Jackson Gillis dies, long-time TV writer who dabbled in spy adventures

Jackson Gillis, a television writer from the 1950s to the 1990s, died Aug. 19, just two days shy of his 94th birthday. His many, many credits included episodes of The Man From U.N.C.L.E., The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., I Spy, The Wild, Wild West and Mission: Impossible.

Those weren’t his most significant credits. Those would probably be the George Reeves Adventures of Superman show and Columbo. But after reading the Bruce Weber-written obituary in The New York Times, we felt it should be noted here.

You can watch one Gillis-scripted episode of I Spy by CLICKING HERE. Below, is a clip from The Galtea Affair, from the third season of The Man From U.N.C.L.E., originally written as a typical Napoleon Solo-Illya Kuryakin adventure but Girl’s Mark Slate subbed for Solo for most of the episode:

Gillis’s final TV credit was a 1994 remake of one of his Adventures of Superman scripts where the Man of Steel gets amnesia after stopping a giant asteroid from hitting earth. Here’s a clip from another Gillis-scripted Superman story, a scene that got deleted when the show went into syndication: