U.N.C.L.E. script: The wheels start to come off

Illya Kuryakin (David McCallum) riding a stink bomb in The Super Colossal Affair

In January 1966, the campy Batman television series was an unexpected hit (even to executives of ABC, the network that broadcast the show). That would have a big impact on the third season (1966-67) of The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

NBC, which aired U.N.C.L.E., wanted a lighter approach. After all, the audience has spoken (according to network executives).

The fourth episode broadcast that season, The Super Colossal Affair (original title: The Sodom and Gomorrah Affair) really reflected the Batman influence.

The episode was written by Stanford Sherman. He was a major Batman scribe. During the 1966-67 season, Sherman would have a hand in writing two three-part stories. Another Batman writer, Stanley Ralph Ross, would work on other U.N.C.L.E. scripts during the 1966-67 season. Ross even worked the same gag into Batman and U.N.C.L.E., involving a butler named Rhett.

With this script (dated July 11, 1966), we’re told in the teaser that the Mafia is mad at their Las Vegas “nephews.”

“Suddenly our nephews no longer know us,” “Uncle Giuliano” says during a meeting in Sicily with his associates. “Suddenly they’ve become ‘legitimate businessmen.’ And suddenly they refuse to pay their family taxes.'”

Uncle Giuliano is the leader of the meeting. According to the stage directions, he is “a frail, kindly looking old man who speaks in a soft voice — but whose words are absolute, unquestioned, and occasionally fatal.”

U.N.C.L.E. agents Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn) and Illya Kuryakin (David McCallum) are observing all this. Solo is in a wagon buried “in a towering pile of hay.” He is using a camera with a telescopic lens to take photographs. Illya is disguised as “an old man, stooped and limping.”

Back at the meeting, Uncle Giuliano berates Frank Cosanos, the U.S. mob boss, for not having solved the Las Vegas problem. Cosanos says the Las Vegas mobsters have the city “fortified.” (The final version would see the character renamed Frank Cariago.)

“No one connected with the family can get near it,” Cosanos adds. “I sent a dozen men in there last month, and I all have to show for it is a dozen funerals.”

Uncle Giuliano isn’t satisfied. “Nephews” in other regions are showing signs of going their own way. “Ingratitude is an infectious disease,” Giuliano says.

Illya manages to activate a listening device and catches part of the meeting. But he’s soon discovered and has to get away. He and Solo barely escape.

At the start of Act I, the agents discuss these events with Alexander Waverly (Leo G. Carroll), the U.N.C.L.E. boss.

“You have a tendencey (sic), Mr. Kuryakin, to occasionally increase the risks of your job for the sake of, shall we say, a peculiar sense of humor,” Waverly says.

“Sorry, sir,” Kuryakin replies.

“It’s unfortunate that we don’t know what was discussed during the first part of that conference,” Waverly continues. “The international crime syndicate must have a very pressing reason to call a meeting at this high a level.”

“The only reason that family ever gets together is for funerals,” Solo says.

Waverly instructs the agents to stay close to Cosanos. “Whatever the syndicate assignment is, it’s big, and it’s his.”

Not a bad start. But things go sideways.

Illya disguises himself again, this time as a pool repairman, paying a visit to Cosanos’ Beverly Hills home. He’s attempting to find a good place to plant a listening device. “The bikinied GINGER KLEINSCHMIDT, Cosanos’ brainless and bodiful girl friend emerges from the house,” according to the stage directions. (The character would be renamed Ginger LaVeer in the episode.)

This exchange follows:

GINGER
I’ll bet you meet so many beautiful girls in your job you get tired of looking at them.

ILLYA
It takes a few.

GINGER
I see you’re the short silent type.

ILLYA
I have to concentrate on my job.

GINGER
Why? The television repairman didn’t have to…

Meanwhile, Solo is in a truck outside listening to the audio from Illya’s listening device. Ginger continues to talk: “…and neither did the refrigerator repairman, or the electric toaster repairman, or the egg cooker repairman, or the chaise lounge repairman…”

Cosanos shows up with his thugs shortly thereafter and Illya quickly retreats. “There’s been a rash of broken swimming pools,” he tells Ginger.

