The Man from U.N.C.L.E.'s Return to Movies (Part 3)

In 1966, Bat-mania joined Bond-mania, and the Man from U.N.C.L.E. followed suit...

...combining elements of both genres into the new season of TV episodes, and the next couple of feature films.

Note: the movies were now based on two-part episodes to cut down on the amount of new footage needed to achieve 90-minute to 2-hour running times!

Due to lower ticket sales, this was the last U.N.C.L.E. film until the recent reboot to play in American theatres.

All the remaining movies played in theatres overseas and went direct to American TV.

Based on the 2nd season opener, "The Alexander the Greater Affair", One Spy Too Many added footage of future Batgirl Yvonne Craig as UNCLE commander Alexander Waverly's niece, Maude, working in communications tracking Solo and Kuryakin on their assignment.

Craig also appeared in new scenes shot for...

... as "Wanda" replacing scenes of another actress who appeared as Wanda, a communications technician in the two-part episode this film was edited from, "The Bridge of Lions Affair".

Did You Know?...This was the only UNCLE episode or movie adapted from an existing novel (which didn't feature anybody from UNCLE); The Bridge of Lions by Henry Slesar.

Based on "The Concrete Overcoat Affair", Spy in the Green Hat added outtakes considered too violent for broadcast TV...but no new footage was shot!

 Did You Know?: Will Kuluva, who played UNCLE head Mr Allison in the Solo pilot that sold Man from U.N.C.L.E. to NBC and the UNCLE movie To Trap a Spy adapted from it, is the title character, a THRUSH bigwig!

No new footage was shot for this movie, edited from the two-part episode "The Five Daughters Affair", but footage cut by NBC censors due to violence was added back, along with a new music score.

Based on "The Prince of Darkness" two-parter, this film added only a couple of minor shots cut by NBC for violence and sexual content.

Appropriately, the final feature film was derived from the final two episodes of the TV series and was released after the show was cancelled.

It's also the only film not to have any footage added, not even already-shot material cut by NBC censors!

BTW, you can catch the Man from U.N.C.L.E. TV series Sunday nights at 10pm ET/7pm PT on MeTV as part of their...

...lineup which also includes the original Mission: Impossible, Get Smart, and, The Saint!

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.'s Return to Movies (Part 2)

We Have Already Seen...

Pleased with the overseas box-office success of To Trap a Spy, MGM decided in 1965 to release another feature consisting of the episode "The Double Affair" with new footage added to extend it to 90 minutes or so.

And, this time, they put the flick in American theatres as well!

You'll note that the American poster mentions U.N.C.L.E. and the fact you'd see the characters in color.

That's because the TV series' first season was produced and aired in black and white, a common practice since most American households still had b/w TV sets!

Here's the trailer for the film...

In 1966 both films were released as a double-feature in response to a similar move by United Artists doing the same thing with their earlier James Bond films (and raking in big bucks doing so)...

At this point, the TV show was both in color and at the height of its' popularity, so the posters no longer needed to play up the "in color" angle!

The feature film fun continues...tomorrow!

BTW, you can catch the Man from U.N.C.L.E. TV series Sunday nights at 10pm ET/7pm PT on MeTV as part of their...

...lineup which also includes the original Mission: Impossible, Get Smart, and, The Saint!

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.'s Return to Movies (Part 1)

The new Man from U.N.C.L.E. film is not Solo and Kuryakin's first cinema appearance...

...but it is the first time the entire movie was shot for theatrical release.

Let me explain.

In 1964, spies were the hot pop culture commodity thanks to the runaway success of Sean Connery's James Bond films Dr No and From Russia with Love.

Hoping to capitalize on the fad, all three TV networks demanded series pilots featuring spies.

MGM's entry was Solo, starring Robert Vaughn as U.N.C.L.E. agent Napoleon Solo. along with David McCallum in a minor role as agent Illya Kuryakin.

NBC liked it and bought the show, but demanded several changes, including retitling the show.

The pilot aired as "The Vulcan Affair", with several minor changes including reshooting all the scenes with the head of U.N.C.L.E., who was recast, and dubbing "THRUSH" into everyone's dialogue to replace "WASP" as the name of the badguys' organization.

One other note: "The Vulcan Affair" was broadcast in black and white (as was the entire first season of the show) since most American households still only had b/w TVs!

To recover costs for the expensive pilot, MGM shot several additional scenes with actress Luciana Paluzzi as a WASP agent trying to seduce and kill Napoleon Solo to get the running time up to about 90 minutes and released the finished film as To Trap a Spy!

