“Lights, camera, action” and starring roles haven’t always been the way. Instead of acting, producing, and directing, Mark Harmon appeared on a popular game show before he became famous. In 2014, David Letterman quizzed the silver fox celeb about having appeared on “The Dating Game” back in the early 1970s. You can see the handsome, square-jawed Harmon sitting alongside two other potential suitors in a fuzzy old video clip of his appearance on the iconic show that ran from 1965 to 1986.
When asked by the potential suitor what she would get if she gave him his millionth kiss, Harmon, in his ever-so-charming ways, said he’d give her a cigar. “I don’t know, I just like to see a girl light one up sometime,” he reasoned. He also joked that his hairstyle made him look like he still “had [his football] helmet on.”
Harmon’s grizzled good looks didn’t come easy, however. Before his game show fame, he worked in various manual labor jobs to support himself while earning his acting stripes. “I enjoyed getting up and doing [carpentry] in the morning,” he told Men’s Journal. It was a craft he learned from his father, through which he eventually parlayed into work as a roofer and framer — as revealed to Sunset. Ironically, it was a talent he ended up sharing with his “NCIS” character years later.
Nicki