There’s a major movie being filmed in Hollywood. Director Ichabod Veblen (who would be renamed Sheldon Veblen in the final version) is doing a movie about an updated Sodom and Gomorrah. Veblen explains to an actor this will be “a modern version of the Sodom and Gomorrah story.” However, the project has run into financial difficulties.

The Mafia will use this as an opportunity against the ungrateful “family” members in Las Vegas. It’s also a chance for the American Mafia boss to fulfill a promise to Ginger to get her into the movies. “My baby wants technicolor-cinemascope, my baby gets technicolor-cinemascope.”

The American mob boss bails out Veblen’s production. But the mobster wants to know how the movie will end.

“Just as Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by fire, Las Vegas is destroyed by fire,” the director says. “A nuclear bomb — the closest thing this faithless age has to a divine thunderbolt. It’s the Biblical story all over again. What beautiful irony.”

The American mob boss agrees to supply $2 million to complete Veblen’s movie, including a real airplane flying over Las Vegas to drop a bomb over the gambling mecca.

Over Acts II and III, Solo and Illya do their best to keep up with the Mafia scheme. Solo is posing as an entertainment reporter. Illya is taking photographs. The duo runs into trouble. The American mobsters mistakenly think the agents are from *Uncle* Giuliano. To be honest, it’s mostly a mess.

Yet, we’re just getting started.

Uncle Giuliano shows up and knows he didn’t send Solo and Illya. This creates obvious complications. Illya is almost killed after being dumped in a vat of plaster of Paris.

Meanwhile, the Mafia’s plot is revealed — it will drop a giant stink bomb over Las Vegas. “That’ll empty the city (Las Vegas) in an hour,” the American mob boss says. “And the effect lasts for five months. Las Vegas will never recover. After this, no tourist will go near the place.”

Time out, time out. The Mafia has seen a dozen of its “soldiers” who were killed by the Las Vegas mobsters. The Mafia isn’t going to kill anybody but just stink up the joint? Did I get that right?

Evidently. The agents move to stop the plot and get on the Mafia aircraft. Uncle Giuliano is sitting in the co-pilot “smiling in anticipation,” according to the stage directions.

Some mayhem ensues. Illya and Cosanos end up atop the stink bomb as it is dropped. Each is holding on for dear life. The mobster has a parachute. Illya grabs Cosanos by the parachute but the mobster ends up falling while Illya has the parachute.

Illya then moves to the nose of the bomb and unscrews it. “As he gets it off…he gets a whiff of the essence of skunk. Phew!” according to the stage directions. The agent “removes the detonator and screws the nose back in as quickly as possible.” Illya then jumps clear of the bomb.

Illya ends up safe but is, well, stinky. Solo, meanwhile, captures Uncle Giuliano in the plane.

This scene clearly is meant as a parody of Dr. Strangelove where Major Kong rides an atomic bomb after it is dropped from a U.S. bomber.

In this script, U.N.C.L.E. also finances the completion of the movie.

The final version of the episode is even worse. Illya is having to undergo intense decontamination from the stink smell, with two guys in protective gear spraying stuff around him:

This script and the final broadcast version represented an early indication that U.N.C.L.E.’s third season would go seriously awry in several episodes.

MGM’s 100th anniversary and its spy impact

MGM logo

This year marks the 100th anniversary of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. MGM was created by a merger of three companies in 1924.

At one time, it was the most glamorous studio in Hollywood before entering a state of decline. It also had an impact on the spy genre with The Man From U.N.C.L.E. television series in the 1960s and later when it acquired United Artists, which released the James Bond films.

MGM came to be in April 1924 when Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures and Louis B. Mayer Pictures merged. The new company would adopt the lion logo of Goldwyn Pictures.

MGM over the decades would release movies such as The Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind, Mrs. Miniver, The Band Wagon, Gigi, Battleground, 2001: A Space Oydessey, and two versions of Ben Hur, among others. Its Culver City, California, backlot was one of the biggest in Hollywood.

