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It’s the end of another year. Here’s hoping for a great 2024 for readers of The Spy Command.
Once upon a time, 2024 was going to be the eighth installment of the Tom Cruise Mission: Impossible film series. No such luck. That has been put off until 2025.
Could we find out more about the future of the James Bond film series? That remains to be seen.
Still, some spy entertainment is out there. Regardless, there’s a lot of be thankful for.
And, as Napoleon Solo reminds everyone, be sure to party responsibly this New Year’s Eve.
As 2023 draws to a close, here’s a look at those who contributed to spy entertainment (or at least spy-related). These are not listed in any particular order. It’s also not a complete list.
David McCallum (1933-2023): Played Illya Kuryakin in The Man From U.N.C.L.E. The Kuryakin character originally was envisioned as a sidekick to Robert Vaughn’s Napoleon Solo. By the end of the first season, Illya was a full-fledged partner for Solo. For some U.N.C.L.E. fans, especially young women, Illya’s popularity rivaled Solo’s.
Robert Janes (1940-2023): Television writer who penned many episodes for the later seasons of Hawaii Five-O.
Stephen Kandel (1927-2023): Wrote episodes of Star Trek (those that featured Harry Mudd), Hawaii Five-O, Mannix, Mission: Impossible, The Wild Wild West and many other American television shows.
John Romita Sr. (1930-2023): The second artist to draw Spider-Man who helped make the web-slinger even more popular.
Chaim Topol (1935-2023): Actor best known for Fiddler on the Roof, who played an ally of Bond in For Your Eyes Only (1981).
Tina Turner (1939-2023): Veteran singer who performed the title song for 1995’s Goldeneye.
Jim Brown (1936-2023): Pro football player who switched to acting, including an episode of I Spy and the movie Ice Station Zebra.
Ray Austin (1932-2023): Stunt performer and television director whose credits included The Avengers, The New Avengers and The Return of the Man From U.N.C.L.E.
Paul Playdon (1943-2023): One-time child actor who became a writer for television shows such as Mission: Impossible.
Sharon Farrell (1940-2023): Actress whose credits included The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and The Wild Wild West.
Edward Hume (1936-2023): Television writer who scripted the pilots for Cannon, The Streets of San Francisco, and Barnaby Jones.
Gayle Hunnicut (1943-2013): Actress who was considered to play Solitaire in Live And Let Die who played the female lead in the 1983 TV movie The Return of the Man From U.N.C.L.E.
Robert Butler (1927-2013): Television director who helmed the pilots for Remington Steele (starring Pierce Brosnan), Batman, Hogan’s Heroes and Hill Street Blues. Butler was also credited as co-creator of Remington Steele. He also directed episodes of Mission: Impossible, I Spy, and Blue Light (a World War II spy show starring Robert Goulet)
Stephen Kandel from an interview about The Magician television series.
Stephen Kandel, an incredibly versatile television writer, died in October, according to the Writers Guild of America website. He was 96.
Kandel, over a long career, penned episodes for shows devoted to science fiction (Star Trek), espionage (Mission: Impossible, The Wild Wild West, certain episodes of Hawaii Five-O and A Man Called Sloane) and crime drama.
Writer Harlan Ellison in 1970 referred to Kandel as “one of the more lunatic scriveners in Clown Town.” In a column reprinted in The Other Glass Teat, Ellison wrote that Kandel was assigned to write an episode of a drama called The Young Lawyers that was to introduce a new WASP character.
According to Ellison, ABC opted to tone down socially conscious stories among other changes. Kandel wasn’t a fan of the changes. He initially named the new WASP character “Christian White.”
“It went through three drafts before anyone got hip to Steve’s sword in the spleen,” Ellison wrote.
Other in-joke humor by Kandel did make it to television screens.
One was a 1973 episode of Mannix, Sing a Song of Murder. Kandel named a hitman Anthony Spinner. Kandel had earlier worked for Spinner on the QM series Dan August.
Presumably, Spinner didn’t mind. Kandel ended up working for Spinner on Cannon. Spinner died in 2020.
Another bit was Kandel’s script for A Man Called Sloane episode titled The Seduction Squad. Robert Culp played a Blofeld-like criminal, except he carried around a small dog instead of a cat.
