Two men from U.N.C.L.E.
make One Spy Too Many.

Playing catch-up, MGM did its best to exploit its own spy property, TV's The Man From U.N.C.L.E. With the exception of TO TRAP A SPY (1966), which was the pilot film for the TV series, the U.N.C.L.E. movies -- ONE OF OUR SPIES IS MISSING, ONE SPY TOO MANY, THE SPY WITH MY FACE, THE SPY IN THE GREEN HAT (all 1966) and THE HELICOPTER SPIES (1968) -- were cobbled together from one or more TV episodes, usually with some additional footage. This American television series can legitimately claim a connection to James Bond creator Ian Fleming. Norman Felton, a native of Britain then living in the U.S., contacted Fleming in 1963. Felton, the executive producer of the "Dr. Kildare" television series, wanted to produce an action series, but with a different "hook". He had yet to find that "hook". At the time, U.S. interest was picking up in the Bond character, but 007 wasn't a huge hit just yet. Ian Fleming pulled out of the collaboration before things progressed very far. He had just come out of the litigation over the "Thunderball" novel, and his counsel advised him to steer clear of the television project. However, Fleming penned a variety of ideas for Felton, ironically enough, some on Western Union telegram blanks. Felton wasn't interested in very many of Fleming's ideas, but liked his character name for the hero -- Napoleon Solo. Further, Fleming envisioned Solo as an ordinary looking man (no taller than average, for example) who was Canadian. He also described a Miss Moneypenny-type character he dubbed April Dancer (the name would be used later for the lead character in "The Girl From U.N.C.L.E." spinoff series).

Originally, "The Man From U.N.C.L.E" was to have been called "Solo." Bond producer Albert R. Broccoli, attempting to prevent the series from being produced and thereby diluting the "Bond" market, sued, claiming "overlapping" of EON owned material, and successfully changed some of the series' aspects. Broccoli claimed "Solo" was the name of a character from "Goldfinger". Indeed, one of the hoods supplying Goldfinger was named Solo, but Felton and MGM (where the TV series was filmed) noted the "Goldfinger" Solo was a criminal, while their Napoleon Solo was a hero. Broccoli settled in return for the name of the TV series being changed.

Bond and MFU, though, do have a number of other things in common. Many MFU guest stars would later appear in Bond movies: Telly Savalas, Curt Jurgens, and Richard Kiel, for example. Bond and Solo both carried guns made by Walther - Bond the PPK; Solo a modified P38. Finally, one-time James Bond George Lazenby appeared as the mysterious Aston Martin-driving "JB" in the 1983 TV movie "The Return of The Man From U.N.C.L.E."

That these films made any money at all in theatrical release is a testament to the popularity of the series and the tolerance (or gullibility) of '60s movie audiences.

Trying to overcome
some Impossible plotting.

'MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE' was an American espionage television series that aired on CBS from September 1966 to March 1973. It was revived in 1988 for two seasons on ABC.

Created and initially produced by Bruce Geller, the show chronicled the exploits of a small covert team of secret government agents, known as the Impossible Missions Force, and their sophisticated methods of deceiving, manipulating and thwarting hostile Iron Curtain governments, third world dictators, corrupt industrialists, and crime lords, among others. The identity of the agency that oversees the Impossible Missions Force (IMF) is never revealed. Only rare cryptic bits of information are ever provided, such as in the third-season mission "Nicole", where the IMF leader states that his instructions come from "Division Seven". It is suggested that the IMF is an independent agency of the United States government.

In the first season, the team is led by Dan Briggs (played by Steven Hill); Jim Phelps (played by Peter Graves) takes charge for the six remaining seasons. Briggs and Phelps usually assemble the same core team of agents, all of whom have careers and some degree of celebrity outside of espionage. The team is occasionally supplemented by other specialists.

The show also inspired the series of 'MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE' theatrical motion pictures starring Tom Cruise beginning in 1996, in which the entire team was assassinated in the opening minutes, except for Tom Cruise.

MAXWELL SMART OF CONTROL

Max puts his foot
in his mouth.

