Film & TV
Robert Wagner
born 1930 · actor
Hart to Hart and It Takes a Thief star, born in Detroit to a Ford Motor Company salesman, who lived in the city until his family moved to Bel Air in 1937.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan
age 96- Birth name
- Robert John Wagner Jr.
- Also known as
- R.J. Wagner
- Detroit years
- 1930–1937
- Field
- Film & TV
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Robert Wagner was born in Detroit in 1930. His father, Robert Sr., a Kalamazoo native, was a traveling salesman for the Ford Motor Company, and his mother Thelma had worked as a telephone operator. The family stayed in Detroit through the early Depression years and in 1937 moved to Bel Air in Los Angeles, where the teenage Wagner caddied at golf clubs and was signed by 20th Century-Fox. He rose as a studio leading man in the 1950s in films such as Prince Valiant and A Kiss Before Dying, then found his greatest success on television as the gentleman thief of It Takes a Thief (1968–1970) and the sleuthing millionaire Jonathan Hart in Hart to Hart (1979–1984). Later audiences know him as Number 2 in the Austin Powers films and from recurring roles on NCIS. His Detroit connection is his birth and first seven years; no Detroit address is documented.
Highlights
- Jonathan Hart in Hart to Hart (1979–1984)
- Alexander Mundy in It Takes a Thief (1968–1970)
- Number 2 in the Austin Powers trilogy (1997–2002)
- Son of a Ford Motor Company salesman