Route 66 Magazine was privileged to interview Martin Milner (Tod of the pot-boiler TV series "route 66") about his career in the entertainment industry. We were also curious, as many of our readers are, to find out what he is doing today. Marty, Judy, his wife of forty-three years, and their three Shih Tzu's live near San Diego, California. The Milners have four grown children, but according to Marty, he doesn't have enough grandchildren.
Sixty-nine-year-old Martin Milner is living the life he has long dreamed of--he travels the world fishing and doing a talk radio program about fishing. Let's Talk Hook-Up, devoted to fly-fishing. Before we talk about "route 66", "Adam-12", and his movie career we discuss fishing. Marty shares with us photos and tales of his adventures fishing the great, and not so great, spots around the world.
"In April and May, I went to New Zealand, in June, I went to Alaska. I canceled a trip to Costa Rica because I was just tired of traveling. In November I'm going to the Florida Keys, and in December to Venezuela to fish for Peacock Bass."
"So apparently, you're an avid fisherman."
"You could say that. (A big grin crosses his face.)
"How did you become involved in the radio show?
"I went on as a guest with a friend of mine who is a famous fly-fisherman. I had gone to Russia with him and he said 'Come on the show and we can talk about Russia, Costa Rica, and other places we've been.' At the close of the show, the host asked me to be his partner--that was eight years ago."
Marty shared with us an album packed with photographs of fishing expeditions from virtually every country you can name. "This is a fish called a Payara from Venezuela. Look at the teeth on that fish."
"Wow, that thing must really bite."
"Well, you have to be very careful when handling them. Interestingly enough, the way you catch these fish is with live bait and that live bait in Piranha."
Oh my gosh! How do you get the Piranha on the hook?"
"Oh, they're not that tough to deal with. Now, this is a shot taken in Russia. They fly you around in a helicopter that was used in the Afghan War. That's my friend Bob Marriott, who owns the best fly-fishing store in the world." (Marty is referring to the gentleman standing next to him in the photograph featured on the contents page.).
"That gives you an idea as to how I occupy my time these days."
"Now, how about route 66"?
"Sure."
"First of all, how did that series get its name when the largest percentage of the show was not filmed on Route 66?"
"Well, Bert Leonard, the producer, and Sterling (sic) Silliphant the writer and co-creator of the show, chose Route 66 because it was the most famous road in the country. It symbolized the heartline of the nation...The Grapes of Wrath and all that went with that. Even though we were criticized for not being on Route 66, pictorially, Route 66 is not all that interesting week after week.
"I had just finished the movie Sweet Smell of Success and another movie, Marjorie Morningstar, and my career was getting pretty hot then. Bert Leonard got in touch with me. They had already cast George Maharis for the show. Bert asked me if I'd be interested in doing this. I had to make a decision at this time if I was going to become a director of do this series--I also had an offer to be a director. I decided I'd rather be an actor. I'm a little lazy, and directors never get a day off. So, I decided to do this series.
"It worked out well for me at the time because Judy and I had been married a couple of years, and we had our first child. My wife was able to travel with us quite a bit, and she would go home when she was about eight months pregnant, have another baby, wait three months or so, then come join us once again. Our last child--the fourth--was born just as we were closing out the year, and it was perfect timing because Amy, our oldest, was ready to start school and wouldn't have been able to travel with me anymore. So, it worked out really well."
"Is there any particular show that sticks out in your mind?
"I guess the one I remember the most was the one filmed in Philadelphia where I was given a dose of LSD before anyone knew what LSD was. Sterling (Silliphant) always knew what was going on--he was way ahead of everybody. That was probably one of the better efforts of the series.
"We had such wonderful actors in the series, mainly because the show was cast out of New York, and we were able to get actors who were beginning to make it in New York, but weren't known nationally. People were becoming stars in New York, like Robert Redford, but they didn't have any national recognition, so we hired Robert Redford to do an episode, and he didn't even get top billing."
"We're talking about a black and white series. What was the actual color of the car?"
"The Corvette was kind of a sand color, because it looked good in black and white. Everyone always assumed it was red."
"Why do you think they did that?
"I guess it was just the image of the show, wow, the red Corvette! The first one (Corvette) I seem to remember was blue, kind of a pale blue. Then the cameraman decided a sand color was best for black and white photography. And, of course, we got a new one every year."
"Do you remember anything that our readers might find interesting in the filming of the series?"
