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’s 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’s last chance to establish his commercial viability in feature films.
However, Worth Winning was a dismal failure, forever altering Harmon’s 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’s failure necessitated Harmon’s return to television, where he has seemingly been able to do no wrong over the course of a 50-plus-year career.
‘Worth Winning’ Isn’t Worth Watching
Just as Mark Harmon’s appearance alongside Sean Connery in The Presidio raised doubts about his ability to project big-screen magnetism, Worth Winning proves he isn’t particularly adept at comedy. In the film, Harmon plays Taylor Worth, a handsome bachelor and television weather forecaster in Philadelphia who accepts a friend’s 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’s portrayal of Leroy Jethro Gibbs on NCIS, the arrogant and shallow Taylor emerges in Worth Winning as a manipulative deceiver who’s never as charming as he intends to be.
Indeed, while the boyish handsomeness that led Harmon to be named People’s Sexiest Man Alive in 1986 makes him physically compatible with this role, he exudes a level of smarmy charm in Worth Winning that’s reminiscent of Harmon’s chilling performance as serial killer Ted Bundy in the 1986 television miniseries The Deliberate Stranger. Taylor’s eventual moral conversion scarcely redeems the film’s 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.
‘Worth Winning’ Became a Big Box-Office Loser
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’s 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.
Worth Winning grossed only $3.6 million at the domestic box office, the lowest total for any of Harmon’s 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’s feature-starring vehicles and has scarcely aired on television over the past 20 years.
‘NCIS’ Has Completely Overshadowed Mark Harmon’s Short-Lived Movie Career
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’s film career was seemingly doomed by fate and the quality of the projects he was offered, Harmon’s 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.
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.
Just as the role of Frank Reagan in Blue Bloods transformed Selleck’s legacy, Harmon’s 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’s 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+.
