About why Thrush isn’t an acronym

A Thrush logo, as seen in The Yellow Scarf Affair, a first-season episode of The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

There’s a classic line in the Western film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

So it is with the notion that Thrush, the villainous organization in The Man From U.N.C.L.E., is actually an acronym, short for the Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity.

It’s not true, at least in the actual 1964-68 series. In the show, Thrush was merely a name. Thrush even had a logo of a sinister-looking bird. It could be seen on the uniforms of Thrush thugs as well as on Thrush weapons.

The blog has written about this before. The notion of Thrush as an acronym originated with a tie-in novel, The Dagger Affair by David McDaniel. In McDaniel’s book, Thrush traced its origin to Professor Moriarty from the Sherlock Holmes stories.

That was pretty amusing. Except, the series itself presented its own origin for Thrush.

A second-season episode, The Adriatic Express Affair, featured Thrush official Madame Nemirovitch (Jesse Royce Landis) claiming to be the founder of the organization. Other than that, the show itself didn’t provide a lot of details about how Thrush got started.

Fans will be fans and many gravitated to McDaniel’s version. It became so popular even major news organizations (apparently without time to research it further) did so as well.

In 2016, with the death of U.N.C.L.E. star Robert Vaughn, The New York Times included Thrush as an acronym in its obituary for the actor.

But no character (Vaughn) played was as popular as Napoleon Solo. From 1964 to 1968, in the thick of the Cold War, millions of Americas tuned in weekly to “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” to watch Mr. Vaughn, as a superagent from the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement, battling T.H.R.U.S.H. (Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity), a secret organization intent on achieving world domination through nefarious if far-fetched devices like mind-controlling gas.

With last month’s death of David McCallum, The Washington Post’s obituary also included Thrush as an acronym.

Setting aside Cold War rivalries, the spies team up to fight an evil organization known as T.H.R.U.S.H. (the Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity), which threatens to turn dogs against their masters, bring the dead back to life and unleash a toxic gas that causes a lethal case of the hiccups.

For the record, the episode about turning dogs against their masters did not involve Thrush. That was done by Gypies in a story written by former British spy Alan Caillou. The episode was titled The Bow-Wow Affair and was the first U.N.C.L.E. story where McCallum’s Illya Kuryakin had the bulk of the screen time.

Well, it has been almost 60 years since The Man From U.N.C.L.E. debuted. At this late date, facts are almost irrelevant. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend, it seems.