I wish that Conrad appeared in more Columbo's. His portraying of Milo Janus was exceptional. Anyone else feel this way???

Robert Conrad was great in that "Columbo" episode. Years later, he also did a very good job portraying a killer as a guest-star on the short-lived "J.J. Starbuck."

You bet ... "An Exercise In Fatality" is a top five favorite, and it's because of Conrad's interaction with Falk, and maybe a little for Gretchen Corbett too, who never looked sweeter on film than she did on columbo -- even later as Beth Davenport in "The Rockford Files".

I would imagine the door was open to him (like it was for Culp and others), but Conrad was up to his chin in his own studio projects during those years. Besides, we never hear about the offers an actor turns down -- just the ones they take.

I don't think there were ever any Rockford plots that would have called for Beth Davenport to wear a bikini. :D

Conrad does fine in the part, basically playing a character that would have audiences think, "What if Jack La Lanne were a sleazy killer?"

You're so right! I totally LOVED his portrayal. Even his gravelly voice when Ruth confronted him about his expenditures, and he said, "Quality, Ruth, quality." Yum. Not to mention that casual yet confident way he had of interacting with Jessica. He "got" the smarmy, confident shyster character down pat.

Of course, he was so busy with his other projects at the time, it's a wonder he found time to do Columbo at all. I would have loved to have seen him do more. Carol

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Replying to:

I wish that Conrad appeared in more Columbo's. His portraying of Milo Janus was exceptional. Anyone else feel this way???

In general, Conrad played good guys, such as Jim West in "Wild Wild West" and Pappy Boyington (A true-life
World War II pilot) in "Baa, Baa, Blacksheep", but he made the shift to bad-guy in Columbo quite well.
He also played a really bad guy in Mission Impossible
in the famous episode where he plays a hired assassin who chooses everything he does at random by throwing dice...he chooses a hotel at random from the phone book when he arrives at the airport, but the IM team
picks him up in their cab and take him to a hotel that they have 20 minutes to make up with the name he chose.

Ah yes, one of my top 5 eps.

"Purr-rofits. What *do* you do with all that money, Milo"

Totally agree Milo Janus takes some beating as a killer you want Columbo to nail. He was a total creep but all the better for it. Exercise has got to be hailed as one of the best and I never tire of it.

What I also love is the fact that when Milo kills Gene it is quite physical, which is inkeeping with Milo's profession but shows real aggression and determination that he could strangle the man after chasing him down - pretty tough for a Columbo killer!

One of his best lines to Columbo was "I don't care what visions you see when you look in your cigar ashes." (Comparing it to tea leaf reading and things like that.) He repeated the line later, when Columbo told him one of his deductions, sice he couldn't seem to prove it - "More cigar ashes." So it really started to sound like an actual expression.

My favorite Conrad line in that ep is "When I grow, Gene, you grow." It's the slogan for his whole scam.

Robert Conrad trivia for "Columbo" fans: He was born Conrad Falk (or, depending on the source, Konrad Falkowski).