{"id":428,"date":"2025-02-10T10:42:35","date_gmt":"2025-02-10T10:42:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/blog\/2007\/05\/03\/wagner-still-punching-in-hustle\/"},"modified":"2025-09-07T19:56:57","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T19:56:57","slug":"wagner-still-punching-in-hustle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=428","title":{"rendered":"The time I asked Robert Wagner about mortality"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"robert_wagner_2012_07-09\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By Ray Bennett<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the hell kind of question is that?\u201d It\u2019s 1985 and I\u2019m sitting with Robert Wagner, who turns 95 today, in his luxury trailer on the Warner Bros. lot where he was making the shortlived TV series \u201cLime Street\u201d.<\/p>\n

Two years earlier, I\u2019d had lunch with him in that same trailer on the lot in Burbank where \u201cHart to Hart\u201d was coming to an end. All around are photos of his family with many of his wife Natalie Wood (pictured below), who drowned at sea in November 1981 at the age of 43.<\/p>\n

On the way there, in pouring rain, Wagner\u2019s longtime PR man, George, says: \u201cPlease don\u2019t ask him about Natalie or Jill. It\u2019s not that he has anything to hide, it\u2019s just that he has nothing he wants to say.\u201d St. John was an old friend of the Wagners and she had been a steady companion since Wood\u2019s death. (They would marry in 1990).<\/p>\n

\"gty_robert_wagner_natalie_wood_jt_130119_wmain\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A sign on Wagner\u2019s trailer door declares: Under No Circumstances Disturb Me. George knocks and we enter. Wagner is on the phone but he bids entry and George disappears. Wagner gets off the phone. At 53, he has become a little stout around the middle but he looks fit. His manner is stern until the smile comes and then there are few actors whose features are more appealingly friendly.<\/p>\n

Wagner pours wine but not for himself: \u201cNot when I\u2019m working. I get sleepy.\u201d He has seen me looking at the pictures on the wall but he chooses to remark on the trailer itself, which is the most luxurious you can imagine, and the moment is lost.<\/p>\n

Two years later, we\u2019re in the same trailer with the same photos of Wood but the mood is different because of the death of Samantha Smith (pictured below on the right), who was a co-star on the show. She had become famous at age 10 when she wrote a letter to then Soviet Leader Yuri Andropov and was invited to visit Moscow, which she did. She perished with her father in a plane crash just a month before I spoke to Wagner.<\/p>\n

\"RJ_Limestreet<\/a><\/p>\n

I choose my words carefully: I ask him if recent events had caused him to change his attitude toward\u00a0mortality.<\/p>\n

Wagner says, \u201cWhat the hell kind of question is that?\u201d and he ponders for a moment or two. He says, \u201cSo many people have had tragedy in their lives. I think you realise that when people that are very close to you are taken. Life constantly causes you to reassess just why you\u2019re here. You realise that there are only a few things that are really important about being here, and that\u2019s to be good to one another and to care for each other because no one has any control over what is going to be dealt to them in life. That little girl had a lot going for her and suddenly she\u2019s gone. Her father, Arthur, was a wonderful man. They were quality people, believe me. So, yeah, it really makes you realise what\u2019s important. My focus is my family. That\u2019s always on top.\u201d<\/p>\n

I met Wagner several times and always found him to be a charming, self-deprecating and amusing gent, the kind who would write a note to your editor if he liked something you\u2019d written. At a media event in 1987 for a TV movie titled \u201cLove Among Thieves\u201d, his co-star Audrey Hepburn was surrounded by admirers and it was impossible to get close. Wagner came to my rescue. We were chatting and he said, \u201cHave you met Audrey?\u201d. When I said no, he created a path through the scrum and so I met Holly Golightly, who was as unflustered and gracious you would hope.<\/p>\n

\"Love<\/a><\/p>\n

The Detroit-born actor is probably known best today for his appearances on TV shows such as \u201cNCIS\u201d (with Mark Harmon, pictured below) and \u201cTwo and a Half Men\u201d and the \u201cAustin Powers\u201d comedies and he\u2019s always been easy-going about his career: \u201cI came to Warner Bros. to try to break into movies and was signed to a picture with Jimmy Cagney called \u2018The Grey Line\u2019 or something like that. It was 1946-47, around there, but they had a big writers\u2019 strike and it never got made. I went back to school but everything turns out for the best \u2013 you never know.\u201d<\/p>\n

In those days, all the major studios had scores of young performers under contract. Wagner worked steadily and it seems now that his career just sailed along in a wide range of pictures of varying quality. There was the title role in the period film \u201cPrince Valiant\u201d (1954), mountain-climbing adventure \u201cThe Mountain\u201d (1956) with Spencer Tracy, espionage yarn \u201cStopover Tokyo\u201d (1957) with Joan Collins, and romantic comedy \u201cSay One for Me\u201d (1959) with Debbie Reynolds and Bing Crosby.<\/p>\n

