As trusty majordomo Max, Lionel Stander’s character serves as the introduction to Hart to Hart. The character was played by Lionel Stander, a talented film actor who had previously been blacklisted in Hollywood.

By the 1970s, Stander’s career had returned in full force, and the actor, previously focused on film, turned his attention toward the growing influence of television.

Stander confessed that he had previously denounced television after being burned by a television pilot. “Just two weeks before I got the offer for the pilot [for Hart to Hart], I had completed another pilot for NBC,” said Stander during an interview with The Huntsville Times. “It had Red Buttons and me in a TV version of Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys...And Simon himself had written the pilot script - can you imagine that? So NBC turned it down, rejected the pilot without even looking at it one time - a Neil Simon pilot, no less. Well, maybe that explains why NBC is where it is.”

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The experience had soured Stander’s experience with the small screen. By the time he was offered a role on Hart to Hart, he was sure to refuse it...or so he thought.

“Anyway, when this second offer came along, I told my agent to forget it,” said the actor. “Then I made some exorbitant demands - a car and a driver, limitation of hours, things like that.” Luckily, the executives on the series understood Stander’s talent and were more than willing to give in to his demands. The rest is television history. “For some strange reason, they gave it to me. I got the role...and every old actor in America should be so lucky.”