Mark Harmon’s ‘Stealing Home’ Is Worth Revisiting

Mark Harmon first gained a measure of stardom on the medical drama television series St. Elsewhere, in which Harmon’s character, Dr. Robert Caldwell, became one of the first television characters to die from AIDS. Harmon left St. Elsewhere in 1986 when he was named People’s Sexiest Man Alive and received excellent reviews for his chilling performance as serial killer Ted Bundy in the made-for-television film The Deliberate Stranger.

Harmon embarked on a feature film career with the 1987 comedy film Summer School, which was a modest commercial success. Harmon next starred alongside Sean Connery in the 1988 crime film The Presidio, in which he, in a precursor to his iconic run on NCIS, plays a former military cop turned San Francisco police detective who investigates a murder at the titular Army base. Harmon followed The Presidio with a project close to his heart, the 1988 coming-of-age romantic drama film Stealing Home, in which the actor plays a washed-up minor league baseball player who returns to his hometown after learning that his childhood sweetheart has committed suicide.

The labor-of-love Stealing Home was excoriated by critics and ignored by audiences at the time of its release. However, Stealing Home has attained cult classic status over the past 35 years, as modern audiences have responded strongly to the film’s nostalgic themes, as well as Harmon’s heartfelt performance, which provides an intriguing glimpse into his triumphant later career.

Mark Harmon Reveals a Sentimental Side in ‘Stealing Home’

In stark contrast to Mark Harmon’s enduring portrayal of taciturn special agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs on NCIS over the course of 19 seasons, Harmon’s character in Stealing Home, Billy Wyatt, is introduced as a failed minor league baseball player in his mid to late 30s who clings to his transient baseball existence to avoid adhering to the rules of adulthood and coming to terms with his past.

Billy’s past takes hold of him early in the film, as Billy, who has been living in a motel room with a cocktail waitress, receives a phone call from his estranged mother, who tells Billy that his childhood friend and sweetheart, Katie Chandler, has committed suicide. After hearing this, Billy travels by bus back to his Pennsylvania hometown, where he is further shocked to discover that Katie’s will specified that he is responsible for disposing of Katie’s ashes, as Katie believed that he was the only person who would know what to do with her ashes.

Through flashbacks, Katie, played by Jodie Foster, appears as a carefree older sister figure to teenage Billy, who is consoled by Katie following the sudden death of Billy’s father and encouraged by Katie to follow his baseball dream. In the present, Billy spends approximately half the film carrying around Katie’s ashes, trying to figure out where to deposit them, a mystery that audiences solve long before Billy arrives at this conclusion near the end of the film.

As a coming-of-age film with an adult narrator, Stealing Home is most effective when it captures the universal feelings related to how Billy’s adult life is divided by memories of the past, specifically the surreal feeling Billy has that he was an optimistic teenager just yesterday, only to awaken in misery as an adult, in stunned disbelief at how disappointingly and mercilessly life has passed him by.

Harmon’s Movie Career Flopped With ‘Stealing Home’

Mark Harmon’s bid for feature film stardom got off to a promising beginning with the 1987 release of Summer School, which grossed more than $35 million at the domestic box office despite scathing critical reviews. However, the disappointing box-office performance of Harmon’s next feature-starring vehicle, The Presidio, which only grossed approximately $20 million at the domestic box office, heralded the imminent demise of his feature film aspirations and his return to television.

Stealing Home, which was released approximately 10 weeks after The Presidio, grossed less than $8 million at the domestic box office. Moreover, Stealing Home, which presently holds a 20% Rotten Tomatoes rating and 78% audience score, received some of the worst critical reviews of any film of its era. Stealing Home elicited hatred from Roger Ebert, who described the film as an excruciating viewing experience in Ebert’s one-star review of Stealing Home. Ebert wrote:

“I detested Stealing Home so much, from beginning to end, that I left the screening wondering if any movie could possibly be that bad.”

‘NCIS’ Has Overshadowed the Rest of Harmon’s Career

In attempting to launch a feature film career in the late 1980s, Mark Harmon followed the example of several other 1980s television stars, most notably Bruce Willis, Don Johnson, and Tom Selleck. While Selleck’s film career was doomed by the quality of the projects he was offered, Harmon’s failure was blamed on his supposed inability to translate his charismatic television persona to the big screen.

Harmon and Selleck both returned to television acting in the 1990s with mixed success as they both searched for a redefining role that would revitalize their careers. Just as the role of Frank Reagan on Blue Bloods transformed Selleck’s legacy, Harmon’s legacy-altering portrayal of Leroy Jethro Gibbs on NCIS has seemingly erased all other memories of the actor, as if his previous career happened to another actor who no longer exists. Stealing Home is streaming on Plex.