The man who assembled the ‘QM Players’

John Conwell’s title card in a second-season episode of 12 O’Clock High.

One of an occasional series about unsung figures of television.

In the 1960s and ’70s, shows produced at QM Productions had the feel of a repertory theater as many of the same guest stars appeared on various Quinn Martin shows.

As noted in the book Quinn Martin, Producer, there was an even nick name for this: the “QM Players.” The informal group consisted of performers such as Leslie Nielsen (star of the first QM series, The New Breed), Peter Mark Richman, Louise Latham, Jessica Walter, J.D. Cannon, Lynda Day George, Bradford Dillman and many others.

The QM executive responsible for this was John Conwell, who headed the company’s casting operation. He was a former actor, appearing in such productions as The Twilight Zone pilot, Where Is Everybody? and as a guest star in a Ray Milland series, Markham.

Conwell moved from in front of the camera to behind it, including the fourth season of The Twilight Zone, when the show aired in a one-hour format. He became part of QM Productions with that company’s second series, The Fugitive.

For most of his time at QM, however, Conwell’s titles in QM show credits didn’t really give the audience an idea of what he did.

Conwell was initially credited as “assistant to producer,” then “assistant to the executive producer.” Finally, by 1977, he was credited as “in charge of talent.”

In any case, Conwell became one of producer Quinn Martin’s key lieutenants. Martin paid more for guest stars ($5,000 for a one-hour episode compared with a going rate of $2,500). So that helped raise the interest of performers to be on QM shows.

Still, it was Conwell who ran the QM casting operation, which also had casting directors for individual series. That may help to explain why actors kept coming back.

Conwell even stayed at the company after Martin’s departure following the sale of QM Productions to Taft Broadcasting. He died in 1994 at the age of 72.

Eleanor Parker, U.N.C.L.E.’s last villainess, dies

Eleanor Parker in the final episode of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. That’s Leslie Nielsen in the background. She’s not going to like what his character does moments later.

Eleanor Parker, who played the final villainess in The Man From U.N.C.L.E. television series starring Robert Vaughn and David McCallum, has died at 91, according to AN ASSOCIATED PRESS OBITUARY ON THE MIAMI HERALD WEBSITE.

Parker played a wide variety of parts according to her HER ENTRY ON IMDB.COM. For spy fans, though, one significant role was filmed in 1967 and aired in January 1968. She was in the final two-part episode of The Man From U.N.C.L.E., The Seven Wonders of the World Affair. It was released outside the U.S. as a movie called How to Steal the World.

In that story, an U.N.C.L.E. official named Robert Kinsley (Barry Sullivan), decides to tip the fight between good and evil in favor of good via a “will docility gas” that will force the world’s population to be compliant. What Kingsley doesn’t know is that his wife (Parker) has been manipulating him in partnership with a Thrush operative named Webb (Peter Mark Richman).

Originally, the story, written by Norman Hudis, was intended as a one-hour episode. But, with NBC opting to cancel U.N.C.L.E. in the middle of its fourth season, executive producer Norman Felton had the script expanded to be a two-parter. It would be the eighth, and final, U.N.C.L.E. movie for international audiences.

Parker’s character meets her demise when Robert Kingsley, finally aware of his wife’s plans, orders a General accidently exposed to the docility gas (Leslie Nielsen) to kill her. Overall, the story’s quality varies greatly, in part because of the last-minute expansion. But it’s still a major part of U.N.C.L.E. lore.

Lt. Columbo’s encounters with spies

Peter Falk passed away last month and obituaries SUCH AS THIS ONE IN THE LOS ANGELES TIMES documented his varied career while noting he was most famous for playing Lt. Columbo, who wore a rumpled raincoat but had a sharp mind. We thought we’d take some time out to detail a couple of enounters the character had with spies.