By the 1960s, MGM’s best days were behind it although the backlot was still intact.

MGM entered the spycraze via The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Arena Productions, headed by Norman Felton, worked out of MGM. Felton met with James Bond author Ian Fleming in New York in October 1962. That was the first step in how U.N.C.L.E. came to be, with writer-producer Sam Rolfe doing the heavy lifting.

The series ran from September 1964 until January 1968. MGM re-edited U.N.C.L.E. episodes into eight movies for international release, with a few of the early ones getting released in the U.S. MGM, in 1966, also had U.N.C.L.E. stars Robert Vaughn and David McCallum be the leads in separate feature films (The Venetian Affair and Three Bites of the Apple, respectively) that were released in 1967.

After U.N.C.L.E. had run its course, MGM got bought and sold, getting diminished in the process. Much of MGM’s Southern California real estate got sold off. Costumes and props from MGM movies were auctioned off. By the mid-1970s, what few MGM movies being made (such as 1976’s Network) were distributed by United Artists, the original 007 studio.

What’s more, as a result of all the deal-making, the pre-1986 MGM film library eventually was acquired by corporate parent companies of Warner Bros. That’s why the 2015 film version of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. was released by Warners.

UA, owned by insurance conglomerate Transamerica, had its own troubles at the end of 1970s and the start of the 1980s. MGM bought UA, a deal that closed in 1981. Now, the James Bond film franchise fell under the sway of MGM.

Eon Productions, which controls creative issues related to Bond, had a series of confrontations with various MGM management regimes. Eon and MGM had legal fights, which resulted in no Bond films being made from summer 1989 (Licence to Kill) to fall 1995 (GoldenEye). Even after that conflict was settled, Eon had plenty of differences with MGM.

For much of the Bond era of MGM, the studio was a shadow of its former self. A notable low was when MGM went into bankruptcy in 2010.

In 2021, Amazon acquired MGM for $8.45 billion. That may have firmed up MGM’s finances, but to date, it hasn’t resulted in a steady production of Bond movies.

Regardless, a merger of almost a century ago, has had a big impact on the spy film and TV genre.

The Man From U.N.C.L.E.’s 60th anniversary

Cover to one of Jon Burlingame’s Man From U.N.C.L.E. soundtracks released in the 2000s.

Adapted and updated from a Sept. 22, 2014 post

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. debuted Sept. 22, 1964, with the telecast of The Vulcan Affair on NBC.

The series had false starts. First Ian Fleming was a participant, then after several months, he wasn’t, bowing out to pressure from Bond movie producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman. Fleming’s participation extended from October 1962 until mid-1963. Then there was threatened legal action from Eon Productions stemming from the show’s original title, Solo.

In turn, the series got a new title and the legal problems eventually went away. A gangster named Solo died the most spectacular death among hoodlums invited to Goldfginer’s Kentucky stud farm, a change from earlier drafts and from Fleming’s original novel. (Adrian Turner’s 1998 book on Goldfinger details the changes in the movie’s script.)

Rough Start

Nor did U.N.C.L.E. get off to an easy start. Airing on Tuesday nights, it was up against The Red Skeleton Show on CBS, which nearly led to cancellation before a mid-season switch to Monday nights.

But the audience discovered the series, eventually ensuring a renewal for a second season for 1965-66, which would be its highest-rated campaign.

Executive Producer Norman Felton (1913-2012) faced other challenges.

His developer-producer Sam Rolfe (1924-1993) departed after the first season and things weren’t quite the same, certainly not as consistent.

Various other producers — David Victor, Boris Ingster, and Anthony Spinner among them — put their own stamp on the show with varying degrees of success. Major contributions were made by writers such as Alan Caillou (who arguably shaped the Illya Kuryakin character), Dean Hargrove, and Peter Allan Fields.