You'll note there's no mention of "U.N.C.L.E." on the poster, since the show hadn't aired outside of the US at that point, so it was promoted as a Bond-like spy pic!

Here's the theatrical trailer for the movie...

...which mentions, at the very end, the tv series as the basis for the movie.

It did moderately-good box office overseas, which resulted in another theatrical release, which we'll show you...tomorrow!

BTW, you can catch the Man from U.N.C.L.E. TV series Sunday nights at 10pm ET/7pm PT on MeTV as part of their...

...lineup which also includes the original Mission: Impossible, Get Smart, and, The Saint!

The Many Incarnations of Dobie Gillis (Conclusion)

Though The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis left first-run TV in 1964, it still lives on...

...as the "inspiration" for the Scooby-Doo crew in their newest series, Be Cool, Scooby-Doo!, coming in Fall 2015 on Boomerang!

Just as "The Honeymooners set in prehistoric times" served as the thematic basis for The Flintstones, "Dobie Gillis & friends (along with a talking dog) solving crimes" was the basis for every Scooby-Doo series (over a dozen since 1969, plus two live-action feature films and numerous tv-movies, both animated and live-action)

The parallels are obvious:

Fred (handsome, athletic, slightly dense) = Dobie

Shaggy (lazy, slang-using) = Maynard

Daphne (beautiful) = Thalia

Velma (brainy, frumpy) = Zelda

Note that this proposal was the second version of the concept pitched to the networks.

The first one, based on the concept of "The Archies (the cartoon musical group who had been on the air for a year) and a talking dog (not Hot Dog) solving crimes" had been rejected!

The detailed, well-researched explanation can be found HERE.

But, wait!

There's more!

An urban legend postulates that Many Loves of Dobie Gillis was actually a reworked Archie tv series proposal!

Interesting idea...except that Dobie was based on Max Shulman's previously-published stories.

Plus, Dobie's premise was to have numerous girlfriends...hence the name "Many Loves of..."

An idea reinforced in the pilot's epilogue (which was cut when the show actually aired, since it was meant to be seen only by network executives and potential sponsors...

BTW, you may note two performers with sci-fi/fantasy connections:

Dobie's older brother is Ron Ely who would later play Tarzan, Doc Savage, and the Golden Age Superman.

(When Dobie was greenlighted, Dwayne Hickman's real-life older brother Darryl Hickman played Dobie's reel-life older brother who appeared in several first-season episodes, then disappeared!)

And the dark-haired girl is Yvonne Craig aka Barbara Gordon/Batgirl from the 1960s tv series!

(Yvonne appeared five times on Dobie, more than any other non-regular, each time as a different girl!)

While there had been a successful Archie radio series, there was no Archie tv pilot produced until 1964, the year Dobie went off the air.

The pilot didn't sell.

There was also a 1976 pilot that would've starred David Caruso as Archie, but he was replaced at the last minute before filming began.

You can see the details of the two pilots (as well as the 1964 pilot itself HERE.

And now for the kicker...

In 1999, a new animated series debuted about a group of teenagers investigating unusual happenings and crimes.

No, it wasn't one of the many Scooby-Doo series, though there was a new animated tv-movie that year!

It was...

You'll note Jughead's use of Shaggy's catchphrase...on the cover, yet!

The show ran only one year (plus reruns).

The spin-off comic outlived it by two years!

To recap, Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (supposedly inspired by Archie) inspired Scooby-Doo, which, in turn, inspired Archie's Weird Mysteries!

Reality is stranger than fiction!

This post is part of...

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The Many Incarnations of Dobie Gillis (Part 2)

As we showed yesterday...

Dobie received his own title from DC Comics in 1960, six months after the show debuted.

Written by DC's hippest writer, Arnold Drake, and illustrated by their best caricaturist, Bob Oksner, the mag reflected the mindset and attitude of the tv series pretty closely.

But, perhaps for licensing reasons, only Dobie, Maynard, Dobie's parents, and original girlfriend Thalia (played by Tuesday Weld) appeared in the comics!

(When Tuesday Weld left the show, Thalia also disappeared from the comic!)

No Zelda!

No Milton Armitage! (played by Warren Beatty in his first steady gig)

No Chatsworth (who replaced Milton as Dobie's nemesis)

None of the colorful supporting cast from the series!

Running for 26 issues (and outlasting the show by almost a year), you'd think the comics would go the way of most tv/movie comic adaptations and disappear from sight, never to be seen again.
That's not quite how it went.

Five years later, DC wanted to go head-to-head with Archie Comics with teen-themed titles and felt the Dobie stories could work if they were "updated" with current hairstyles and fashions.