'GET SMART' (1965): An American comedy television series parodying the secret agent genre that had become widely popular in the first half of the 1960s, with the release of the James Bond films. It was created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, and had its television premiere on NBC on September 18, 1965. It stars Don Adams (who was also a director on the series) as agent Maxwell Smart (Agent 86), Barbara Feldon as Agent 99, and Edward Platt as The Chief. Henry said that they created the show to capitalize on James Bond and Inspector Clouseau, "the two biggest things in the entertainment world today". Brooks described the premise for the show that they created in an October 1965 Time magazine article: "No one had ever done a show about an idiot before. I decided to be the first." Like a double-agent, the show switched networks in 1969 to CBS. It ended its five-season run on May 15, 1970, with a total of 138 episodes. The series won seven Emmy Awards, and it was nominated for another 14 Emmys and two Golden Globe Awards.

Four feature-length films have been produced following the end of the NBC/CBS run of the TV series:

• 1980: 'THE NUDE BOMB' (dir. Clive Donner), also known as 'THE RETURN OF MAXWELL SMART' or 'MAXWELL SMART AND THE NUDE BOMB', a 1980 theatrical film made without the involvement of Brooks and Henry, was panned by critics and barely returned its budget at the box office.
• 1989: 'GET SMART, AGAIN!' (dir. Gary Nelson) a made-for-TV movie on ABC. It prompted the development of a short-lived 1995 weekly series on Fox also titled 'GET SMART', with Adams and Feldon reprising their characters with Maxwell Smart now being the Chief of Control as their bumbling son, Zach (Andy Dick), becomes Control's star agent (Zach's twin sister is never seen nor mentioned -- though the new leader of KAOS, a hidden female figure, would have been revealed as the other twin if the show had continued). And 99 is now a congresswoman. The beginning teaser shows Maxwell Smart and Zach driving to Control headquarters in a car wash separately; Smart, Zach and their secretary cram themselves into a secret elevator: a soda machine which "disappears". (A cleaning lady sits down in the open space when all of a sudden the machine pops up and knocks the woman into the ceiling.) A late episode of the 1995 series shows that just as Siegfried is leaving a room, Maxwell Smart accidentally activates an atomic bomb just before the end of the show. (The teaser for the episode shows an atomic bomb going off.)
• 2008: 'GET SMART' (dir. Peter Segal) starring Steve Carell as Smart alongside Anne Hathaway as 99. Distributed by Warner Bros., the film includes a dedication to Adams and Platt, who had died in 2005 and 1974, respectively. It received mixed critical reviews but was a commercial success, earning over $230 million worldwide.
• 2008: 'GET SMART'S BRUCE AND LLOYD: OUT OF CONTROL' (dir. Gil Junger), a made-for-DVD spin-off revolving around minor characters, Bruce and Lloyd (Masi Oka and Nate Torrence), the masterminds behind the high-tech gadgets that are often used by Smart.
In October 2008, it was reported that Warner Bros., Village Roadshow Pictures and Mosaic Media Group were producing a sequel to the 2008 film. Carell and Hathaway were set to return, but the status of other cast members had not been announced. As of 2019, Get Smart 2 is no longer in development.

SIMON TEMPLAR (SELF-EMPLOYED)

Future Bond (Roger Moore)
performs a HALO-jump.

'THE SAINT' (1962), starring future Bond Roger Moore, was a British mystery spy thriller television series that aired in the United Kingdom on ITV between 1962 and 1969. It was based on the literary character Simon Templar created by Leslie Charteris in the 1920s and featured in many novels over the years. In the television series, Templar helps those whom conventional agencies are powerless or unwilling to protect, often using methods that skirt the law. Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal is his nominal nemesis who considers Templar a common criminal, but often grudgingly tolerates his actions for the greater good. NBC picked up the show as a summer replacement in its evening schedule in 1966 because of the strong performance in the United States of the first two series in first-run syndication. The programme, therefore, ended its run with both trans-Atlantic primetime scheduling and colour episodes. It also proved popular beyond the UK and US, eventually airing in over 60 countries, and made a profit in excess of £350m for ITC.[4][5][6] With almost 120 episodes, the programme is exceeded only by The Avengers as the most productive show of its genre produced in the UK. As with The Avengers, the colour episodes were originally broadcast in the UK in black and white before the advent of colour transmissions on ITV. Moore had earlier tried to buy the production rights to the Saint books himself, and was delighted to be able to play the part. Moore eventually became co-owner of the show with Robert S. Baker when the show moved to colour and the production credit became Bamore Productions. Most of the wardrobe Moore wore in the series was his own. He was reportedly offered the role of James Bond at least twice during the run of the series, but he had to turn it down both times due to his television commitments.

