Best known for his seven-year run as officer Jim Reed on Adam 12, Kent McCord turns 81 today.
For so many of us, the oh-so handsome Kent was our first crush as he starred in 175 episodes of the classic NBC police drama opposite Martin Milner.
Kent went on to be of the leads in the ABC sci-fi series Galactica 1980 and on the 1989 series UNSUB and had a recurring role on seaQuest DSV in the mid-’90s. His semi-regular role of Jack Crichton on Farscape, a sci-fi TV cult hit that ran from 1999-2003, gained him lots of younger fans. There’s also been plenty of voiceover work, scores of television guest spots (Silk Stalkings, MacGyver, Murder, She Wrote) and some movies (Airplane II-The Sequel, Predator II, and Megiddo-The Omega Code 2).
“Make-believe is a wonderful way to make a living,” Kent told me in a 2008 interview. “When you get into my age range — and for women it happens quite younger — you are being excluded from this American scene if you watch the programming that is going on. But there are people who revel in the fact that mature people can have interesting lives.”
It’s no surprise that the LA native’s first acting gig was on The Adventure of Ozzie and Harriet since he was a buddy of Ricky Nelson, whom he met at USC. McCord appeared in about 50 episodes from 1962-66, and remembers one scene particularly well.
“I started on that show working background, standing in for Ricky. One day, they were doing a fraternity show where there was a party going on — early-day ‘Risky Business’-type thing — while Ozzie and Harriet were away from the house. They came home early and I was standing at the door with at my date. Ozzie asked, ‘Where’s Rick?’ and I said, ‘Who’s Rick?’ Those were the first two words I ever said in pictures.”
Happy birthday to Kent who is still quite the Silver Fox!
