When I was a teenager, a popular television show was “The Dating Game.” One “bachelorette” would ask questions of three “bachelors,” who sat just a few feet away behind a wall. Sometimes the roles were reversed. Then she’d pick one for a date, paid for by the show.

I tried out for “The Dating Game.” I sat in a conference room with two other men, and a young female staffer asked three of us questions. One guy was enthusiastic, expressive and funny. The second guy and I were intimidated and reserved. Bachelor No. 1 had done his homework. You can guess which one of us was selected to be on the show.

Months later, another young man tried out for the show and was on it two times. Tom Selleck was attending the University of Southern California and was a 6-foot, 4-inch bench warmer on their basketball team. Landing the starring role in the Hawaii-based TV show “Magnum, P.I.” was over 10 years away, but it all began for him on “The Dating Game.”

One bachelorette asked him, “If you were to apply for a mail-order bride, how would the order read?”

Selleck responded, “Reasonably tall, good looking, good personality and not too inhibited.”

The bachelorettes didn’t pick him, but a week after it aired, he got a call from a casting director at 20th Century Fox. Would he like to come in for an audition?

Selleck read a scene from “Barefoot in the Park,” and the casting director thought he had potential. He brought Selleck to meet his boss. Selleck was shocked when they walked into the office of Richard Zanuck, the president of the studio.

“You play at USC?” Zanuck asked.

“Yessir,” Selleck responded.

“I’m a huge UCLA fan,” Zanuck continued.

And there it was: He had invoked what people in L.A. call “the rivalry.” “Well, that’s too bad,” Selleck answered, like a true Trojan.

UCLA had a 7-foot, 2-inch, high-scoring center named Lew Alcindor. UCLA won three national championships, and Alcindor was the first player selected in the 1969 NBA Draft. In 1971, he took the Muslim name Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Selleck told Zanuck that when USC prepared to play UCLA, the coaches had him “play” Lew Alcindor, against USC’s first string.

“Zanuck looked like a kid staring into a giant bowl of ice cream. ‘No kidding?’” he asked.

“No kidding,” Selleck replied.

Zanuck turned to the casting executive and gave him a green light to put Selleck in the studio’s New Talent Training Program.

“The whole thing was stunning when you think about it,” Selleck said. “A kid goes on ‘The Dating Game,’ which leads to meeting a studio casting director.

“The kid had no real acting experience and no real desire to become an actor, but ended up BS-ing with the president of 20th Century Fox and was promptly invited into the studio’s New Talent Program. And what seals the deal was college basketball. Go figure … You never know.”

Biography

Selleck, 80, authored a book with Ellis Henican that was published in 2024 with that title — “You Never Know: A Memoir” (HarperCollins).

“It happened so quickly, I never once stopped to ask myself, why? Why am I doing this? I’d never had the slightest interest in acting. Ever,” he said in the book.

“But in my own unplanned way, I had actually accomplished something. I’d been offered an opportunity that others would kill for. I was developing a healthy respect for serendipity.”

Selleck showed up for the salaried training program, driving his beat-up ’64 Volks­wagen. “We’ve been expecting you, Mr. Selleck,” the guard at the gate said. “Welcome to Fox.”

After the program ended, Selleck spent a decade auditioning for commercials and bit parts in films and television shows. He honed his skills and his confidence.

‘Magnum, P.I.’

In 1979, after countless auditions and small parts in films and commercials, Selleck was offered the leading role in a prime-time television show.

“Magnum, P.I.” was about a Naval Academy graduate who had served as a Navy SEAL (‘sea, air and land’) in Vietnam and decided to hit the pause button,” he wrote.

“Not because of disillusionment or delayed stress, but because, as he put it, ‘One day I woke up at 33 and realized I’d never been 23.’”

Selleck had spent six years in the National Guard and felt he could relate to the character.

Many Vietnam vets had been in the news in the late 1970s for being homeless drug users due to post- traumatic stress. “Magnum, P.I.” was about to rewrite that narrative.

“It was about four former warriors (played by Selleck, Roger E. Mosley, Larry Manetti and John Hillerman), a Navy SEAL and two marines from the Vietnam war and another veteran from conflicts gone by. All trying to make a life for themselves, not because of a rejection of the life that they had lived, but in many ways, as an affirmation of it.”

Magnum’s closet

Selleck put some thought into what was in Thomas Magnum’s closet, feeling it would help define the character. He wanted to keep the wardrobe as simple as possible.

“People should be able to close their eyes and literally see the character, like the hat and jacket Indiana Jones wore in ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark,’” Selleck wrote. Steven Spielberg and George Lucas wanted him to play that role, but a potential conflict with filming “Magnum” nixed it.

The hat

“The great director John Ford (whose kids went to Punahou) said always start with the hat. Magnum, being career military, was probably a ball cap kind of guy,” Sel­leck thought. He had always been a Detroit Tiger’s fan and picked their cap, “just to give him an eccentricity.”

Aloha shirts

He also felt Magnum should wear short pants and Aloha shirts, not because the show was in Hawaii. “I thought those shirts represented something more important — the Annapolis career officer had made a startling change in his life. That narrative was critical to the heart of the character.

“The clothes all needed to have some age on them. Thomas Magnum was not doing all that well as a private investigator.”

The gun

“The Colt 1911 .45-caliber automatic — John Browning’s masterpiece — was the sidearm I trained with in the U.S. Army. It was standard issue in the Navy too, so it was a perfect fit,” Selleck said.

Completing the outfit was an insignia ring. Magnum, T.C. and Rick each wore one in Vietnam, and years later, it reflected their continuing camaraderie. The particular insignia was a symbol they made up. A ring, Aloha shirt and baseball cap from “Magnum, P.I.” were donated to the Smithsonian Museum in 1988.

Breaking the fourth wall

When an actor looks at the camera and speaks to viewers, it’s called “breaking the fourth wall.” Selleck decided to do it in “Magnum, P.I.”

The first time he was filmed leaving the Robin’s Nest estate in a red Ferrari, he looked at the camera, smiled, raised his eyebrows, hit the gas and drove off.

“I was well aware I was breaking the fourth wall. That can be risky, over-the-top cute or just plain dumb,” Selleck said.

“But when I looked right into the camera, I got the feeling that Magnum was sharing his little victory with the audience, and it just seemed right. I don’t remember if it was in the script or if I improvised it.

“And you know what? It worked. You never know.

“It schooled me in the kind of humor that was so necessary in pretty serious stories. That shot was used in the opening credits of all 163 shows we did.”

‘Blue Bloods’

“Magnum, P.I.” ran for eight seasons, from 1980-88. Selleck won an Emmy award for outstanding lead actor in a drama series. More than 50 million people watched its final episode.

Selleck recently finished his 14th season as Frank Reagan, NYPD commissioner, on the TV show “Blue Bloods.”


Bob Sigall is the author of the five “The Companies We Keep” books. Contact him at Sigall@Yahoo.com or sign up for his free email newsletter at RearviewMirrorInsider.com.


Share.
Exit mobile version