David Janssen - Acting Career

Acting Career

Janssen appeared in many television series before he landed programs of his own. In 1956, he and Peter Breck appeared in John Bromfield's syndicated series Sheriff of Cochise in the episode "The Turkey Farmers". Later, he guest starred on NBC's medical drama The Eleventh Hour in the role of Hal Kincaid in the 1962 episode "Make Me a Place", with series co-stars Wendell Corey and Jack Ging. He joined Milner in a 1962 episode of Route 66 as the character Kamo in the episode "One Tiger to a Hill."

Janssen starred in four television series of his own:

• Richard Diamond, Private Detective (1957–60),
• The Fugitive, the hit Quinn Martin produced series, (1963–67),
• O'Hara, U.S. Treasury (1971–72), and
• Harry O (1974–76).

At the time, the final episode of The Fugitive held the record for the greatest number of American homes with television sets to watch a series finale, at 72% in August 1967.

His films include To Hell and Back, the autobiography of Audie Murphy, who is considered the most decorated soldier in the military history of the United States; John Wayne's war film The Green Berets (1968), and opposite Gregory Peck in the space story Marooned about three stranded astronauts. Janssen played an alcoholic in the 1977 TV movie A Sensitive, Passionate Man, which co-starred Angie Dickinson and an engineer who devises an unbeatable system for blackjack in the 1978 made-for-TV movie Nowhere to Run, co-starring Stefanie Powers and Linda Evans.

Though Janssen's scenes were cut from the final release, he also appeared as a journalist in the film Inchon, which he accepted to work with Laurence Olivier who played General Douglas MacArthur.

At the time of his death, Janssen had just begun filming a television movie playing the part of Father Damien, the priest who dedicated himself to the leper colony on the island of Molokai. The part was eventually reassigned to actor Ken Howard.