Actor Martin Milner made a surprising admission the other day. He's a chronic worrier! It doesn't square with his strong face, his six-foot-one muscular frame, his pleasant and relaxed personality. Still, this inner-worry habit plagues him. His apprehension seems to jump quickly from one thing to another, never quite leaving him free from anxiety.
Milner has nothing to worry about as far as his NBC-TV series, Adam-12 is concerned. He plays the role of stalwart Officer Pete Malloy, whose film "heroics" come close to reality in situations based on true incidents taken from the files of the Los Angeles Police Department. In these days of wall-to-wall lawlessness, real-life police heroes are often unsung and sometimes derided and insulted. It takes genuine acting ability to portray a satisfactory "hero" in uniform, and Milner's characterization has found cheering acceptance from a growing number of people who are weary of horrible non-hero types.
In the past, Marty's acting talent brought him fame and great popularity as Tod Stiles in TV's Route 66, which was launched in 1960 and ran for four years. But his career actually began when he was 14. "I was born in Detroit," Marty says. "My father, Sam Milner, was a film distributor. My mother was a dancer named Jerry Martin. There's a custom in our family to pass along family names and that's why I was called Martin Sam." He has a great interest in the derivation and meaning of surnames and how they originated. When it came to his own children, he and his wife Judy gave them wonderful old-fashioned names like Amy (who is 10), Molly (8), Stuart (7) and Andrew (5).
"My parents moved to Seattle when I was a little kid, and I got my first job there when I was 9. But not as an actor! I watered the lawns of an apartment house next door. Then I worked as a stock boy, office boy, and box boy in a supermarket. But my parents were 'show biz' people, and after we moved to Hollywood it was understood that I would be an actor. While still in school, I studied with an acting coach and signed with an agent--I was associated with him for twenty years and named by boy Stuart after him. Then I studied theatre arts at U.S.C. for a year."
By 1952, Marty had achieved a background of numerous minor film roles--plus an important part in Life With Father, when he was snagged by the Army for a two-year hitch, during which time (in Special Services at Fort Ord, California) he directed twenty training films and acted as emcee for a touring unit. Then the Army granted him leave to accept a role in The Long Gray Line, a West Point film starring Tyrone Power and Maureen O'Hara.
Out of the Army, Marty resumed his movie career; 1957 was a banner year when he enacted major roles in Sweet Smell of Success and Marjorie Morningstar. More importantly, it was in that same year he married Judy Jones, a TV actress and singer. One of his "worries" is that he's really never had any bad times--so he figures he may have some coming--but he came closest to hardship after his marriage.
They bought their first house, an old one in need of much repair. They had a baby on the way and not much money. He had a couple of good prospects, but the movie was cancelled and the TV series turned out to be one of only four pilots that Ziv didn't sell. It was then that Marty learned do-it-yourself carpentry and repaired the house himself.
He has kept up his interest in this craft ever since and just finished remodeling two rooms in his present home. He as also built miniature doll houses for his wife and daughters, complete with lights and furniture. In fact, repairing and remodeling projects occupy the major part of his free time. His whole world revolves around his home and family.
"There's just my wife and our kids," he says. "We don't belong to any group. Sometimes I worry because we're such an ordinary family and live such a completely ordinary life." (This, of course, is about the most un-ordinary statement anyone could hear in Hollywood, where being "ordinary" is like leprosy or unemployment).
"We live in a big old house," Marty explains, "with six bedrooms and lots of acreage. So we have ample room in which to entertain friends, but we seldom do. And we're not entertained by the 'in' group--very few of our friends are in the industry. We're not the way Hollywood people are supposed to be. We're just ordinary. Sometimes I wonder if we shouldn't be more flamboyant!
"But the fact is, Judy and I don't like to run with the crowd. For example, if everyone rushed out to buy a Mustang, then we don't seem to want one. I drive a Bentley that's several years old, and Judy has a Checker elongated airport bus. It's painted white with a blue racing stripe--and it's her only car."
As Marty talks along, he becomes less "ordinary" by the minute. Even his dog "Hector" is different. Hector is a 150-lb Rottweiler, which he describes as "a monster with a head like a cardboard box." And one of the pets Marty has acquired for his children is an alligator.
Though Marty is doing very well in life, he still worries. "When my kids are well, I worry that they might get sick. When they're sick, I worry till they get well again--as, of course, they always do. I have the responsibility of my family, and that really worries me. I guess actors always feel insecure."
If Martin Milner could have had his choice of a time in which to live, he says he would have chosen the 1890s, when there existed very strong family and community ties. For a person of Marty's extreme sensitivity, it might indeed have been an easier and gentler way of life than today.
Marty fully shares all the activities of his children. He proudly attended all their "commencement" exercise this year, when they passed from one grammar-school grade to the next. When his youngest, Andrew, "graduated" from kindergarten to the first grade last June, Marty canceled every commitment he had, in order to be at the ceremony.
Given Marty's great love of home and family life, he was nevertheless at one time very much a "traveling man." During the filming of Route 66, he covered every state on the mainland. Judy and Amy used to accompany him for six months out of the year. When Judy was pregnant, she'd come back to Hollywood. Once, when he was filming in Dallas, he managed to get a day off and flew home--arriving just in time to attend his most recent baby's birth!
When Molly was due, he came home from Florida, bone-tired, and pleaded with his wife: "Please don't have the baby tonight." But she did. One year, he was home for Christmas but had to return to Florida on Jan. 6. Andrew arrived Jan. 5! Like all good troupers, their timing was perfect.
Today, with the filming of Adam-12 centered in the Los Angeles area, Marty is able to raise his family in a stable environment. He has very few disciplinary problems with the children, he smiles: "They know what's expected of them. Kids like to be told. They get lost when they're not guided. Children are happy when they know the rules."
So are adults. Martin Milner seems to have learned the rules that apply in maturity. He upholds some of them when he portrays Officer Pete Malloy. And he has been richly rewarded for appreciating the virtue of simplicity in his personal life. A most extraordinary man!
As far as his habit of worrying is concerned, the candid truth is that anybody on earth who stands guard over his greatest treasures knows what fear is, and often surrounds his enclave of happiness with vigilant concern. But that's only an alert, outside quivering of nerves, covering the strength within. It's nothing to worry about.