Biography
Actor David Janssen is best remembered for his role as Dr. Richard Kimble in "The Fugitive," the classic suspense television show that ran for four seasons in the mid 1960s. Accused and convicted of murdering his wife, Janssen becomes an outlaw when the train taking him to prison crashes, and he begins his own manhunt for the one-armed murderer who got away. Before hitting it big with the show, he played numerous bit parts in forgettable B movies over the years, but his movie career never really took off. Television was where Janssen made his name and fortune. In 1957, he played one of TV's first tough-guy detectives in "Richard Diamond, Private Detective." Post-"Fugitive," he starred in the crime show "O'Hara, United States Treasury," co-created by "Dragnet"'s Jack Webb, and in the short-lived "Harry O," the latter show fondly remembered by viewers and critics as one of the best crime shows of its day. Although his big-screen career never panned out, many action fans will remember him best as the doubting journalist in need of some political indoctrination from John Wayne in the gung-ho Vietnam War film "The Green Berets." Janssen died in 1980 of a heart attack at the age of 48.
