Joseph Campanella dies at 93

Joseph Campanella in a first-season episode of Mannix

Joseph Campanella, whose acting career lasted more than a half-century, died today at 93, according to Variety.

Campanella was a familiar face on U.S. television television, splitting his time between playing villains and sympathetic characters.

His credits included co-starring in the first season of Mannix as Lew Wickersham, the head of Intertect, the large agency where hero Joe Mannix (Mike Connors) worked.

Wickersham prided himself on devising a set of rules he said were designed to get the most of his employees. “Not me,” Mannix replied in a scene in the show’s pilot.

Throughout the first season, there was a tension between Mannix and his boss. That angle was dropped starting with the second season when Mannix went off on his own.

Campanella was nominated for an Emmy for playing Wickersham. He also returned in a sixth-season episode playing a different role.

Wickersham was based on entertainment mogul Lew Wasserman, the head of MCA, the parent company at the time of Universal.

According to commentary tracks on the first-season Mannix DVD set, Wasserman approved of Campanella’s performance. After Campanella departed Mannix, he was hired by Universal to play an attorney in The Lawyers segment of The Bold Ones.

Later in his career, Campanella was a voice in a 1990s Spider-Man cartoon. The actor was also the younger brother of character actor Frank Campanella (1919-2006).

1960s adventure footnote: My Friend Tony

Main title to My Friend Tony

One of the most successful television producers of the 1960s was Sheldon Leonard (1907-1997). Leonard produced many situation comedies, but also dabbled in dramas such as I Spy (1965-68).

My Friend Tony (1969) was one of Leonard’s least successful efforts, which ran a mere 16 episodes on NBC.

The series star was James Whitmore (1921-2009), an Emmy winning actor who was also twice nominated for an Oscar.  The title character was played by Enzo Cerusico (1937-1991). Whitmore’s character first encountered Cerusico’s Tony during World War II in Italy.

These days, there’s not a lot of information available about the show. One promo that aired during NBC’s broadcast of the 1969 Super Bowl had this description: “A vial of deadly germs imperils an entire city on My Friend Tony tonight.”

The series creators included Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts, who had written the 1949 film White Heat. By 1969, the duo had become writer-producers handling the day-to-day supervision of Mannix, which aired on CBS.

Leonard summoned Earle Hagen to come up with a theme. The musician, by this point, had worked for Leonard for years on sitcoms such as The Andy Griffith Show, Gomer Pyle and The Dick Van Dyke Show. Hagen also had composed the theme for I Spy.

A video with the main and end titles to an episode of My Friend Tony has been on YouTube for a while. The cast included veteran character actor Richard Anderson as well as future sitcom star Penny Marshall.