Other Kandel credits included the 1960s Batman series. Kandel also wrote a two-part story that began on Cannon and concluded on Barnaby Jones.
Robert Butlerduring an interview for the Archive of American Television
Robert Butler, a long-time television director who directed the pilots for a number of series, has died at 95, The Hollywood Reporter said.
Butler helmed the first Star Trek pilot, The Cage, with Jeffrey Hunter as Capt. Pike. He also directed the pilots for Hogan’s Heroes, the Adam West Batman series, Hill Street Blues, and Remington Steele with Pierce Brosnan (a show he co-created with Michael Gleason).
His credits also included four episodes of I Spy, one episode of Mission: Impossible (The Mind of Stefan Miklos), and episodes of Columbo.
Regarding Star Trek, Butler said in an interview for the Archive of American Television: “I read the script and I was doubtful. A little disdain is great. To fall blindly in love with material is not as great as having a holdout corner of disdain. Objectivity is the result.”
On the Batman pilot: “It was totally, totally crazy material,” Butler said in the same Archive of American Television interview. “I remember the crew didn’t get it.”
On Remington Steele: “I adored the idea, in a man’s world, of a woman who was superior to most men inventing a non-existent man behind whom she hid….Michael Gleason and I concocted the idea where as she is inventing Steele and is concocting this guy…wham, in he walks.” Gleason wrote the pilot script while both Gleason and Butler were credited as co-creators.
Butler’s IMDB ENTRY lists 99 directing credits from 1959 to 2009 across many genres.
With the passing of David McCallum, the blog decided to look at the surviving stars of the 1960s spy craze.
In no particular order:
Barbara Bain (b. 1931): Bain played Cinammon Carter, the original woman operative of the Impossible Missions Force on Mission: Impossible.
Bain won three Emmys for the role, twice beating out Diana Rigg of The Avengers. She departed the series after three seasons when her then-husband, Martin Landau, was forced off the show. Bain’s exit was a major blow to the series. She reprised the role in a 1997 episode of Diagnosis: Murder.
Peter Lupus (b. 1932): Lupus played Willy Armitage, another original M:I cast member. Willy was a bodybuilder of some renown, whose strength was useful (such as carry nuclear warheads in the pilot). He also helped IMF electronics whiz Barney Collier (Greg Morris) a lot. At one point, the producers wanted to phase Willy out. But Lupus and his character were so popular, that didn’t happen.
Barbara Feldon (b. 1933): Feldon was agent 99 of CONTROL in Get Smart. She was already popular via commercials when she got the part. Feldon’s popularity expanded with Get Smart. Feldon even recorded a song simply titled “99.”
Bill Cosby (b. 1937): Cosby has been both famous and infamous (the latter for allegations of sexual assault). But in the mid-1960s, I Spy, which starred Robert Culp and Cosby, was a major show — both for entertainment and for racial integration. Culp and Cosby were equals on the show.
Linda Thorson (b. 1947): The actress played Tara King, John Steed’s final partner in the original version of The Avengers.
George Lazenby (b. 1939): Lazenby’s one turn as James Bond closed out the 1960s with On Her Majesty’s Secret Service in 1969. The male model won the role over a lot of competition. But he didn’t stick around for a second turn as 007. Lazenby, however, did an homage to the role in the 1983 TV movie The Return of the Man From U.N.C.L.E.
Joanna Lumley (b. 1946): She squeezes in as one of the “angels of death” in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. In the 1970s, she’d be another one of John Steed’s partners in The New Avengers.
Stefanie Powers (b. 1942): Star of The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. Her character name, April Dancer, was courtesy of Ian Fleming, part of his handwritten notes to producer Norman Felton in October 1962. The name was used after NBC insisted on an U.N.C.L.E. spinoff.
Robert Wagner (b. 1930): Star of It Takes a Thief where a master thief works for U.S. intelligence.
Michael Caine (b. 1933): Star of three film adaptations of Len Deighton spy novels. Bond producer Harry Saltzman also produced these films. Some Bond crew members also worked on them.