\"Wager<\/a>He told me, \u201cI always knew that this was what I wanted to do but I never knew if I would make it. I had a lot of people stroking me over the years — a lot of good people like Spencer Tracy and Elia Kazan who boosted me. I could have gone down. I had a lot of enthusiasm but I don’t think I was really so talented. I don’t think I\u2019ve had all that talent within me that was bursting loose, that couldn’t wait to be seen and captured on the screen. I think I was really fortunate.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know what that sounds like, but it\u2019s the truth. It\u2019s the truth. I mean, you look back at some of those pictures and you say, \u2018Whew!\u2019 But I kept going and in some of the stuff I was good, you know? Some of the stuff, I was O.K. I look back, and some of it wasn\u2019t so bad for the time.\u00a0I\u2019ve had a lot of ups and downs. It\u2019s not been particularly a case of not getting the parts that you want but of not working at all.”<\/p>\n

In the early 1960s, Wagner moved to Europe and made four movies there\u00a0\u2013 World War II epic \u201cThe Longest Day\u201d (1962), Philip Leacock\u2019s \u201cThe War Lover\u201d (1962) with Steve McQueen, Vittorio De Sica\u2019s \u201cThe Condemned of Altona\u201d (1962) with Sophia Loren, Maximillian Schell and Fredric March, and Blake Edwards\u2019s \u201cThe Pink Panther\u201d (1963) with David Niven, Peter Sellers and Claudia Cardinale.<\/p>\n

\"Paul<\/a><\/p>\n

Back in the U.S., he found that he had been forgotten: \u201cWhen I came back from Europe in the early \u201960s, I had a soft spot for a while. I was out of work for a long time. The guy who pulled me out of it was Paul Newman in \u2018Harper\u2019 (pictured above). I think I loosened up a little bit in that film too. I\u2019ve been really fortunate to have worked with people who have encouraged me, who\u2019ve said, \u2018Come on, you know it\u2019s not gonna be that bad. Do it!\u2019\u00a0I was sitting around the other day with a guy who started out in the picture business the same time I did and, I don\u2019t know, it\u2019s a real phenomenon: if you\u2019re there and you keep going, if you just keep punching at it, somehow you stick around.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later would come blockbusters such as \u201cThe Towering Inferno\u201d (1974) with Steve McQueen, Paul Newman and William Holden and \u201cMidway\u201d (1976) with Charlton Heston, Henry Fonda, James Coburn and Robert Mitchum and TV movies including \u201cCat on a Hot Tin Roof\u201d (1976) with Natalie Wood and Laurence Olivier, \u201cThere Must Be a Pony\u201d (1986) with Elizabeth Taylor, and \u201cLove Among the Thieves\u201d (1987) with Audrey Hepburn.<\/p>\n

His TV series \u201cIt Takes a Thief\u201d ran for just 66 episodes from 1968 to 1970 but was extremely popular and \u201cSwitch\u201d ran for 71 episodes from 1975 to 1978. His biggest TV success was in \u201cHart to Hart\u201d with Stefanie Powers, which had 111 episodes from 1979 to 1984 and returned in 1993 for a series of TV movies.<\/p>\n

Wagner made a TV series in the United Kingdom in the 1979s for the BBC and Universal Pictures titled \u201cColditz\u201d. A prisoner of war drama set during World War II, it costarred Jack Hedley, Richard Heffer and Edward Hardwicke, shown below standing behind Wagner and David McCallum. The series ran for 24 episodes in 1972-74 but the American actor appeared in just 14 of them.<\/p>\n

\"Colditz<\/a><\/p>\n

He told me, \u201cI liked the opening, the first year, but then we had a very difficult time. It started out as a kind of documentary but in the end they had the prisoners out sitting on deck chairs and they’d be singing away. The guys in Colditz never sang; they were starving to death. I said, ‘What is this, a bloody musical?’ I turned my back on the camera and walked out because they took something that could really have been great and put it in the toilet. The reason I reacted so strongly was because I really loved doing it, and I hated to see it wasted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wagner said he had no great roles that he was dying to play, or the book that he wanted to make into a film: \u201cThere is no \u2018Gandhi\u2019 in my life. I think actors have to take what is dealt to them. You can spend an awful lot of time worrying about what you\u2019d like to do but there\u2019s a lot of good stuff just lying around on the ground if you peck at it long enough and make it happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was particularly proud of working with Olivier and Wood in the TV version of \u201cCat on a Hot Tin Roof\u201d (pictured below): \u201cI\u2019ve often said I never thought something like that would happen to me in my whole life. A telephone call comes. I say, \u2018What? Tennessee Williams? Larry Olivier?\u2019 I mean, jeez! You never know what\u2019s gonna come down the road.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Wagner,<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ray Bennett \u201cWhat the hell kind of question is that?\u201d It\u2019s 1985 and I\u2019m sitting with Robert Wagner, who turns 95 today, in his luxury trailer on the Warner Bros. lot where he was making the shortlived TV series … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,1263,2257,15],"tags":[2336,2335,2337,357,2334,2333],"class_list":["post-428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-interviews","category-memory-lane","category-recalling","category-television","tag-colditz","tag-hart-to-hart","tag-to-catch-a-thief","tag-audrey-hepburn","tag-natalie-wood","tag-robert-wagner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=428"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11526,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428\/revisions\/11526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}