"We were filming on a boat off the coast of Louisiana and were shooting on an actual boat in a terrible rainstorm. Our electricity for the lights and everything charged the boat, so every time we touched a piece of metal we got an electrical shock, but we had to keep going. I also remember crashing the car a couple of times as well."
"How do you feel about your connection with Route 66 today? Everybody remembers Tod. It is amazing the people who come into our store and see your picture and ask 'Where is he now? What's he doing?'"
I'm pleased that everybody remembers it (the series). Sometimes it's a little unnerving. I was coming back from a fishing trip somewhere and was traveling on I-40. I needed a place to stay, so I stopped in Kingman and went in this motel and here was this Route 66 museum with my picture up on the walls."
"Let's move ahead a few years. You now an an avocado ranch?
"I don't anymore.
Oh, you don't?
"Oh no, I haven't had it in years. We lived there, it was out in the country, and I thought it would be a good thing for the kids. I was never part of the Hollywood establishment. The crime rate was getting high, and we just thought it would be a good thing to move. And I wanted to move, too. So we bought this twenty-four acres in Fallbrook that had this producing avocado grove on it, built the house, and we lived there for seven years.
"At the end of the seven years, my wife and the children were a little tired of the remoteness of the place. The kids wanted to be at the beach all the time, so Judy, my wife, would drive them roundtrip from Fallbrook to the beach everyday. So, we moved to the beach. We moved to Del Mar. We lived there, on the beach, for eleven years. We wound up here about five years ago, and we're never moving again, ever."
"You and Kent McCord, your partner on Adam-12, are both involved in police charities. Is that correct?
"Yes, Kent is involved with LAPD charities, and I'm involved with the San Diego Police Department. In fact, I'm attending a fund-raiser this Saturday for an officer who was killed in the line of duty. I'm also a commissioner with the San Diego Police Department Historical Society."
"Do you still see Kent?"
"Oh, a lot. He was in Australia and just got back. He's doing a recurring role in a series that is shot in Australia, so, he and his wife went over to do a couple of episodes. Since they're half-way around the world, they came back by way of Paris and took a mini-vacation."
The friendship with Marty and Kent goes all the way back to the start of Adam-23. Producer Herman Saunders said, "Most important, he (Marty) and Kent really like each other. It comes through on the screen, and it makes the audience like them." The two got along so well they would take family vacations together.
"Is there any possibility of you and Kent getting together to do another show?
"I kind of doubt it. Kent keeps talking about it, but he's eleven years younger than me. I think that's kind of a stretch for me to be contemplating playing even a chief of police; after all, I'm well past retirement age. So, I kind of doubt that's going to come about.
"You and Kent did a movie for the Nashville Network back in 1990 called Nashville Beat. Did you enjoy working with Kent on that project?
"Sure, we're a real team and that was a lot of fun, but it was a lot of work at the same time."
"There's a rumor of you doing a Route 66 show with George Maharis."
"That's an old rumor. That goes back about eight or so years. Bert Leonard was talking about it, he got a couple of scripts, contacted me and George, and we all got together to discuss it. It was going to be for CBS, but Bert Leonard was the last of the producers who had control, and the network couldn't tell him what to do. Well, no one has that autonomy anymore, and the project fell apart when Bert got into some hassles with CBS. So, I don't see any possibility of that happening."
"Did you ever see the Route 66 series that came out in about 1992?"
"Yes, I did."
"What did you think of the show?
"Well, I liked the two guys, but I thought the stories were bad. There just wasn't the content to make the shows the shows work. They did the same thing with Adam-12 after we stopped filming. A company produced, I think it was fifty or so shows for the syndicated market, and they did not have one person on the staff who had anything to do with the original Adam-12 and they had no idea what made it work."
"Do you feel it was Jack Webb who made Adam-12 work?"
"No, it was a man named Bob Cinader, Jack Webb's partner and co-creator of the show who was on the show every day. I have a feeling Jack didn't see a lot of these shows.
"I used to spend a lot of time with Jack because for the last four years of Adam-12 we were living in Fallbrook, and when I would go in to film, I would stay in my studio dressing room, which was a nice apartment. At the end of the day, everybody tended to gravitate to Jack Webb's office, where, after about five o'clock, the bar would be open. You never knew who would be there, one day it might be Sid Shineberg, the head of Universal; he next day it might be Anthony Quinn telling stories. It was an interesting place to be. So I spent a lot of evening with Jack in his office, and out to dinner afterwards. I would say, 'What did you think about so-and-so and about our show?' And he'd say 'I don't really know,' making me think he had not seen it."
