and invited me down to Fairmont, Indiana. Nick Adams was touring with some kind of Nick Adams film; I forget the name of it now. He was in Fairmont Indiana, so we met at the James Dean gravesite.
We were two young guys. He was looking at me and I was looking at him. He invited me to his room at his hotel and we had a couple of drinks together and he told me if I ever came to Hollywood that I was to look him up. He gave me his exchange. I didn’t know what the hell that was, back in the day. But he wrote it out for me and I kept it and went to New York to get a break in acting. When that didn’t work out I went back to Hollywood and called Nick and we hooked up the day I arrived in Hollywood, August 17, 1957. We were friends for the 13 years until his death.
Here’s Adams with Doris Day and Lee Patrick in “Pillow Talk” (1959).
As his film career began Conrad posed for the typical beefcake shots:
Feel free to write your own caption for these shots with Van Williams (“The Green Hornet”):
Conrad’s first real bout with fame came with the Warner Bros. TV show “Hawaiian Eye” (1959-1963).
This gave the hunky star plenty of reasons to be shirtless for the audience. Here he is on the Warner lot:
After “Hawaiian Eye,” Conrad moved onto even greater success with his role of James West in “The Wild Wild West” (1965-1969), a wacky combination of western, science fiction, and espionage. Michael Garrison, the creator of the show, called it “James Bond on horseback.” Conrad was the perfect fit for the lead, and did almost all of his own stunts.
Conrad died in 2004 at the age of 84. See more Robert Conrad photos at my main website.