The series also resulted in eight movies edited from the TV series (many with additional footage) for international release: To Trap a Spy, The Spy With My Face, One Spy Too Many, One of Our Spies Is Missing, The Spy In the Green Hat, The Karate Killers, The Helicopter Spies, and How to Steal the World. A few even got U.S. releases.

Time Takes Its Toll

Few of the creative personnel are still with us. Frequent U.N.C.L.E. director Joseph Sargent died in December 2014, three months after the show’s 50th anniversary. Star Robert Vaughn died in 2016. David McCallum passed away in 2023, days after his 90th birthday. Fred Koenekamp, who worked as director of photography on U.N.C.L.E. which got him movie jobs, passed away in 2017. Writer Peter Allan Fields died in 2019.

Dean Hargrove

There are still survivors. Dean Hargrove, 85, in a long interview in March 2019 with the Writer’s Guild Foundation provided some insights into the show. He acknowledged it put him on the map, setting up a long and successful career as a TV writer-producer.

The franchise is in limbo. A 2015 movie based on the series wasn’t a financial success. There was talk of trying to get a sequel going but there’s no sign much is happening.

Hargrove, in his 2019 interview, said studio Warner Bros. may have simply waited too long to do a movie version.

Regardless, U.N.C.L.E. this year marks an important anniversary. Before U.N.C.L.E., there were unsuccessful attempts at American spy TV shows. For example, Five Fingers in 1959, starring David Hedison and Luciana Paluzzi, lasted only 16 episodes.

Dick Van Dyke’s visits to spy land

Title card for The Man From My Uncle

Actor Dick Van Dyke turned 98 on Dec. 13, celebrating a long career of entertainment. He even ventured into the realm of spies on occasion.

The Dick Van Dyke Show, “The Man From My Uncle,” original airdate: April 20, 1966: The uncle of the title refers to Uncle Sam. Comedy writer Rob Petrie is contacted by a federal agency. Agents want to use the Petrie house in New Rochelle, New York, to conduct a surveillance operation.

The lead agent is Harry Bond (Godfrey Cambridge). Before Rob can make a joke on Bond’s name, the agent waves him off. He’s heard them all before. The episode goes on to make other references to Bond films and The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

The episode was written by Garry Marshall and Jerry Belson. The duo would develop The Odd Couple into a TV series before they went their separate ways. Marshall would create TV comedies such as Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley. Marshall and Belson also wrote an episode of I Spy during the 1965-66 television season.

Diagnosis Murder, “Discards,” original airdate: Nov. 13, 1997: In this series, Van Dyke played a crime-solving doctor, Mark Sloan. One of Sloan’s associates (Charlie Schlatter) discovers his father (Robert Culp) is a spy.

Culp had starred in I Spy (1965-68). The roster of guest stars also included former TV spy actors Patrick Macnee, Robert Vaughn and Barbara Bain. The latter actually reprised her Mission: Impossible character, Cinnamon Carter.

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.

David McCallum, U.N.C.L.E.’s cool Russian, dies

David McCallum in a Man From U.N.C.L.E. publicity still

David McCallum, the Scottish-born actor who gained fame playing Russian agent Illya Kuryakin on The Man From U.N.C.L.E., died on Monday less than a week after turning 90, Variety reported.

Variety’s story included a statement from McCallum’s son, Peter. “He was the kindest, coolest, most patient and loving father. He always put family before self. He looked forward to any chance to connect with his grandchildren.”

The Kuryakin role was only a fraction of a career that lasted more than 60 years. For example, he played a British officer in 1963’s The Great Escape and Judas in 1965’s The Greatest Story Ever Told.

Years earlier, he was in the cast of Hell Drivers, a 1957 film whose cast included future spy craze stars Sean Connery and Patrick McGoohan as well as Stanley Baker, and Herbert Lom.

In terms of a continuing role, McCallum played Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard on NCIS far longer than he portrayed Illya Kuryakin.

Still, the role of the enigmatic Kuryakin in the 1964-68 series made McCallum a star.

The actor took a part, originally intended as a sidekick, into the equal of Napoleon Solo, played by Robert Vaughn.

