Biography
Red-headed, freckle-faced Martin Milner was only 15 when he made his screen debut in
Life With Father (1947), and would continue to play wide-eyed high schoolers and college kids well into the next decade. His early film assignments included the teenaged Marine recruit in
Lewis Milestone's The Halls of Montezuma (1951) and the obnoxious suitor of
Jeanne Crain in
Belles on Their Toes (1952). His first regular TV series was The Stu Erwin Show (1950-1955), in which he played the boyfriend (and later husband) of Stu's daughter Joyce. More mature roles came his way in
Marjorie Morningstar (1957) as
Natalie Wood's playwright sweetheart and in The Sweet Smell of Success (1957) as the jazz musician targeted for persecution by Winchell-esque columnist
Burt Lancaster. Beginning in 1960, he enjoyed a four-year run as Corvette-driving Tod Stiles on TV's
Route 66 (a statue of Milner and his co-star
George Maharis currently stands at the Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, KY). A longtime friend and associate of producer/director/actor
Jack Webb, Milner was cast as veteran L.A.P.D. patrolman Pete Malloy on the Webb-produced TV weekly
Adam-12, which ran from 1968 to 1975. His later TV work included a short-lived 1970s series based on Johan Wyss'
Swiss Family Robinson. Later employed as a California radio personality, Martin Milner continues to make occasional TV guest appearances; one of these was in the 1989 TV movie
Nashville Beat, in which he was reunited with his
Adam-12 co-star
Kent McCord. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide