`Adam 12` star Martin Milner passes away

“I had an extended, lengthy friendship with Marty and we remained pals up until the top”, stated McCord on Monday. Wonderful films, wonderful television shows, pioneering shows like Route 66. He was one of the great guys. He then appeared in John Wayne’s “Sands of Iwo Jima” in 1949 and “Operation Pacific” in 1951.

Later, Milner played the betrayed husband of Patty Duke’s character in the 1967 film adaptation of Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls. His big break came in the early 1950s, when he met actor-producer Jack Webb, who gave him a role on “Dragnet” and later cast him in “Adam-12”.

“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. Joe Friday, a huge hit.

“So I went to work in the “Dragnet” radio series”, Milner recalled in a 1973 TV Guide interview.

From 1968 through the 1974-’75 season, he played a police officer on a popular police drama – “Adam 12”.

Mr. Milner had no illusions about his place in the Hollywood firmament and seemed not to be particularly concerned about it.

As clean-cut Yale graduate Tod Stiles on Route 66, which aired on CBS from 1960-64, Milner and his working-class buddy Buz Murdock (George Maharis, later to be replaced by Glenn Corbett’s Lincoln Case) traveled all over the country in Tod’s Corvette convertible in search of adventure. It was famously filmed on-location.

Route 66 ran for more than 115 episodes; Milner followed it up with Adam-12, which ran from 1968-’75.

Milner and McCord were reunited in the 1989 TV movie “Nashville Beat“, in which Milner played a former LAPD officer who moved to Tennessee to join the Nashville Police Department.

“His depiction of a professional & tough yet compassionate cop led 2 thousands of men & women applying 2 become #LAPD officers, including me”, he wrote in another tweet. “Godspeed Martin, you will live forever in our hearts”.

Martin Miller, the star of “Route 66” and “Adam-12”, has passed away.

After retiring from acting, Milner co-hosted a radio show about fishing called “Let’s Talk Hook-Up” on XTRA 690. He stayed with the program for about a decade.