1966: The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.’s (reverse) Skyfall preview

Stefanie Powers and Noel Harrison in a Girl From U.N.C.L.E. publicity still

The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., a one-season spinoff of The Man From U.N.C.L.E., is known for being a frothy, overly cute take on the spy genre. But it has one thing else: a preview, in reverse, of Skyfall’s pre-credits sequence.

GFU: In the pre-credits sequence of The Lethal Eagle Affair, the 11th of 29 Girl episodes, lead character April Dancer (Stefanie Powers) is in peril, tied atop a car. Her sidekick, Mark Slate (Noel Harrison), is keeping her under observation. Slate is in constant communication with U.N.C.L.E. chief Alexander Waverly (Leo G. Carroll).

Skyfall: In the pre-credits sequence, James Bond (Daniel Craig) is fighting an assassin atop a train. His sidekick, agene Eve (Naomie Harris) has frantically driven ahead and stops, keeping 007 under observation. Eve is in constant communication with MI6 chief M (Judi Dench).

GFU: An eagle is released by the bad guys and is descending rapidly toward April Dancer. Slate has the eagle in his gun sights and asks Waverly for permission to fire.

Skyfall: Eve has Bond and the assassin in her sights but doesn’t have a clean shot.

GFU: Waverly refuses Slate’s request to open fire. “You are there to observe,” Waverly says. He comes across as a bit cold blooded, which is the intent.

Skyfall: M tells Eve to blast away. “Take the bloody shot!” She comes across as a bit cold blooded, which is the intent.

The television episode is still a much lighter outing compared to the 2012 James Bond film and doesn’t have much else in common. But it’s still amusing to watch the U.N.C.L.E. episode play out compared to the Skyfall pre-credits sequence.

February 2013 post: 1968: I SPY PREVIEWS SKYFALL’S CLIMAX.

Noel Harrison, Girl From U.N.C.L.E. co-star, dies at 79

Noel Harrison circa 1966

Noel Harrison, who played Mark Slate in The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., died on Oct. 20 at age 79.

Word spread among fans after a message Harrison’s wife, Lori, had been sent out. Meanwhile, Andy Williamson, a U.K. musician MADE A POST ON TWITTER that read:

Andy Williamson‏@bigbuzzard
Sad Sad news that fellow #kidney patient #NoelHarrison died yesterday. I loved playing http://youtu.be/WEhS9Y9HYjU with him last year.

Later, Stefanie Powers, his U.N.C.L.E. co-star, also POSTED ON TWITTER about the death of Harrison:

Stefanie Powers‏@Stefanie_Powers
My darling friend Noel Harrison passed last night. Let us all light a candle to speed him on his way – he deserves to fly with the angels

Powers and Harrison, the son of actor Rex Harrison, were the leads of the spinoff from The Man From U.N.C.L.E. The show only ran one season, 1966-67.

In the pilot, an episode of Man, Mark Slate was a middle aged U.N.C.L.E. agent (Norman Fell) who was trying to hide the fact he was over the age of 40, which was supposed to be the mandatory retirement age for field agents.

That concept was dropped when Girl was picked up as a series. Slate was remade as a British agent in his 30s in the person of Harrison. Executive Producer Norman Felton, who had seen Scotsman David McCallum become a star as Illya Kuryakin on Man, in effect tried to see if lightning would strike twice. It didn’t.

Right from the start, Girl took on a very light touch. Also, the Girl concept was forced on Felton by NBC, which specifically wanted the spinoff to feature a woman agent. Felton & Co. weren’t comfortable having Powers’s April Dancer get into big fights; as a result, Harrison’s Slate ended up absorbing enough beatings for two characters. That had the effect of making Harrison’s Slate look like a weaker character.

Harrison’s Slate perhaps came across best in an episode of Man, The Galatea Affair. It was originally written as a typical Napoleon Solo-Illya Kuraykin story. Harrison got the bulk of the Solo part. The episode was also a play on My Fair Lady, in which Slate trains a low-class English woman to take the place of a countess (both parts being played by Joan Collins).

