Happy 86th birthday, Luciana Paluzzi

Luciana Paluzzi and Sean Connery during the filming of Thunderball

Today, June 10, is the 86th birthday for actress Luciana Paluzzi. She is perhaps best known for playing Fiona Volpe, the femme fatale in Thunderball. But she performed in spy-related entertainment before that.

—Five Fingers: A short-lived 1959-60 television series where she co-starred with David Hedison.

–The Man From U.N.C.L.E.: Paluzzi played Angela, a femme fatale that, essentially, was a warmup for her Thunderball part. She filmed her scenes in early 1964. The intent was to expand the show’s pilot into a movie for international distribution.

There are two versions of those scenes. The first is To Trap a Spy, the aforementioned movie version. It’s in color and sexier. The other is The Four-Steps Affair, an episode of U.N.C.L.E.’s first season, which was in black and white and not as sexy. A new story was devised around the Paluzzi footage.

Post-Thunderball, there were other moments.

–The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.: Paluzzi played a sympathetic character in the show’s first episode, The Dog-Gone Affair.

–Hawaii Five-O: Near the end of her acting career, Paluzzi played an Italian journalist causing problems for Steve McGarrett amid an international crisis in a 1978 episode. Paluzzi had earlier acted with star Jack Lord in a 1966 episode of 12 O’Clock High.

UPDATE: A Paluzzi credit I forgot — The 1966 MGM movie The Venetian Affair, starring Robert Vaughn, with a cast that also included Elke Sommer, Boris Karloff, Roger C. Carmel and Edward Asner.

Lalo Schifrin to receive an honorary Oscar

Cover to a 1960s Lalo Schifrin album

Composer Lalo Schifrin will receive an honorary Oscar later this year, the Academy of Motor Picture Arts and Scientists announced this week.

Schifrin, 86, first made his mark composing for scores for television, including the pilots for Mission: Impossible and Mannix. He moved into films, scoring, among others, The Cincinnati Kid, Bullitt, Dirty Harry and Enter the Dragon. Schifrin was nominated for six Oscars.

And since this blog concentrates on spy-related entertainment, we note he also scored Murderers’ Row, the second Matt Helm film, and The Venetian Affair. He also did the arrangement of Jerry Goldsmith’s theme for The Man From U.N.C.L.E. for that show’s second season (1965-66).

Honorary Oscars used to be given out during the Oscars telecast. But in recent years, they’re part of a separate event, which this year will be held Nov. 18.

The academy also said actress Cicely Tyson, 93, and publicist Marvin Levy will receive honorary Oscars.

Also, Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall will receive the Irving G. Thalberg Award, a career award given to producers. It’s the first Thalberg award given since 2010.

U.N.C.L.E. double feature in LA on Nov. 21-22

Theatrical showings of two movies re-edited from The Man From U.N.C.L.E. are scheduled for Los Angeles on Nov. 21 and 22.

The Spy With My Face and One Spy Too Many are to be shown at the New Beverly Cinema, a revival movie house owned by director Quentin Tarantino. Each movie will be shown once on Friday, Nov. 21 and twice on Saturday, Nov. 22. The latter date also marks the 82nd birthday of Robert Vaughn, who played Napoleon Solo in the 1964-68 series.

For specific times and a link to buy tickets, you can CLICK HERE.

Each film contains scenes not in the television versions of their stories. For more information about The Spy With My Face, CLICK HERE and scroll down to episode 8. For more information about One Spy Too Many, CLICK HERE and read about episodes 30-31 at the top of the page.

The theater also plans another double feature of note for spy fans.

On Nov. 23 and 24, it will show The Venetian Affair, a serious 1967 spy movie also starring Robert Vaughn, with a cast that includes Luciana Paluzzi and Boris Karloff, and Hickey & Boggs, a 1972 movie reuniting Robert Culp and Bill Cosby as private eyes.Hickey & Boggs was directed by Culp and written by Walter Hill. Culp and Cosby had starred in I Spy, the 1965-68 espionage series.

Intrusion of real life paragraph:

Cosby has been in the news the past week because of rape allegations going back several years that he has denied (this CNN story summarizes the situation) and also because of his philanthropy (loaning 60 pieces of African art to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art as detailed in this NPR story).

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.

Salute to Luciana Paluzzi

One of our favorite 007 femme fatales, Luciana Paluzzi, turned 72 last month. So we figured that was as good an excuse to honor her here.

Of course, most Bond fans remember her as Fiona, member of SPECTRE’s execution branch, in Thunderball. Here’s the trailer:

Here she is in a similar role in To Trap a Spy, the theatrical movie version of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. pilot. This is extra footage used to extend the story to movie length. A toned down version of this footage would appear in the episode The Four-Steps Affair.

A few years later, she re-teamed with Robert Vaughn in The Venetian Affair (based on a Helen MacInnes novel and had nothing to do with U.N.C.L.E.). Here’s that trailer:

And, finally, here’s the trailer for one of her lesser credits, The Green Slime.