You can't tell it from these clips, but in the full interview Mark Harmon comes across as amazingly personable as well as charming

Mark Harmon on being named People's "Sexiest Man
Alive," his "dating" history, Elizabeth Taylor, et al.

"I don't know anybody -- other than you, Michael -- who would take that seriously."

-- Mark Harmon (laughing), with Michael Kay
on Yes Network's CenterStage

by Ken

There's stuff I wish I could write about, which for whatever reasons I just don't feel like trying to. One of those things, though, is Michael Kay's CenterStage interview with actor Mark Harmon, in which he came across, to me at least, as utterly charming and down-to-earth -- though of course I'm aware that it could be an excellent performance for our benefit. (It didn't seem so to me, and frankly I don't think he's that skilled an actor, but hey, you never know.) And it occurred to me that maybe there would be clips available which would make it unnecessary for me to try to explain what was so winning about the appearance.

Well, there are clips, and they're OK as far as they go, but they include hardly any of the stuff that I found so personally appealing, starting with the quite remarkable (again it seemed to me) way in which Harmon actually listens to Michael Kay, and deals with him directly and simply one-on-one. In context, his response to Michael's hilariously expressed awe, "for a shallow person like me," at what it must be like to be on the cover of People as the "Sexiest Man Alive" ("Tells me a lot about you," he says) is an utterly charming extension of this, while out of context it sounds more like a putdown.

So there's none of the stuff about what it was like growing up as the son of two famous people (for a long time, he says, he didn't know! the day he found out who is father was, he says, he came home and pretty much accused him of being "the great Tom Harmon") and what it was like when one of his sisters, Kristin, had her first date with her future husband, Rick Nelson (like the other kids in the neighborhood, he says, he was glued to his yard waiting for the celebrity to show up) and so on.

Meaning I'm back where I started. I still can't make the point about what was so captivating about the interview. Maybe a little comes through in the way he remembers working with Elizabeth Taylor? Anyway, here's an earlier clip, where I think you'll get some sense that he doesn't talk about his days of athletic glory the way . . . well, the way most people who've had days of athletic glory talk about them:

On his storied college QB career (while being the son of
nationally renowned athlete-broadcaster Tom Harmon)

#