• In 1978, the series was revived as 'RETURN OF THE SAINT', starring Ian Ogilvy as Templar.
• Two further attempts were made to revive The Saint on television in 1980s. In 1987, a 46-minute U.S. TV pilot, "The Saint in Manhattan", was made starring Australian actor Andrew Clarke; and, in 1989, London Weekend Television in the UK made a series of six film-length episodes starring Simon Dutton.
• Roger Moore never played the role again after 1969, though he is heard speaking on a car radio during the 1997 film 'THE SAINT', starring Val Kilmer as Templar. The film bore little resemblance to the books or TV series, and carried no credit for Leslie Charteris. The producers bought the rights to use the character's name from Robert S. Baker, who held the rights and had developed and produced both 'THE SAINT' and 'RETURN OF THE SAINT'.
• In September 2009, a new adaptation for 'THE SAINT' was to be remade for television by Vancouver-based studio Brightlight Pictures. Scottish actor Dougray Scott was lined up to play Simon Templar, but no series came about. James Purefoy was also considered to play 'THE SAINT' in a remake, production of which was scheduled to begin in July 2011. This project also failed to materialise.
• Another attempt was announced in December 2012, when Roger Moore was to be producer for a new series and to have Adam Rayner star as Simon Templar and Eliza Dushku as his girlfriend Patricia Holm. In a promotion that was later released, it was also shown that Moore would star in the new series, as would his successor in Return of the Saint, Ian Ogilvy. Production of a pilot episode was completed by early 2013. As of summer 2014, it was awaiting a broadcast time in the U.S. However, the piece underwent reshoots for the ending and add an extra prologue in November 2015, and the pilot episode was retooled as a TV film, 'THE SAINT', getting an online release on 12 July 2017, two months after Moore's death.

KELLY AND SCOTTY OF (UNSURE)

I Spy, You Spy
Everybody Spy.

'I SPY' (1965) was an American secret-agent adventure television series that ran for three seasons on NBC from September 15, 1965, to April 15, 1968, and teamed US intelligence agents Kelly Robinson (Robert Culp) and Alexander "Scotty" Scott (Bill Cosby), traveling undercover as international "tennis bums." Robinson poses as an amateur with Scott as his trainer, playing against wealthy opponents in return for food and lodging. Their work involved chasing villains, spies, and beautiful women. The creative forces behind the show were writers David Friedkin and Morton Fine and cinematographer Fouad Said. Together they formed Triple F Productions under the aegis of Desilu Productions where the show was produced. Fine and Friedkin (who previously wrote scripts for radio's Broadway Is My Beat and Crime Classics under producer-director Elliott Lewis) were co-producers and head writers, and wrote the scripts for 16 episodes, one of which Friedkin directed. Friedkin also dabbled in acting and appeared in two episodes in the first season. Actor-producer Sheldon Leonard, known for playing gangster roles in the 1940s and 1950s, was the executive producer (receiving top billing before the title in the series' opening title sequence). He also played a gangster-villain role in two episodes and appeared in a third show as himself in a humorous cameo. In addition, he directed one episode and served as occasional second-unit director throughout the series.

'I SPY' broke ground in that it was the first American television drama to feature a black actor (Cosby) in a lead role. Originally an older actor was slated to play a fatherly mentor to Culp's character. After seeing Cosby performing stand-up comedy on a talk-show, Sheldon Leonard decided to take a chance on hiring him to play opposite Culp. Cosby won three consecutive Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 1966, 1967 and 1968 (becoming the first African-American male actor to do so). Robert Culp was also nominated in the same category for all three seasons.

A number of original novels based upon the series were published, most written in the mid-to-late 1960s by Walter Wager under the pseudonym "John Tiger," through Popular Library.

In 'I SPY RETURNS' (1994), a nostalgic television movie (and unsold pilot episode for a new series), Culp and Cosby reprised their roles as Robinson and Scott for the first time since 1968. The original opening title sequence is reused with no changes other than the addition of the word 'Returns' beneath 'I Spy' and a new arrangement of the theme music. Cosby was the executive producer. Unlike the original series, the TV-movie was shot on videotape instead of film. Here, Robinson has become director of the agency, while Scott has left the business. However, the aging agents have to leap into action once again, this time to keep an eye on their children, Bennett Robinson (George Newbern) and Nicole Scott (Salli Richardson-Whitfield) who are now operatives. This was shown as a "CBS Movie Special" on February 3, 1994.

