Joseph Campanella

Lew Wickersham from Mannix Dr. Graham Aspinall from Mannix

Ah, Joseph Campanella. Like all great character actors, one of those people who turns up everywhere. The name isn't always matched with the face, but people remember him.

I definitely saw him turn up everywhere. For a while, he was one of many character actors whose name I stared at in the guest-starring list and tried to place. Then I would see him and go, "Oh yeah, that guy!"

The first thing I remember ever seeing him in, though I didn't know his name, was Touched by an Angel. I even remember exactly where I was when I saw the episode. And when I watched the episode semi-recently after becoming enthusiastic about this great man, I realized something very odd. Only two things about the episode had really stood out to me since I saw it in first-run in 1997: 1, the flashbacks to the 1950s, which fascinated me, and 2, Joseph's character in the present-day scenes. He definitely made an impression on me. I didn't know his name, but I knew he was someone special.

I had become obsessed with Mannix sometime back, after watching episodes to see Richard Anderson and Christopher Cary. But I had been avoiding season 1, because I'd heard negative things about the different format and how Joe Mannix always argued with his boss. I figured it was probably very volatile arguments and that they had a lot of bad blood between them, and I wasn't too interested in that. But when I exhausted all other watching options, I decided I wanted to see season 1 too, so I rented the first disc from Netflix.

It only took the first episode to show me that I had been seriously misinformed. The different format didn't seriously bother me, and more importantly, Joe Mannix and Lew Wickersham had something special between them. They didn't always agree, but they cared about and respected each other. They were friends.

Over time, I also discovered that Lew, more than any other character throughout the series, believed in Joe and his ideas. Sometimes Lew was horrified by the particular manner in which Joe executed an idea, but he didn't dismiss Joe's ideas as nonsense or tell Joe he was imagining things. Every other true friend Joe had in the series, from Peggy Fair to policemen Art and Adam, sometimes or often scoffed and tried to convince Joe to give up his ideas about certain cases. Lew never did.

Of course, that didn't mean Lew didn't try to convince Joe to work on the cases Lew wanted him to work on if Joe had gotten interested in something other than what Lew wanted. There were some clashes over that sort of thing and Lew was forced to suspend Joe at least once. But Lew ran a huge, national detective agency. He had to be professional and think of the overall picture. Still, Joe was his friend and he often went very much out of his way for him. And Joe, unlike Carl Kolchak with Tony Vincenzo, recognized that and appreciated it.

Lew was something special. So was his actor. Almost immediately, I added Joseph to my list of favorites and started looking up everything I could find that he was in.

I still wish they had chosen to bring Lew back when they got Joseph back for a guest-spot on Mannix in season 6. But the whole episode, The Crimson Halo, is clearly a celebration of the great interaction and camaraderie between Mike Connors and Joseph. It is truly a delight and a treasure, even though Joseph's character isn't Lew.

Joseph plays good guys and bad guys with equal capability. He also has played very tortured characters, such as a drug addict in the Ironside episode The Happy Dreams of Hollow Men. He's incredible at whatever part he takes and is always very believable. Like the great Simon Oakland, Joseph often brings human qualities to the tortured or antagonistic characters he portrays.