After Girl ended, Harrison ended up in one more notable spy television story: the only three-part episode of Mission: Impossible, The Falcon. Harrison played the childlike member of a royal family of a country who’s being used as a dupe by an ambitious general (John Vernon). The story is even more complicated than the typical M:I tale and features a number of cliffhangers along the way.

Harrison also had a career as a musician, perhaps best known for singing The Windmills of Your Mind, the title song for the original version of The Thomas Crown Affair.

UPDATE (Oct. 22): The BBC has AN OBITUARY of Harrison on its Web site. You can also click to see obits from THE ASSOCIATED PRESS and the U.K. TELEGRAPH NEWSPAPER.

September 2011 post: THE GIRL FROM U.N.C.L.E.’S 45TH ANNIVERSARY: A SPINOFF FAILS TO TAKE OFF

GIRL FROM U.N.C.L.E. REVIEWS on The Man From U.N.C.L.E. episode guide

Richard Matheson and his (unlikely) contribution to spy TV

Richard Matheson

Author Richard Matheson died this week at the age of 87. Obituaries, SUCH AS THIS ONE ON NPR quite rightly detailed work such as I Am Legend, classic episodes of The Twilight Zone and the early 1970s television movie Duel, starring Dennis Weaver, which was one of Steven Spielberg’s early directing credits.

He also made an unlikely contribution to 1960s spy television. It wasn’t on The Man From U.N.C.L.E. or Mission: Impossible or Get Smart or The Wild, Wild West. Instead, it was the script for an installment of The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., the spinoff that only lasted one season.

The specific episode was THE ATLANTIS AFFAIR, the ninth episode of the series. While it suffers some of the same campiness that crimped the entire Girl series, it is one of the better entries for the show. With Matheson scripting, April Dancer (Stefanie Powers) and Mark Slate (Noel Harrison) come across as more than competent, which wasn’t always the case in a show that too often played it for laughs while falling short.

Matheson’s script even introduces some science fiction elements. The villain in the episode is even played by Khigh Dhiegh, two years before his debut as Wo Fat, the arch-foe of Steve McGarrett in Hawaii Five-O.

Boris Karloff’s visits to ’60s spy entertainment

Boris Karloff (1887-1969) is best remembered for horror roles such as Frankenstein’s monster. But Karloff was quite versatile and in the last decade of his life found himself drawn to spy-related entertainment, particularly on television. A spy boom was underway and the character actor ended up being part of it.

Boris Karloff as Mr. Singh in The Wild, Wild West

The Wild, Wild West, “The Night of the Golden Cobra”: Karloff is Mr. Singh, who abducts James West (Robert Conrad), ace U.S. Secret Service agent, so he can instruct his three sons in the art of killing. Singh doesn’t do things in a small way. Having emigrated from India, he has a palace out in the 1870s American West. The early second-season episode was scripted by Henry Sharp, one of the show’s best writers. Karloff makes the most of Sharp’s witty dialogue.

Boris Karloff clowns around with Stefanie Powers and Robert Vaughn during production of The Mother Muffin Affair

The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., “The Mother Muffin Affair”: Probably one of the best remembered episodes of a series that had a lot of duds. Karloff plays Mother Muffin, who heads up an independent assassination team. Producer Douglas Benton had worked with Karloff on the Thriller anthology series that ran from 1960 to 1962.

According to an interview Benton did in the late 1990s (which is re-enacted in a commentary track on the Thriller DVD set, with Benton’s son reading his father’s words), writer Joseph Calvelli described Mother Muffin as “Boris Karloff in drag.” Benton decided to send a copy of the script to Karloff, feeling it would appeal to the actor’s sense of humor. As Benton remembered it, the script came back a few days later with a note that read: “Where and when?” The episode has Robert Vaughn appearing as The Man From U.N.C.L.E.’s Napoleon Solo, teaming up with Stefanie Powers’s April Dancer.

