In addition to his work on television, he appeared in numerous films, including Sudden Fear (1952), Good Neighbor Sam (1964), Situation Hopeless...

[11] Connors's film career started in the early 1950s, when he made his acting debut in a supporting role opposite Joan Crawford and Jack Palance in the thriller Sudden Fear (1952).

He had initially been rejected for an audition by producer Joseph Kaufman due to his lack of experience, but after sneaking into Republic Pictures and meeting director David Miller, Connors was given a chance to read the script and was offered the part.

[12] Connors was cast in the John Wayne film, Island in the Sky, in which he played a crewman on one of the search-and-rescue planes.

and The People's Choice and in two Rod Cameron syndicated crime dramas, City Detective and the Western-themed State Trooper, and played the villain in the first episode filmed (but second one aired) of ABC's smash hit Maverick, opposite James Garner in 1957.

[14] Connors had roles in several of the earliest films Roger Corman directed: Five Guns West (1955), The Day the World Ended (1955), Swamp Women (1956), and The Oklahoma Woman (1956).

[16] In 1958, Connors appeared in the title role of the episode "Simon Pitt", the series finale of the NBC Western Jefferson Drum, starring Jeff Richards as a frontier newspaper editor.

That same year, Connors was cast as Miles Borden, a corrupt US Army lieutenant bitter over his $54 monthly pay, on NBC's Wagon Train in the episode "The Dora Gray Story" with Linda Darnell in the title role.

An episode of Studio 57 starring Connors and titled "Getaway Car" was proposed as a pilot for a series about the CHP to be called Motorcycle Cop.

Connors stated in an interview that the show's primary sponsor, J.B. Williams, refused CBS president James Aubrey's request to move it to a later time slot on a different day.

In 1963, he guest-starred as Jack Marson in the episode "Shadow of the Cougar" on the NBC modern Western series, Redigo, starring Richard Egan.

[14] In 1964, Connors appeared in a pinch-hit role for Raymond Burr as attorney Joe Kelly in the Perry Mason episode, "The Case of the Bullied Bowler".

[20] In 1964, Connors had a role in the Jack Lemmon comedy Good Neighbor Sam, and was the leading man to Susan Hayward and Bette Davis in Where Love Has Gone.

He co-starred with Robert Redford in one of his earliest film roles, the World War II black comedy Situation Hopeless...

[13] Connors was strongly considered to play Matt Helm in The Silencers (1966), but that role had eventually gone to Dean Martin.

However, his audition had impressed Columbia Pictures, so Connors was instead cast in the similar James Bond spoof film Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die (1966).

Connors himself performed the stuntwork of dangling from a rope ladder attached to a helicopter flying off the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro when the local stuntman refused to do it.

During the first season of the series, Joe Mannix worked for Intertect, a large Los Angeles detective agency run by his superior Lew Wickersham (Joseph Campanella).

From the second season onward, Mannix opened his own detective agency and is assisted by his secretary Peggy Fair (Gail Fisher).

Then-president Lucille Ball pushed for CBS to keep the show on the air by removing the high-tech computers and making Mannix an independent detective.

When CBS discovered the deal, the executives quickly decided to cancel Mannix to avoid losing viewership for new episodes to the reruns.

[27] The film was intended to be the pilot for a new ABC series titled Ohanian, about an Armenian-American former homicide detective who is now a charter-boat skipper.

[13] Connors' final appearance was in a 2007 Two and a Half Men episode, as a love interest of Evelyn Harper's (Holland Taylor).