Martin Milner, who drove a Corvette across America for four years as the co-star of TV’s “Route 66” and later traded in the iconic convertible for a police patrol auto as a star of “Adam-12”, died Monday at his home in Carlsbad.

“Route 66” was the only TV show filmed entirely on location in the early 1960s, moving to new towns and cities for each new episode. Webb resurrected Dragnet for TV in 1967, and Milner was cast in a first-season episode as Pete Molloy, an LAPD officer who testified at a trial along with his rookie partner Jim Reed (Kent McCord). “But me and my family would travel with the trucks, because we had the kids with us”.

Milner began his career in Hollywood on the big screen in the 1940s, making his debut opposite Elizabeth Taylor in Life with Father.

When Mr. Milner was in the Army at Northern California’s Fort Ord, he would sometimes visit Los Angeles and look Webb up. “His depiction of a professional & tough yet compassionate cop led to thousands of men & women applying to become LAPD officers, including me”. Other early film roles included “Sands of Iwo Jima” with John Wayne, “Mister Roberts” with Henry Fonda, James Cagney and Jack Lemmon in 1955, and two Burt Lancaster films in 1957 – “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” and “Sweet Smell of Success“.

But it his next starring role that would make Milner a star. “Valley of the Dolls” and “Three Guns for Texas”.

Milner was born December. 28, 1931, in Detroit.

During his career, Milner also guest-starred on such TV shows as The Lone Ranger, Slattery’s People, The Twilight Zone, The Millionaire, The Rat Patrol and Murder, She Wrote. As a teenager, he moved to Los Angeles with his family, where he earned minor film roles and met Jack Webb, who gave him some work on his radio show Dragnet, which he later parlayed into guest spots on the TV show of the same name in the 1950s. Martin Milner is survived by wife, Judith Bess “Judy” Jones, a former singer and actress to whom he had been married since 1957; daughter Molly; and sons Stuart and Andrew.