The Venetian Affair: This 1967 movie, based on a novel by Helen MacInnes, was a chance for Robert Vaughn to star in a serious spy vehicle compared with the more escapist fare on The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Karloff is part of a cast that also includes Elke Sommer and Luciana Paluzzi. The film starts with an American diplomat performing a suicide bombing at a peace conference.

I Spy, “Mainly on the Plains”: Karloff is a scientist who seems to have become a bit unglued and is giving Kelly Robinson and Alexander Scott (Robert Culp and Bill Cosby) fits. The episode was scripted by series creators Morton Fine and David Friedkin (who didn’t get that creator credit while they were alive; they received it posthumously with the I Spy Returns 1994 TV movie) and directed by Friedkin.

The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.’s 45th anniversary: a spinoff fails to take off

This week is the 45th anniversary for The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. Its failure to find an audience — it only lasted one season — is a reminder of what can happen when creators don’t especially believe in what they’re doing.

A spinoff of The Man From U.N.C.L.E., featurng a woman agent, was the idea of NBC. The wife of a network executive had even suggested a name for such an operative: Cookie Fortune. Norman Felton, the executive producer of The Man From From U.N.C.L.E., wasn’t keen on the notion. He counterproposed having two hour-long shows each week simply called U.N.C.L.E., where agents could be mixed and matched. NBC stood firm.

Girl’s pilot aired at a second-season episode of Man called The Moonglow Affair, scripted by Dean Hargrove. Hargrove passed on using Cookie Fortune as a name; he ended up going to Ian Fleming’s list of ideas for Man and used April Dancer (envisioned by Fleming as a Miss Moneypenny type character).

In Moonglow, Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn) and Illya Kuryakin (David McCallum) are incapacitated. April (Mary Ann Mobley) is assigned to take over the assignment, aided by a middle aged Mark Slate (Norman Fell). For the series, April was recast with Stefanie Powers and Slate was turned into a Brit in his 30s, with Noel Harrison in the role.

What happened next was a vicious cycle. By many accounts, Powers and Harrison couldn’t take the material seriously. Douglas Benton ordered scripts to take a lighter tone, figuring it would play to the strengths of Powers and Harrison. One of the crew was associate producer Max Hodge, who had written the first two Mr. Freeze stories on the 1966 Batman series.

Also, Felton & Co. weren’t comfortable having April actually fight guys (and absorb at least some punishment).
As a result, Slate’s Harrison had to take the beatings for two characters, making him look weaker. Meanwhile, ABC was importing episodes of the U.K.-produced The Avengers featuring Diana Rigg’s Mrs. Peel. April looked weak by comparison.

A light tone can work when 1) the jokes are funny and 2) the audience laughs with the hero. The problem with Girl is frequently the jokes weren’t funny and came at the expense of April Dancer and Mark Slate. Late in the season, Hargrove returned and wrote The Double-O-Nothing Affair. It was still light (Thrush villain Edward Asner’s base of operations is disguised as a used-car lot) but the jokes worked and April and Mark came across as capable and brave agents. Perhaps Hargrove had invested enough in the character of April Dancer to try to make it work.

Too little, too late. Girl was canceled in the spring of 1967 and an opportunity was lost. The show is now on DVD. Here’s a clip from what may be the worst episode of the series, The Paradise Lost Affair, in which the supposedly professionally trained April looks weak against villain Genghis Gomez VIII (Monte Landis). Warner Bros. uploaded this clip to YouTube to try to get people to buy the DVDs. Oops.

The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. available on DVD this week

The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., the spinoff series from The Man From U.N.C.L.E. will become available on Aug. 23 on DVD from Warner Bros.

