What's the deal with Hannibal Smith's gloves?

[Horatio_Hellpop]

@Silent_Kal

He didn’t want to leave fingerprints?

Or perhaps Peppard was concealing some sort of hand injury or defect, like Gary Burghoff or James Doohan.

That was my first thought, but IMDB doesn’t mention it. His ex-wife Elizabeth Ashley wrote a scathing tell-all book in 1978, so if hay was to be made about a physical deformity, I sure think she would have mentioned it…