The Six Million Dollar Man (1974)

Trivia: Longtime TV actor Lee Majors was extremely influential in the overall development of the "Six Million Dollar Man" series. Although he had already appeared in the 3 successful made-for-TV pilot movies in 1973, Majors was very skeptical of entering into a weekly series, and he wanted a guarantee that the show would not devolve into a campy superhero series (like "Batman"). Majors further stipulated that there should be no blood and no violent death on the show. Executive producer Harve Bennett, producer Kenneth Johnson, and ABC Television immediately agreed. Majors also thought the original "Six Million Dollar Man" theme song (sung by Dusty Springfield) was embarrassingly bad, so composer Oliver Nelson wrote the iconic instrumental theme for the series. Two years into the hit show, Majors then became concerned that his character, Steve Austin, would be perceived as gay because he never had an onscreen love interest; so Majors essentially demanded that a female character be added to fill that role. The producers complied without question. According to Lee Majors: "People were really getting to the point where it was like, 'When's this guy [Steve Austin] going to come out of the closet here?' That's when we brought in Lindsay Wagner to be the first love interest."

Charles Austin Miller