Kuryakin, as originally scripted by Sam Rolfe, was supposed to be a large “Slavic man.” Instead, it was cast with the 5-foot-8 McCallum. The actor, in an interview for a 2007 home video release of the series, said the only information he had was the character had “jazz records under” his bed.

Kuryakin only had a few lines in the show’s pilot, The Vulcan Affair. But writer Alan Caillou, a British spy during World War II, expanded the character in two first-season episodes, The Quadripartite Affair and The Giuoco Piano Affair.

As written by Caillou, Kuryakin knew a lot about gypsies and was very protective about a woman, Marion Raven (played by his then-wife Jill Ireland), who witnessed her father being killed.

Caillou also wrote the first Kuryakin-centric episode, The Bow-Wow Affair, involving gypsies enticing dogs to attack their masters. Solo uses an intercom to ask Kuryakin if he’s free to attend a meeting.

“No man is free who has to work for a living,” McCallum’s Illya replies. “But I’m available.”

By that time, Kuryakin was an established part of the show. Earlier, NBC’s West Coast executives, including Grant Tinker (whose instincts normally were better) wanted to get rid of Kuryakin.

The production team claimed to have misunderstood Tinker’s instructions. The part of the U.N.C.L.E. chief was recast with Leo G. Carroll replacing Will Kuluva. But executive producer Norman Felton had intended to replace Kuluva for the series all along.

The series avoided emphasizing how Kuryakin was a loyal Soviet working at the multi-national U.N.C.L.E. There were little references here and there but given the Cold War tensions of the era they were subtle.

In The Project Strigas Affair (an episode that guest starred William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, two years before Star Trek), McCallum’s Illya spent much of the story in a disguise resembling a young Trotsky.

In another episode, The Love Affair, Vaughn’s Solo and McCallum’s Illya approach a Long Island approach a mansion that’s the site of a party for the rich.

“Suddenly, I feel very Russian,” Illya says.

Solo replies to start a revolution if he doesn’t get out soon enough.

1960s ad with David McCallum referencing The Man From U.N.C.L.E., pitching U.S. Savings Bonds

McCallum’s Kuryakin was so popular, he appeared in ads marketing U.S. Savings Bonds. For American audiences, Illya may have been a Soviet, but he was our Soviet.

During the course of the series, McCallum and Ireland divorced. He met Kathy Carpenter, a model, during a photo shoot with Robert Vaughn. McCallum and Carpenter became an item, marrying in 1967. (He got time off during U.N.C.L.E.’s fourth season, which is why Kuryakin doesn’t appear in The Man From Thrush Affair.)

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. was canceled by NBC in January 1968 after 105 episodes.

McCallum stayed busy in the decades that followed. But he never shed the association with Kuryakin.

In 1998, The New York Times ran a feature on McCallum. It began with this passage:

As paranoid as it sounds, David McCallum is absolutely certain he is being shadowed by a Russian agent.

”He’s there every day,” Mr. McCallum said in a stage whisper as he peered over a pair of sunglasses. ”I mean, it’s been 30 years, but I can’t escape him. Illya Kuryakin is there 24 hours a day.”

McCallum’s role in NCIS, starting in 2003, eased that. Still, the series included an episode with an in-joke. Mark Harmon’s agent Gibbs is asked what Ducky looked like as a young man. “Illya Kuryakin,” Gibbs replies.

In 2015, McCallum finally witnessed another actor, Armie Hammer, assume the role of Kuryakin in The Man From U.N.C.L.E. movie. McCallum, in an interview on Fox News, endorsed both the film and his successor. “I envy him his height,” McCallum said of the 6-foot-5 Hammer.

In a later interview, McCallum said the 2015 version of Illya “was ridiculous.” In the 2015 movie, Illya was a borderline psychotic. He still complimented Hammer’s performance.

For fans of the original U.N.C.L.E. series, however, McCallum remained a giant.

Here’s a Wall Street Journal video interview from 2016 where McCallum discussed his career.

Here is another excerpt from an interview McCallum did about the role of Illya Kuryakin.