"You started very early in your career working with Jack Webb."
"Yeah, I actually met Jack when we were filming Halls of Montezuma where we were both actors in the film. At that time, Dragnet had been on the radio a year or two and was really starting to be a success. After the filming of The Halls of Montezuma, I had won some money from Jack playing Gin Rummy, and he invited me down to NBC to pick up my winnings. While I was there, he said, 'Have you ever done radio?' I said no, and he asked me if I would like to. I said sure, why not. So, from then on, I did Dragnet pretty regularly as a guest.
"Then I was drafted into the Army in 1952, and Jack and I had become good friends. Any time I could get home on a Sunday, I could do Dragnet on the radio.
"It was a live show then, wasn't it?"
"No, it was on tape, and every other Sunday they would tape two shows. So, if I could get home on Sunday, I could do two shows, and I would make about $112, or something like that, which is what I was making a month in the Army. When I got out of the service, I made Pete Kelly's Blues with Jack."
"Would you consider yourself to be one of the Jack Webb ensemble players?"
"Certainly. There was a group of excellent radio actors, Olan Soule, Virginia Gregg, and many others. If Jack liked you, he would use you all the time. We were pretty good friends."
"You did a Columbo, Murder by the Book. What was it like working with Jack Cassidy, the villain of that episode?
"Oh, Jack Cassidy was a lot of fun. We were up in Big Bear filming, and he was a character. He played Jack Cassidy to the absolute hilt. In fact, Universal has just put together a commemorative, leather bound script of that show to give to Peter Falk. Steven Spielberg was the director, so he signed the script, and they sent a young woman down from Hollywood to have me sign it as well."
Murder by the Book was the series debut for Columbo and would represent one of the most amazing collaborations in the history of television. The writer was Steven Bochco (Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, NYPD Blue), the director was Stephen Spielberg, Columbo producers Richard Levinson and William Link were well-known for their excellent TV films including the Execution of Private Slovik, and , of course, the stars Peter Falk, Martin Milner, and Jack Cassidy.)
"Going back to the early years, did you enjoy doing Mister Roberts?
"Sure, I was just out of the Army, and I was happy to have a job. I had done a movie for John Ford prior to that, and he cast me for the role. Then Ford took ill, and Mervin Leroy took over. I was happy to have a job, it was a good scene, and it helped my career."
"What do you consider as the best film role you ever played?"
"That has to be the Sweet Smell of Success with Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis. It was a challenging role with very well written dialogue. I think it was one of the best performances of my career. It was placed on the National Film Registry in 1993.
"Your career has really been phenomenal."
"It has been a lot better than I ever had reason to expect. Like so many actors, when I first started, , I said just let me make a living at this because it it something that I really enjoy doing."
"When you were at Fort Ord, you met David Jansen (sic) and Clint Eastwood."
"We were all in Special Services, and in addition to being entertainers, we handled all of the sports--the baseball team, the golf course. Clint was a lifeguard at the pool."
"There's a story that you and David Janssen convinced Clint he should go into acting."
"No, that's not true. Clint was already under contract to Universal, and when we all made a movie together after I got out of the Army, both Clint and David were under contract to Universal, but I wasn't. I think Clint was destined to be a star no matter what. He's so talented, not only as an actor, but if you look back on the things he's directed, I think he's a brilliant guy. Even films that have not been successful , like Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, which was not a very successful film."
What a cool movie!"
"Yes, it is a good movie."
And the soundtrack! Or course, Eastwood is a jazz buff."
"He does love jazz."
"So, what do you see down the road for Marty Milner?"
"Well, I'd just like to do this radio show until I drop dead in my tracks, hopefully wearing a pair of waders. I don't make a lot of mony from radio, but the perks are great--equipment and trips, and the ability to do what I want to do."
"So, you don't feel any pressing desire to get back in front of the camera?"
"No, not really. I don't like to go to Los Angeles. I'm not looking for those twelve-hour days anymore. I've done just about everything in film and television, along with radio and Broadway."
"Well, Marty. I want to thank you for taking the time to talk with us and for sharing your memories of not only the old 'route 66' series, but your film, TV, and radio work as well. I'm sure our readers are going to enjoy your memories, as well as finding out what you are doing today."