Leigh Chapman in The Man From U.N.C.L.E. episode “The Four-Steps Affair”
Another in a series about unsung figures of television
Leigh Chapman experienced the 1960s spy craze both in front and behind the camera.
She appeared in multiple episodes of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. as Sarah, an employee of the agency who provided key information to agents. She had occasional amusing moments when communicating via audio with Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn).
Chapman also wrote for television. Her efforts included six episodes of The Wild Wild West, which mixed spies with cowboys. One of her writing highlights was The Night of the Vicious Valentine, which featured an Emmy-awarding winning performance by Agnes Moorehead as the episode’s villain.
Chapman also wrote a first-season episode of the Mission: Impossible television series (Fakeout) as well as sharing a “story by” credit for an episode of It Takes a Thief.
Minimal spoilers but pass over if you’re super adverse to spoilers.
Stylistically, Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One is like an updated 1960s James Bond movie, especially the more epic ones such as You Only Live Twice.
It has a similar structure: The seventh M:I film, directed and co-written by Christopher McQuarrie, is built around outrageous stunts punctuated by humor and some genuinely dramatic scenes. And, as usual, it borrows tropes from the original 1966-73 M:I television series.
Some M:I action sequences evoke Bond but go bigger.
A car chase in Rome tops a similar sequence in SPECTRE. And, of course, there is the much-hyped motorcycle jumping off a mountain, a la GoldenEye, except here star and producer Tom Cruise does the jump himself. Cruise performing his own stunts has emerged over the years as the big trademark of the M:I film series.
The plot has a “ripped from the headlines” feel, dealing with artificial intelligence here, similar to how Bond films evoked the space race in the 1960s as well as the end of the Cold War and media barons in the 1990s, and other issues in the 21st century.
Dead Reckoning isn’t perfect. Its 163-minute running time feels like it could have been tightened. But that’s an issue with a lot of movies these days.
There is a lot of fan debate on chatter about Bond vs. M:I. The Bond series these days likes to take extended breaks between entries. This film and 2018’s Mission: Impossible Fallout came out during such pauses for the Bond series. For now, Mission: Impossible is taking up the slack left by Bond. GRADE: A-Minus.
Paul Playdon (1943-2023), when he was a child actor, in a memorable episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents in 1957, The Glass Eye with Jessica Tandy.
Paul Playdon, who began his show business career as a child actor, then transitioned to being a television writer-producer, has died at 80.
His death was reported on Facebook by a friend, Danny Biderman in a detailed post. Biederman has an extensive collection of props from various examples of spy entertainment.
Playdon, born in the U.K., had been a child actor appearing in Alfred Hitchcock Presents, in the 1957 episode The Glass Eye. Other performers in the episode included Jessica Tandy and William Shatner.
Playdon moved to being a writer-producer. His work covered a number of television series, including Hawaii Five-O, Cannon, The Wild Wild West and The Magician.
Perhaps his biggest television impact was on the original Mission: Impossible series. He was brought on as story editor after ace M:I writer-producers William Read Woodfield and Allan Balter exited the show after a dispute with creator-executive producer Bruce Geller.
Playdon, with his story editor hat, had to revise scripts. His M:I input as writer also included a two-part story as well as the show’s only three-part story. Bits of both adventures showed up in the 2011 Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol movie.
Gerald Fried, an Emmy-winning composer who had a big impact on spy television series, has died at 95. His death was announced on Twitter by Trek Long Island, a Star Trek convention organization.
Fried won an Emmy for the 1977 miniseries Roots, based on the book by Alex Haley. It was an enormous popular and critical hit, and Fried was a major contributor.
However, Fried was incredibly versatile. He could score slapstick comedy (the Sherwood Schwartz-produced comedies Gilligan’s Island and It’s About Time) as well as serious science fiction and adventure (Star Trek).
The composer frequently won assignments to score spy TV shows. Among them: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (starting in the second season into the early part of the fourth) as well as Mission: Impossible.
With U.N.C.L.E., Fried became the show’s go-to composer. His first effort, the two-part Alexander the Greater Affair, was extremely energetic. Fried carried the composing burden for the show’s second and third seasons. That included providing the third-season arrangement of Jerry Goldsmith’s U.N.C.L.E. theme.