David McCallum at 90

David McCallum in a Man From U.N.C.L.E. publicity still

David McCallum, the Scottish-born actor who gained fame playing Russian agent Illya Kuryakin on The Man From U.N.C.L.E. , celebrates his 90th birthday on Sept. 19.

The Kuryakin role was only a fraction of a career that has lasted more than 60 years. For example, he played a British officer in 1963’s The Great Escape and Judas in 1965’s The Greatest Story Ever Told.

In terms of a continuing role, he played Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard on NCIS far longer than he portrayed Illya Kuryakin.

Still, the role of the enigmatic Kuryakin in the 1964-68 series made McCallum a star.

The actor took a part, originally intended as a sidekick, into the equal of Napoleon Solo, played by Robert Vaughn.

Kuryakin, as originally scripted by Sam Rolfe, was supposed to be a large “Slavic man.” Instead, it was cast with the 5-foot-8 McCallum. The actor, in an interview for a 2007 home video release of the series, said the only information he had was the character had “jazz records under” his bed.

Kuryakin only had a few lines in the show’s pilot, The Vulcan Affair (and its movie version, To Trap a Spy). But writer Alan Caillou, a British spy during World War II, expanded the character in two first-season episodes, The Quadripartite Affair and The Giuoco Piano Affair.

As written by Caillou, Kuryakin knew a lot about gypsies and was very protective about a woman, Marion Raven (played by his then-wife Jill Ireland), who witnessed her father being killed.

Caillou also wrote the first Kuryakin-centric episode, The Bow-Wow Affair, involving gypsies enticing dogs to attack their masters. Solo uses an intercom to ask Kuryakin if he’s free to attend a meeting.

“No man is free who has to work for a living,” McCallum’s Illya replies. “But I’m available.”

By that time, Kuryakin was an established part of the show. Earlier, NBC West Coast executives, headed by Grant Tinker (whose instincts normally were better), wanted to get rid of Kuryakin.

The production team claimed to have misunderstood Tinker’s instructions. The part of the U.N.C.L.E. chief was recast with Leo G. Carroll replacing Will Kuluva. But executive producer Norman Felton had intended to replace Kuluva for the series all along.

The series avoided emphasizing how Kuryakin was a loyal Soviet working at the multi-national U.N.C.L.E. There were little references here and there but given the Cold War tensions of the era, they were subtle.

1960s ad with David McCallum and a “message from U.N.C.L.E.” pitching U.S. Savings Bonds

Regardless, McCallum was so popular, that he appeared in ads emphasizing the U.N.C.L.E. connection that marketed U.S. Savings Bonds. For American audiences, Illya may have been a Soviet, but he was our Soviet.

During the course of the series, McCallum and Ireland divorced. He met Kathy Carpenter, a model, during a photo shoot with Robert Vaughn. McCallum and Carpenter became an item, marrying in 1967. (He got time off during U.N.C.L.E.’s fourth season, which is why Kuryakin doesn’t appear in The Man From Thrush Affair.)

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. was canceled by NBC, its final episode airing in January 1968 after 105 episodes.

McCallum stayed busy in the decades that followed. But he never shed the association with Kuryakin.

In 1998, The New York Times ran a feature story on McCallum. It began with this passage:

As paranoid as it sounds, David McCallum is absolutely certain he is being shadowed by a Russian agent.

”He’s there every day,” Mr. McCallum said in a stage whisper as he peered over a pair of sunglasses. ”I mean, it’s been 30 years, but I can’t escape him. Illya Kuryakin is there 24 hours a day.”

McCallum’s role in NCIS, starting in 2003, eased that. Still, the series included an episode with an in-joke. Mark Harmon’s agent Gibbs is asked what Ducky looked like as a young man. “Illya Kuryakin,” Gibbs replies.

In 2015, McCallum finally witnessed another actor, Armie Hammer, assume the role of Kuryakin in The Man From U.N.C.L.E. movie. McCallum, in an interview on Fox News, endorsed both the film and his successor. “I envy him his height,” McCallum said of the 6-foot-5 Hammer.