In “Identity Crisis,” in 1975 from Columbo’s fifth season on NBC, the murderer Columbo pursues is Nelson Brenner. The CIA operative is played by Patrick McGoohan, who seems to channel his John Drake and Number Six personas. McGoohan, who also directed the episode, was back for his second turn as a murderer on the show. McGoohan even works in his “Be seeing you!” line from The Prisoner.

The script, by Bill Driskill, is pretty complex. The murder victim (Leslie Nielsen) is another agent. There’s a non-existent operative named Steinmetz and….well, you get the idea.

Brenner has a cover identity as a business consultant. At one point, the CIA director (David White) pays a visit on Columbo, telling him to can his investigation in the interest of national security. Columbo, of course, doesn’t give up that easily but knows it’ll be even trickier to bring in Brenner.

The CIA shows up in a more indirect role in “Columbo Goes to the Guillotine,” the first Columbo to air on ABC when the show was revived in 1989. Elliott Blake (Anthony Andrews) is trying to convince the agency he’s a genuine psychic who can be of aid in intelligence work. The CIA hires a magician, Max Dyson (Anthony Zerbe), who has also exposed other psychics as frauds, to test Blake’s abilities.

The two men, however, have met before. They were in a prison in Uganda years earlier. They meet the night before the test and rig it in Blake’s favor. Afterward, Dyson says he agreed because of what the two mean to each other while in prison. Blake, though, knows that Dyson sold him out to get out of that prison. He kills Dyson, making it appear the magician was killed in an accident involving a guillotine trick.

Columbo engages in his usual cat-and-mouse games with Blake. Meanwhile, the CIA’s Mr. Harrow (Alan Fudge) is convinced Blake is the real thing. The agency is ready to whisk Blake away with a new identity. Columbo, armed with a court order, prevents that. He duplicates the Dyson-Blake test, ending the CIA’s interest in Blake.

The episode was written by William Read Woodfield (a writer on the original Mission: Impossible series and a magician himself) and directed by Leo Penn. It ends with Columbo taking a big chance to make his case against Blake:

Oscar update III: John Barry leads off “In Memoriam”

John Barry, the 11-time 007 composer who established the musical sound of James Bond movies (and won five Oscars for four non-Bond movies), was the first person included in the “In Memoriam” segment of the Oscars telecast. But there were a number of others included that contributed to 007 and other spy related entertainment.

They included: Alan Hume, director of photography on three Bond movies in the 1980s; Irvin Kershner, director of the 1983 Bond film Never Say Never Again, who is probably best known for directing 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back; Tom Mankiewicz, credited as a screenwriter on three 1970s 007 films and an uncredited writer on two others.

Also included were Robert Culp, the star of television’s I Spy; Anne Francis, the star of television’s Honey West; and Leslie Nielsen, who made a late-career switch to comedy that included a 007 parody, Spy Hard. All three did extensive film work in movies and television.

Who will make the Oscars “In Memoriam” segment?

You’d think John Barry (5-time Oscar winner, 11-time 007 composer) would be a lock. What about James MacArthur, Robert Culp, Leslie Nielsen? Peter Graves? The latter were known mostly for their work on television but did a number of films. What about one-time 007 screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz, part of a prominent Hollywood clan that includes Herman Mankiewicz and Joseph L. Mankiewicz? We’ll be watching.

Leslie Nielsen dies at 84, parodies included ‘Spy Hard’

Surely we’re not serious? Unfortunately, we are. Actor Leslie Nielsen has passed away on Nov. 28, the Associated Press reported, citing the actor’s agent.