Fried said in a 2003 interview for the Archive of American Television that U.N.C.L.E. was a challenge.
“They didn’t have much money for an orchestra budget,” Fried said. “Sometimes you had to do an hour TV show with like six or seven musicians.” His solution was “using a lot of percussion” to generate a “full sound” for the audience.
In the show’s campy third season, Fried did a score for one episode (The Hot Number Affair with Sonny and Cher as guest stars) where the music was played by kazoos. He was asked about it in the Archive of American television interview and lit up. “You remembered,” he told the interviewer.
Gerald Fred’s title card for Part Two, Alexander the Greater Affair
Things took an abrupt turn in the fourth season. The new producer, Anthony Spinner, opted for a more serious tone.
Fried produced another arrangement of the theme but it was rejected. A Fried score for The Deadly Quest Affair also was rejected. He scored one more episode, The Test Tube Killer Affair, which sounded more serious than most of his third-season efforts.
Fried also scored the Star Trek episode Amok Time, which involves a Vulcan mating ritual. Things get complicated and Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock get into a battle to the death.
Fried’s music was so memorable that others referenced it over the years, including the Jim Carrey film The Cable Guy. Carrey would actually “sing” Fried’s music.
Fried’s IMDB.COM ENTRY lists more than 100 composing credits, going back to the 1950s.
The composer’s break came with scoring a 1951 short documentary directed by Stanley Kubrick, Day of the Fight. It showed a day in the life of a boxer. Fried scored other Kubrick films including The Killing and Paths of Glory.
In the Archive of American Television interview, Fried recalled how he met Kubrick. According to the composer, the director said Fried was the only musician that Kubrick knew.
In their early collaborations, Kubrick deferred to Fried on music. As they worked more often, Kubrick asserted more control. Eventually, Fried said, there were “knockdown battles.” With Paths of Glory, “I had to justify every note.”
In 2014, Fried was one of the guests at The Golden Anniversary Affair, a fan event for the 50th anniversary of U.N.C.L.E. Fried was among those who watched musicians perform music from the series, including some of Fried’s compositions.
Cliff Robertson in “The Game,” a 1965 episode of Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre.
Since the start of the 21st century, the most critically acclaimed James Bond film was Casino Royale (2006). Eon Productions finally had its hands on the rights for the first Ian Fleming Bond story.
Still, Eon made one significant change: Bond and the villain Le Chiffre would duel over a game of poker (very popular at the time of production), rather than baccarat or chermin de fer. The latter, essentially is like blackjack except you’re playing to 9 instead of 21.
With the 2006 movie, Casino Royale rode the enthusiasm for poker. Stories SUCH AS THIS ONE said Eon Productions concluded poker was more dramatic than baccarat.
Earlier movies made by Eon Productions used chemin de fer/baccarat as a setting. They included Dr. No (Bond playing against Sylvia Trench), Thunderball (Bond playing against Largo), and For Your Eyes Only.
Still, before Casino Royale, other spy (and non-spy) productions utilized chemin de fer/baccarat settings. Some examples:
Climax! “Casino Royale” (1954): The first James Bond adaptation was a 1954 episode of Climax!, a CBS anthology show. It featured an American Bond (Barry Nelson) dueling with a version of Le Chiffre played by Peter Lorre.
Bob Hope Presents The Chrysler Theatre: The third-season debut of the anthology show featured Cliff Robertson and Dina Merrill in a drama directed by Sydney Pollack. A Midwestern businessman stumbles into a high-stakes game of baccarat. Pollack, in one of his early directing credits, uses dutch angles to emphasize how the lead character has gotten in over his head. The episode includes a score by John Williams.
Here’s the episode:
Mission: Impossible (season 1): “Odds On Evil”: The Impossible Missions Force out-swindles a Middle Eastern dictator. The final showdown occurs between the dictator (Nehemiah Persoff) and IMF operative Rollin Hand (Martin Landau). The dictator is playing with marked cards. When Rollin has one-upped the dictator, the latter is stunned. “That is impossible.”
Rollin responds: “Your highness, in baccarat, nothing is impossible.”
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