In a later interview, McCallum said the 2015 version of Illya “was ridiculous.” In the 2015 movie, Illya was a borderline psychotic. He still complimented Hammer’s performance.

For fans of the original U.N.C.L.E. series, however, McCallum remained a giant.

Here’s a Wall Street Journal video interview from 2016 where McCallum discussed his career.

Here is another excerpt from an interview McCallum did about the role of Illya Kuryakin.

2013: Filming on a U.N.C.L.E. movie starts

Henry Cavill during the filming of The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

Ten years ago this week, filming commenced on a movie version of The Man From U.N.C.L.E., the 1964-68 TV series.

The project had been in development for years, with many scripts commissioned and different creative personnel attached. Finally, Warner Bros. approved a project directed by Guy Ritchie.

On Sept. 6, 2013, Henry Cavill (as Napoleon Solo), Armie Hammer (as Illya Kuryakin), and Jared Harris (as a CIA official) went before the cameras at an outdoor cafe set constructed in London.

The Henry Cavill News website had a Sept. 6, 2013 post about the beginning of production. Its lead image was a photo of Cavill and Hammer with their backs to the cameras. The site quoted posts on Twitter (now X) from people who had gone by the filming site.

The filming schedule would extend into December, though Cavill finished in late November. He was already bulking up to play Superman in Batman v. Superman, which would begin filming in early 2014.

Prior to this, the last U.N.C.L.E. production had been the 1983 TV movie The Return of the Man From U.N.C.L.E., which starred the original leads, Robert Vaughn and David McCallum. Neither would be called upon to do a cameo for the 21st-century film.

Naturally, U.N.C.L.E. fans were curious. Some were intrigued about a new take. Others felt there was no way to improve upon the original.

Even today, years after the movie was finally released in August 2015, the movie divides U.N.C.L.E. fans. Those who liked the movie were hoping for a sequel. That would not happen after the film only generated a global box office of $107 million. The fans who detested the movie said, essentially, good riddance.

U.N.C.L.E. script: A future Oscar winner takes a turn

Richardo Montalban and Robert Vaughn in The Dove Affair

In the earliest days of making The Man From U.N.C.L.E. television series, one writer would go on to bigger things.

His name? Robert Towne, who’d win an Oscar for writing 1974’s Chinatown. The Dove Affair would be his only contribution to U.N.C.L.E.

A script he submitted dated August 1964, has some interesting differences with the episode that would air on NBC on Dec. 15, 1964.

As with the episode, the story begins after the death of the head of an Eastern European nation, Milo Jans and the leader’s body is laying in state. “His name ‘MILO JANS 1884-1964’ and the phrase ‘PRINCE AMONG BARBARIANS, AND BARBARIAN AMONG PRINCES’ is inlaid on the brick wall directly behind the tomb.”

An American teacher, Miss Taub, and her students are present. She tells her students about Jans’ historical importance.

A mysterious man prepares an explosive. Miss Taub continues her briefing for the students. An explosive goes off. The man breaks into the tomb and takes a medal on the body of Jans.

The man (still not identified) has hidden the medal and meets up on a bridge with Satine, an intelligent operative for Jans’ country. Eventually, Satine double-crosses the man, sending him to the water below.

Then, the secret police of the country come up to Satine. They ask what happened to the man. Satine says he would have preferred the man be apprehended alive.

We cut to U.N.C.L.E. headquarters. The man turns out to be a now-dead U.N.C.L.E. agent. There is video of the dead U.N.C.L.E. agent with Jans while he was alive. Alexander Waverly now ponders what to do next. Waverly *now turns* to Napoleon Solo, the Number One of Section Two (operations and enforcement).

WAVERLY

Now why? Why would one of our best Section III people risk an international incident by defiling a national teasure?

SOLO

Why in fact did Jans ask us there at all?

At this point, Waverly assigns Solo to the affair. The briefing includes some details about Satine. Since 1949, he has been first deputy chief of KREB, the country’s intelligence agency. Until 1962, it wasn’t known whether Satine was one man or several. It was discovered he was only one person because he imports special drugs for stomach trouble.