Nielsen was a dramatic actor for years until the 1980 movie Airplane! From then on Nielsen was known mostly for comedy. A short-lived 1982 parody of police dramas, Police Squad!, led six years later to the first of three films featuring his Frank Drebin character, The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!. Frank had a knack for becoming involving in international intrigue and political conspiracies, like this one:

So, of course, at some point Nielsen had to parody spy entertainment. So he did 1996’s Spy Hard, playing secret agent Dick Steele:

Unlikely ’60s spies, or Ward Cleaver, secret agent

Spy stories were big on television in the 1960s, thanks to James Bond. Even non-espionage shows incorporated spy-oriented stories. But there were a few where the actors cast come across as a bit unlikely. A few examples:

Hugh Beaumont, Mannix: In the second-season episode, “To The Swiftest, Death,” private eye Joe Mannix has taken up amateur auto racing. While he’s near the back of the pack, another participant appears to have run off the track and been consumed in a fiery crash. Mannix is hired to investigate but he’s getting heat from U.S. authorities, including Frank Abbott (Hugh Beaumont), who may be with a U.S. intelligence agency. This episode aired in 1968, five years after Leave It To Beaver went off the air but for some viewers, it’s hard to get the image of Ward Cleaver out of their heads.

William Windom, The FBI: Windom plays the title character in the second-season episode “The Assassin.” Windom’s character, Anton Christopher, is the most feared assassin in the employ of the Soviet Bloc. We see him make a hit in the pre-credits sequence, but his face isn’t shown. Later, Christopher meets a contact (Tom Skerritt), who is taken aback by how ordinary the assassin appears. Christopher makes a remark to the effect that successful operatives don’t look glamorous like in the movies. No specific character is mentioned, but presumably this is a Bond reference. Windom is quite good and comes across as both ruthless and weary.

Russell Johnson, The FBI: the former Professor on Gilligan’s Island appears as a Soviet agent in the fourth-season episode “Caesar’s Wife.” He even gets to beat the crap out of Harrison Ford in one scene. Johnson’s character has been operating in the U.S. for years and has befriended a retired diplomat (Michael Rennie), whose knowledge would be most useful to the U.S.S.R.

Larry Blyden, The Man From U.N.C.L.E.: In the second-season episode “The Waverly Ring Affair,” Blyden plays George Dennell, an U.N.C.L.E. employee who gets drafted by the crafty Alexander Waverly to help smoke out a traitor in the organization. Blyden usually (but not exclusively) was normally cast in comedic roles and he uses some of that here. Dennell is the episode’s “innocent.” Part of the show’s format involved an innocent character getting swept up in the adventures of agents Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin. Some fans don’t care for the innocent characters (they’d rather see more of Solo and Kuryakin). Blyden’s Dennell, though, is one of the better innocent characters in the series.

Leslie Nielsen, Hawaii Five-O: The show’s pilot has Hawaii lawman Steve McGarrett trying to find the killer of an old friend who also happened to be an agent of U.S. “Intelligence.” Presumably, this means the CIA, but that’s not specified. The Big Kahuna has two suspects as possible traitors: Miller (Andrew Duggan), a veteran agent passed over for promotion, and Brent (Leslie Nielsen), the Honolulu station chief. The audience knows there’s a traitor because of the pre-credits sequence where *somebody* is working with villain Wo Fat. But the audience doesn’t see the traitor’s face, though we’re shown he smokes a pipe. And wouldn’t you know it, both Trend and Miller smoke pipes. Nielsen, who spent much of his career doing dramatic parts, is actually fine. But given all his over-the-top comedic roles, people who see the pilot episode for the first time are probably taken aback.

Wally Cox, Mission: Impossible: Cox appears in the series pilot as Terry Targo, a safecracker who is supposed to play an important part in the scheme cooked up by Dan Briggs (Steven Hill). When we see the “apartment scene” (where the audience is given hints about the plan, but not all the information), Cox’s Targo comes across as savvy. The IMF is playing a penny ante poker game and Targo catches Rollin Hand (Martin Landau) cheating. The plan calls for Targo to be inside a large case into a safe where two unclear weapons are stored. A major complication occurs later when Targo’s hands are broken. One can’t help but wonder if the creators of the George Clooney version of Ocean’s Eleven saw the episode. In any event, Cox makes an interesting (if one-time) addition to the IMF.