Going Conway (Again!)

It's been fifteen years since I put up a post on Gary Conway. I don't typically do many repeats, but way back then my posts tended to be more abbreviated than they later became. While I was poking around the WWW, I stumbled upon some pics that had not been shared here before and so I thought I'd present them to you as something of a supplement to that long ago post. Conway is surely best known for essaying the male lead on Irwin Allen's 1968-1970 fantasy series Land of the Giants, as seen here in his Captain Steve Burton guise.

Conway's angular looks and fit physique provided a strong sense of heroism and looked terrific when placed against the sultry Deanna Lund.

Those angular looks could sometimes come off as quite severe...

...ya see what I mean, Dorothy?

Giants was a show I wasn't able to see in its initial run. In my area, it was NEVER repeated or aired in syndication, so it became almost mythic to me when I was a young man. I recall a manager of mine (at Red Lobster in the 1980s) telling me that it had been his favorite show, yet I had no way on earth of seeing it! Finally with the advent of widespread cable and, I think, the SciFi Channel, it was run again and I was able to take it in.

"This'll put some lead in your pencil..." Ha ha! By the time I finally got to watch Giants, I was already familiar with Conway from another project he'd worked on. How that came to me is a hoot in an of itself...!

Seen here is Conway in the 1975 hot mess Once Is Not Enough. His part in the movie is negligible and near pointless, but I wasn't just going to forget those legs... But how and why did I see Enough before ever getting the chance to watch Giants?

It's because I was the biggest Dynasty fan on the planet's surface. I lived and breathed everything about that show. So when its breakout star, Miss Joan Collins, came out with a home video collection in 1985, I naturally HAD to rent each of the movies featured in it. I knew nothing about these movies, but they each had a videotaped introduction from her prior to viewing and those I had to see. So it was off to Blockbuster to rent them, one after the other.

This is what La Collins had to say on the back of the box for Enough. The movie is actually quite rotten, but that doesn't mean I don't utterly adore it! I did a whole tribute to it right here.

This collection would ultimately be expanded with a few other titles like Alfie (1966), This Property is Condemned (1966) and Lifeguard (1976!) Now, some of you tykes might be thinking, "Why did people rent movies from a video store...??!" since such things scarcely exist anymore. To that point I say look at the price of these VHS cassettes. $59.95 each. Does that sound like a lot? How 'bout when adjusted for inflation to today's staggering equivalent -- $175.00!!!!

Anyhoo, that was my very first exposure to Conway and only made me that more interested in seeing Land of the Giants.

But first, amazingly enough, came reruns of his show prior to that... Burke's Law. (I'm not looking this up, but if memory serves, it was TNT which began showing it.)

Burke's Law was a sort of all-star variation on Perry Mason, but with a private eye instead of a defense attorney. Gene Barry played Amos Burke, with young Conway as his aide. It was a longstanding TV trope to have an older, established name costarring with a fresh, new face. Sometimes the actors got on famously as in the case of Raymond Massey and Richard Chamberlain on Dr. Kildare. Sometimes the teamings were a disaster, in the case of Riverboat with Darren McGavin and Burt Reynolds. With Hawaii 5-O, Jack Lord and James MacArthur were amiable, though there was never a question as to who called the shots. With Law, Conway found his lead actor Barry selfish and he was not displeased to be rid of the show after two years when it was re-tooled (and then flopped.)

Conway did flounder a bit for three TV seasons before Giants came along to provide steady work once more. He'd had some rough going prior to that, though.

His very first movie, I Was a Teenage Frankenstein (1957) had his face completely covered for much of its running time! At least the makers had the good sense to show us his torso.

It was a well-defined torso which he had already shown to good effect in a number of physique portraits prior to landing that initial movie gig.

Check out those diamond-cutters...! Ha ha!

His other 1957 movie can be read about in great detail here. Then it was back to the well for more Frankenstein-y antics with How to Make a Monster (1958.) The film concerned a studio makeup artist who loses his job and seeks revenge on the studio.

He uses mind control to get a young actor (Conway) who's playing the Teenage Frankenstein to fulfill his plan. So you had Conway playing an actor playing a role that he'd actually played himself the prior year! Unusual and confusing!

Gary Conway, who'd portrayed the Teenage Frankenstein, playing Tony Mantell, who's been cast as Teenage Frankenstein...! Whaat??

Fortunately, before long, he was able to show his face (and more) as a guest on shows like Surfside 6 and Hawaiian Eye.

The now Warner Brothers contractee popped up on many of their shows from Bourbon Street Beat to Colt .45 to Lawman to 77 Sunset Strip before landing the lead in Land of the Giants. In that capacity, he was subject to a wealth of now-campy publicity shots.

"Take two of these and call me in the morning..."

"Gary want a cracker?"

"Is this the party to whom I am speaking...?"

"Eggs are HOW MUCH a dozen...?!"

"I preferred the trapeze in my bedroom back home."

"Screw you..."

"Plug it in, plug it in..."

"Yes, is this my agent?" (By the way, there once was a blog called Dialing the Phone with a Pencil that I enjoyed a lot.)

"Hang in there bud, you'll be remembered forever for this show."

"Koochie-koo!"

As you might guess, serious and/or significant acting gigs proved hard to come by after the antics of Land of the Giants. He did land roles in a couple of TV movies and some guest roles such as on Ghost Story and, as depicted here, Columbo (the one in which Donald Pleasance was the guest killer.)

That same year (1973), he startled some fans by agreeing to pose for Playgirl magazine, though it was in its earliest days, when there was no frontal nudity called for.

This was about as risque as it got.

Two years after Once Is Not Enough, he produced and starred in the revenge flick The Farmer (1977), but it had little impact.

Apart from a 1981 shot on The Love Boat, it was a decade before his next appearance. He acted in American Ninja 2: The Confrontation (1987.) By this point, he'd turned his attention to wine-making with a successful venture in California.

His last stab at show business was when he wrote and directed a 2000 project called Woman's Story, which starred Erin Gray and Kent McCord. All about a marriage torn apart by adultery (and venereal disease!), it remains an elusive item to view.

His character, appropriately enough, works with figure models (female.) It was a realm he knew something about from his own days in the posing strap. Conway is still among us today at age 88.

The End - Part I

The End - Part II

The End - Part III