Martin Milner, who became a star on 1960s television hits like "Route 66" and "Adam 12," died Sunday at 83.
Milner's entertainment career covered five decades, spanning numerous television series from "Dragnet" to "Murder She Wrote," but was defined by his clean-cut looks when he was cast as authority figures, said
CNN.
Milner played Tod Stiles, who with Buz Murdock traveled the country in "Route 66," which ran from 1960 to 1964 in a television series that tackled cultural issues and America's car culture.
In "Adam-12," Milner helped America become familiar with police jargon and procedures with plotlines created from actual cases from the Los Angeles Police Department. That series, with the familiar radio dispatcher catchphrase "1-Adam-12," ran from 1968 to 1975.
"The innovative series had a more realistic quality than previous cop shows: The partners, on which the show narrowly focused, would patrol with no idea what they would encounter through the course of the day, and viewers got to witness the highs and lows in their lives," wrote Carmel Dagan of
Variety.
"Milner had a long association with Jack Webb, whose Mark VII Ltd. produced 'Adam-12' and had produced 'Dragnet' since 1951. After Webb and Milner met on the set of the movie 'Halls of Montezuma' in 1950, Webb cast Milner in various roles on 'Dragnet' in the early '50s, first on radio and then when the crime drama transitioned to TV, where Milner appeared in six episodes of 'Dragnet, from 1952-55," said Dagan.
Milner was born in Detroit in 1931, where his father was a film distributor and his mother a professional dancer, said
The New York Times. He began acting in his early teens and served in the U.S. Army from 1952 to 1952, where he directed training films.
Milner became known in San Diego for his fishing show "Let's Talk Hook-Up" and the syndicated "Let's Talk Fishing," which ran from the 1980s into the 2000s.
Fellow television police officers and real ones remembered Milner on Twitter.
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