The price is $59.95. Be warned: the picture has not been digitally remastered (similar to Warners Bros.’s releases of The FBI) and appears to be a “manufactured on demand,” or MOD. That means no extras. That’s a far cry from Warners’s 2007 release of The Man From U.N.C.L.E., which was loaded with extras.

Girl featured the adventures of agent April Dancer (Stefanie Powers), assisted by fellow U.N.C.L.E. operative Mark Slate (Noel Harrison). Leo G. Carroll played U.N.C.L.E. boss Alexander Waverly in both the spinoff and parent series. The pilot for Girl was a second-season episode of Man called The Moonglow Affair, which featured Mary Ann Mobley and Norman Fell, playing a frumpy, older-than-40, American Mark Slate.

Norman Felton, Man’s executive producer, wasn’t particularly keen on the spinoff, which was the brainchild of executives of NBC. Girl, which ran during the 1966-67 season, often had even goofier humor than Man’s third season. But it has some gems, including The Double-O-Nothing Affair, written by ace Man scripter Dean Hargrove, who also wrote The Moonglow Affair. Double-O-Nothing features Edward Asner is a Thrush operative, with a used-car lot as his cover.

Another notable episode was The Mother Muffin Affair, where Man’s Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn) appeared to oppose independent woman criminal Mother Muffin, played by Boris Karloff. Thus, it was the one production with both U.N.C.L.E. characters named by Ian Fleming. (Fleming had suggested the name of April Dancer for a Miss Moneypenny-type character when he met with Felton in 1962.)

Douglas Benton, Girl’s producer, in a late 1990s interview said the production team was thinking about casting Dame Judith Anderson. Joseph Calvelli, the writer, was asked to describe Mother Muffin and he replied, “Boris Karloff in drag.” Benton had worked with Karloff on the 1960-62 anthology series Thriller, offered him the role and Karloff, according to the producer, immediately accepted. (The interview is recreated on a commentary track on the Thriller DVD set, with Benton’s son reading his father’s words.)

Finally, for Bond fans, Luciana Paluzzi is a guest star in Girl’s first episode, The Dog Gone Affair.

For more information about the DVD set, including how to order, JUST CLICK HERE. Meanwhile, here’s a clip from The Mata Hari Affair, the fourth episode. Truth be told, it’s not that good despite being directed by Joseph Sargent, one of the best of the Man directors. For some viewers, though, this scene is still a highlight:

The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. makes list of 15 worst spinoff series

Entertainment Weekly has come out with a list of the 15 worst spinoff series. The only spy series, and one of the oldest series on the list, is The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., which ran in the 1966-67 series.

We’d excerpt except there’s not much text. Essentially, it says Stefanie Powers’s April Dancer comes across as a weak character, suffering in comparison to Diana Rigg’s Emma Peel, who could be seen on The Avengers at the same time. You can see what EW has to say BY CLICKING HERE. Once there you can click around to see the rest of the list, which includes Joey and After M*A*S*H.

To read some detailed reviews of episodes from The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., you can go to our sister site, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. episode guide, by CLICKING HERE.

1966: U.N.C.L.E. tries to “extend the brand” with The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.

In the jaded 21st Century there’s a marketing phrase, “extend the brand,” where a company tries to take an existing brand name of a product and produce a similar, yet slightly different version. For example, Coke began Diet Coke, New Coke (oops), Cherry Coke, etc. So it was with The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.

The pilot for the series was an episode of The Man From U.N.C.L.E., written by Dean Hargrove and directed by Joseph Sargent. It featured Mary Ann Mobley as a quite young April Dancer (a character name that was one of Ian Fleming’s few contributions to the U.N.C.L.E. universe) and a 40-year-old plus Mark Slate (Norman Fell).

Before the series began filming, both roles were recast with Stefanie Powers and Noel Harrison. Over at the Television Obsurities site, there’s a history of the one-season series. That report, which includes a video of a GFU promo, can be view by CLICKING RIGHT HERE.

To read reviews of a good many episodes of the series, CLICK HERE.