{"id":2746,"date":"2025-04-29T15:17:02","date_gmt":"2025-04-29T15:17:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/?p=2746"},"modified":"2025-04-29T15:17:02","modified_gmt":"2025-04-29T15:17:02","slug":"nearly-15-years-before-ncis-mark-harmon-starred-in-a-completely-forgotten-comedy-flop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/?p=2746","title":{"rendered":"Nearly 15 Years Before \u2018NCIS,\u2019 Mark Harmon Starred in a Completely Forgotten Comedy Flop"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n

Long before his days on NCIS, Mark Harmon embarked on a feature film career with the 1987 comedy Summer School, which was a modest box-office success. However, the commercial and critical failure of the 1988 starring vehicles The Presidio and Stealing Home seriously damaged Harmon\u2019s bid for movie stardom and left him in desperate need of a box-office hit. He reached a major turning point in his career with the theatrical release of the 1989 romantic comedy film Worth Winning, which marked Harmon\u2019s last chance to establish his commercial viability in feature films.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

However, Worth Winning was a dismal failure, forever altering Harmon\u2019s career. While he has made several feature-film appearances over the past 35 years, including his role in the upcoming comedy sequel Freakier Friday, his leading-man status in feature films ended with Worth Winning. Indeed, the only virtuous aspect of Worth Winning is that the film\u2019s failure necessitated Harmon\u2019s return to television, where he has seemingly been able to do no wrong over the course of a 50-plus-year career.<\/p>\n

\u2018Worth Winning\u2019 Isn\u2019t Worth Watching<\/h3>\n

Just as Mark Harmon\u2019s appearance alongside Sean Connery in The Presidio raised doubts about his ability to project big-screen magnetism, Worth Winning proves he isn\u2019t particularly adept at comedy. In the film, Harmon plays Taylor Worth, a handsome bachelor and television weather forecaster in Philadelphia who accepts a friend\u2019s bet in which Taylor has to convince three randomly selected women to fall in love with him and accept his proposal of marriage over a three-month period. In stark contrast to the integrity and stoicism that became the hallmark of Harmon\u2019s portrayal of Leroy Jethro Gibbs on NCIS, the arrogant and shallow Taylor emerges in Worth Winning as a manipulative deceiver who\u2019s never as charming as he intends to be.<\/p>\n

Indeed, while the boyish handsomeness that led Harmon to be named People\u2019s Sexiest Man Alive in 1986 makes him physically compatible with this role, he exudes a level of smarmy charm in Worth Winning that\u2019s reminiscent of Harmon\u2019s chilling performance as serial killer Ted Bundy in the 1986 television miniseries The Deliberate Stranger. Taylor\u2019s eventual moral conversion scarcely redeems the film\u2019s distasteful premise, in which Taylor secretly films the phony wedding proposals to win the bet. Worth Winning is so demeaning to both sexes that by the time Taylor receives his comeuppance and pursues redemption, it seems entirely worthless.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u2018Worth Winning\u2019 Became a Big Box-Office Loser<\/h3>\n

To promote Worth Winning, Mark Harmon hosted a 1989 Fox summer movie television special in which he presented clips and interviews from the historic 1989 summer movie schedule, led by the blockbuster release of Batman. Near the end of the one-hour program, Harmon coyly mentions that he has a film that\u2019s slated to be released in the summer of 1989, referring to Worth Winning, which was originally scheduled to be released in July 1989 before being pushed back and then unceremoniously dumped by Fox in October, ostensibly to avoid the blockbuster competition.<\/p>\n

Worth Winning grossed only $3.6 million at the domestic box office, the lowest total for any of Harmon\u2019s feature-starring vehicles, followed by the approximately $7.4 million gross of Stealing Home. The theatrical release of Worth Winning, which also received strongly negative critical reviews, was such a non-event that the film was out of theaters after just two weekends. Indeed, while Stealing Home gained an enthusiastic following over time, Worth Winning is easily the most forgotten of Harmon\u2019s feature-starring vehicles and has scarcely aired on television over the past 20 years.<\/p>\n

\u2018NCIS\u2019 Has Completely Overshadowed Mark Harmon\u2019s Short-Lived Movie Career<\/h3>\n

In attempting to transition from television to feature-film stardom in the late 1980s, Mark Harmon followed the example of several other 1980s television stars, most notably Bruce Willis and Tom Selleck. While Selleck\u2019s film career was seemingly doomed by fate and the quality of the projects he was offered, Harmon\u2019s failure was attributed to his inability to translate his charismatic television persona to the big screen. Like Selleck, whose leading-man status in feature films ended in the early 1990s after a string of box-office failures, Harmon returned to television acting in the 1990s with mixed success, as he, like Selleck, searched throughout the decade for an iconic role that would redefine his career.<\/p>\n

Harmon followed the failure of Worth Winning with a starring role opposite the legendary Elizabeth Taylor in the 1989 made-for-television film Sweet Bird of Youth before making his return to series television with the police drama television series Reasonable Doubts, which ran for two seasons on NBC between 1991 and 1993.<\/p>\n

Just as the role of Frank Reagan in Blue Bloods transformed Selleck\u2019s legacy, Harmon\u2019s portrayal of Leroy Jethro Gibbs on NCIS has seemingly erased all previous memories of the actor, especially his quest for feature-film stardom in the late 1980s. Indeed, the sex-symbol image that defined his short-lived feature film career is so incongruous with the now 73-year-old Harmon\u2019s historic run on NCIS over 19 seasons that the older and younger versions of Harmon seem to represent two entirely different actors and careers. Worth Winning is currently unavailable to stream, though NCIS is streaming on Paramount+.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Long before his days on NCIS, Mark Harmon embarked on a feature film career with the 1987 comedy Summer School, which was a modest box-office success. However,… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2748,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2746"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2749,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2746\/revisions\/2749"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}