In the final episodes, things were simplified. Solo takes the medal from the body of Jans, is almost killed by Satine but comes back.

Ricardo Montalban was cast as Satine, and the stomach drugs bit remained. June Lockhart played Miss Taub and she was one of the best “innocents” in the story. Miss Taub and her students end up helping Solo get out of fix toward the end of the story.

Return of The Man From U.N.C.L.E.’s 40th anniversary

Robert Vaughn and David McCallum in a publicity still for The Return of The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

Adapted from a 2013 post with updates.

You can’t keep a good man down. So it was for former U.N.C.L.E. agents Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin, who made a return 40 years ago.

The intrepid agents, again played by Robert Vaughn and David McCallum, were back after a 15-year absence. This time they appeared in a made-for-television movie broadcast in April 1983 on CBS, instead of NBC, home of the original 1964-68 series.

It was a mixed homecoming. Return’s script, penned by executive producer Michael Sloan, recycled the plot of Thunderball, the fourth James Bond film. Thrush steals two nuclear bombs from a U.S. military aircraft. Thrush operative Janus (Geoffrey Lewis) boasts that the criminal organization is now “a nuclear power.” Yawn. Thrush was much more ambitious in the old days.

The show had been sold to NBC as “James Bond for television.” Sloan & Co. took the idea literally, hiring one-time 007 George Lazenby to play “JB,” who happens to drive as vintage Aston Martin DB5. (In real life, the car was constantly in need of repair.) JB helps Solo, who has just been recalled to active duty for U.N.C.L.E., to get out of a jam in Las Vegas.

In a sense, this TV movie was a footnote to 1983’s “Battle of the Bonds.” Roger Moore and Sean Connery were starring in dueling 007 films, Octopussy and Never Say Never Again respectively. All three Bond film actors up to that time were either playing 007 or a reasonable facsimile. Lazenby filmed his scenes for The Return of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. on Dec. 2-3, 1982.

The original U.N.C.L.E. series had been filmed no further out than about 30 miles from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s studio in Culver City, California. Return was really filmed in and around Las Vegas, with the desert nearby substituting for Libya, where Thrush chieftain Justin Sepheran (Anthony Zerbe) has established his headquarters.

George Lazenby’s title card in the main titles of The Return of The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

Vaughn and McCallum, being old pros, make the best of the material they’re given, especially when they appear together. That’s not often, as it turns out. After being reunited, they pursue the affair from different angles. Solo has to put up with skeptical U.N.C.L.E. agent Kowalski (Tom Mason), who complains out loud to new U.N.C.L.E. chief Sir John Raleigh (Patrick Macnee) bringing back two aging ex-operatives.

Sloan did end up bringing in two crew members of the original series: composer Gerald Fried, who worked on the second through fourth seasons, and director of photography Fred Koenekamp, who had photographed 90 U.N.C.L.E. episodes from 1964 through 1967.

Also on the crew was Robert Short, listed as a technical adviser. He and Danny Biederman had attempted to put together an U.N.C.L.E. feature film. Their project eventually was rejected in favor of Sloan’s TV movie.

In the end, the April 5, 1983 broadcast produced respectable ratings. CBS, however, passed on committing to a new U.N.C.L.E. series.

For a long time, Return remained the last official U.N.C.L.E. production. Another U.N.C.L.E. project wouldn’t be seen until 2015. That’s when The Man From U.N.C.L.E. film debuted. It had an “origin” storyline, didn’t feature many of the familiar U.N.C.L.E. memes, and revised the back stories of Solo and Kuryakin.

In 2013, the blog published a post about Return’s 30th anniversary. Since then Vaughn, Macnee and Koenekamp have died.

For a more detailed review of The Return of The Man From U.N.C.L.E., CLICK HERE.

Finally, in 2021, director Ray Austin hosted a live stream with participants of the 1983 TV movie. Austin had once been the stunt arranger on The Avengers television series.