A movie remake, also titled 'I SPY,' followed in 2002 with Eddie Murphy and Owen Wilson. In this iteration, the character names are reversed, so Alexander Scott (Wilson) is now the white secret agent and Kelly Robinson (Murphy) the black athlete, now a boxer (It also changed the original premise of them both being agents, with Robinson being a civilian boxer who is essentially brought in to act as Scott's cover story while he carries out his mission). The film was initially a commercial and critical failure. In his 2009 Movie Guide, film critic Leonard Maltin describes the film as an "In-name-only reincarnation of the smart 1960s TV show.... An object lesson in bad screenwriting, with an incoherent story, and characters that make no sense."

LANCELOT LINK OF A.P.E.

Going A.P.E.
with Lance Link.

'LANCELOT LINK, SECRET CHIMP' was an American action/adventure comedy series that originally aired Saturday mornings on ABC from September 12, 1970 to January 2, 1971 and rebroadcast the following season. The live-action film series featured a cast of chimpanzees given apparent speaking roles by overdubbing with human voices. Surprisingly for Saturday morning TV, the show had a "seven-figure budget" with location filming, props and costumes, and the laborious staging and training of the animals. The filmmakers made the most of the budget, staging multiple episodes with the same settings and wardrobe, occasionally reusing the more elaborate chase footage. Lance Link drove a 1970 Datsun Sports 2000 while villain Baron Von Butcher (and his chauffeur Creto) used a late-'50s Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud. The primates themselves rode Kawasaki MB-1 Coyote minibikes in a number of episodes.

Two of the three producers/creators were Stan Burns and Mike Marmer, former writers for 'GET SMART!' Both resigned from their jobs as head writers on 'THE CAROL BURNETT SHOW' to work on 'LANCELOT LINK, SECRET CHIMP'. According to The Believer, "to make the dialogue fit the chimps' lip action, Burns and Marmer went to ridiculous lengths. Voiceovers were ad-libbed on the set, giving birth to beautifully absurd moments of the chimps breaking into songs at the end of sentences or spontaneously reciting Mother Goose rhymes just so it would look right." Co-producer Allan Sandler explained that the writers studied the silent film footage of the chimps, and counted the syllables as the chimps' mouths moved. The writers would then shorten or lengthen the scripted lines according to the syllable count.

The series consisted of 17 episodes (standard practice at the time for the ABC network, allowing for each episode to be broadcast three times per year). The show's first-season episodes were an hour long, and also included Warner Bros. cartoon shorts from that animation studio's final years. The second season consisted of repeats from the first season with the cartoons removed. The original network broadcast included a laugh track; this was later removed for the syndicated and video releases.

'LANCELOT LINK, SECRET CHIMP' was an immediate success, spawning a wave of related merchandise including a record album, comic books, lunchboxes, and Halloween costumes. Life Magazine featured the series in a photo spread. But the series was just too expensive to continue.

'ALIAS' (2001 TV Series) Sydney Bristow is an international spy recruited out of college and trained for espionage and self-defense. (42 mins.) Stars: Jennifer Garner, Ron Rifkin, Carl Lumbly, Kevin Weisman

'LA FEMME NIKITA' (1997 TV Series): Section One, a clandestine anti-terrorist organization, fakes the death of a jailed, convicted murderer and trains her to be a spy.

Stars: Peta Wilson, Don Francks, Eugene Robert Glazer, Roy Dupuis. It was followed by 'NIKITA' (2010 TV Series): A rogue assassin returns to take down the secret organization that trained her. (60 mins.) Stars: Maggie Q, Shane West, Lyndsy Fonseca, Aaron Stanford.

'24' (2001 TV Series): Jack Bauer, Director of Field Ops for the Counter-Terrorist Unit of Los Angeles, races against the clock to subvert terrorist plots and save his nation from ultimate disaster. (44 mins.) Stars: Kiefer Sutherland, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Carlos Bernard, Dennis Haysbert.

'BURN NOTICE' (2007 TV Series): A spy recently disavowed by the U.S. government uses his special ops training to help others in trouble. (44 mins.) Stars: Jeffrey Donovan, Gabrielle Anwar, Bruce Campbell, Sharon Gless.

'COVERT AFFAIRS' (2010 TV Series): A young CIA operative/trainee, Annie Walker, is sent into the field to work for the DPD (Domestic Protection Division)... (60 mins.) Stars: Piper Perabo, Christopher Gorham, Kari Matchett, Peter Gallagher.