The idea had proven successful with romance comics, where they (and Marvel, and other companies) had been doing that to fill out the books with a new story up front with older (and cheaper, since they weren't paying reprint fees) stories in back as shown HERE!

But, DC had let the license for the Dobie Gillis characters expire since the show was cancelled.
Since they were modifying the art anyway, the editors just renamed the characters!
In addition, "beatniks" became "hippies", and other cultural references were also updated.

With new covers based on the earlier cover jokes (like the Dobie original and Windy re-do covers above), DC launched Windy and Willy in their own book.
Note: "Windy" is the revised Maynard,  so he finally gets top billing over Dobie aka Willy!

Many Loves of Dobie Gillis #20

Windy & Willy #3

Despite the economical updating, Windy and Willy lasted only four issues.

You'd think that would have been the last attempt to recycle the Dobie Gillis concept.

Hoo boy, would you be wrong!

Tomorrow, see how Dobie and his friends were reincarnated into one of the most successful pop culture franchises in history!

This post is part of...

 Click HERE for a complete list of links to other retro-kool entries!

The Many Incarnations of Dobie Gillis

What do Dobie Gillis and M*A*S*H's Hawkeye Pierce have in common...

...besides being the lead characters in 1950s-set series currently running on MeTV?

They both began life as characters in prose tales, then appeared in movies based on that prose, and finally on long-running TV series based, not on the movies, but the original stories!

Noted humor writer Max Shulman conceived a college-age Dobie Gillis for a series of short stories in Cosmopolitan and The Saturday Evening Post which were gathered into a best-selling anthology called (suprise!) The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.

A couple of tales were adapted into a 1953 movie starring singer Bobby Van as Dobie, Debbie Reynolds as girlfriend Pansy Hammer, and dancer/choreographer Bob Fosse as Dobie's best friend, Charlie Trask.

If you're not familar with the flick, it's understandable.

It didn't do well in theatres, didn't do well on VHS, and is currently available only as a limited-run dvd.

George Burns (of Burns and Allen and Oh, God! fame) optioned Dobie for TV, hoping to produce a star vehicle for his son, Ronnie.

Shulman, less than impressed with Ronnie Allen's talent (or lack thereof), stalled until the option expired, then took the idea to NBC, making the characters high-schoolers instead of college students, and with a kid in the lead who had recently made an impression on teenage audiences on Love That Bob aka The Bob Cummings Show..

The astute among you will note the article above lists CBS, not NBC.

That's because NBC turned the show down, then CBS bought it!

(Thought I'd made a typo, eh?)

The show also introduced a brand-new character to replace dull Charlie Trask as Dobie's best friend...

...Bob Denver as Maynard G Krebs, TV's first ongoing beatnik!

Maynard, like Fonzie on Happy Days and Kramer on Seinfeld, quickly became the show's "breakout" character, with his catch phrases entering the pop culture lexicon and episodes written to showcase him instead of Dobie!

BTW, contrary to popular belief, this was not Denver's first professional acting gig...

As hard as it is to believe in an era when half of scripted tv shows feature tweens/teens/young adults (under 25s) as series leads or title characters, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis was the first network prime-time TV series with a high schooler (and his friends) as the primary characters!

The show was told from the teen/young adult point of view, and the sarcastic (even snarky) dialogue usually gave the kids the final word with the adults.

Creator/producer Shulman also decided to let the characters age at a normal rate, instead of keeping them high schoolers forever.

The first season showed Dobie and friends as seniors in high school

The second had them graduating and Dobie and Maynard being drafted into the Army.

The third season featured Dobie and Maynard receiving their military discharges and entering college.

The fourth and final season continued their college careers (such as they were) as well as introducing surreal storylines that wouldn't have been out of place several years later on The Monkees.

After the show was cancelled, there were several attempts at sequels and spinoffs, but none of them sold.

MeTV is running the show Sunday mornings at 5 and 5:30 am Eastern.

Set your DVR and recapture the fun of the show that paved the way for teen-oriented series like The Facts of Life and (shudder) Reign.

But don't hold that against Dobie...

This post is part of...

 Click HERE for a complete list of links to other retro-kool entries!

And be here tomorrow for a pair of rare Dobie Gillis treats, including...

...as Maynard would say, "it's kool, dad!"

Captain's Library MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. "Human Bottle Affair"

Here's something a little different...a prose story with illustrations...

...from the British weekly TV Tornado., which ran strips and stories based on other British and American tv series, as well as a couple of features not based on video shows!

TV Tornado ran U.N.C.L.E. text stories like this, but no strips, like The Saint feature we ran last week.
However, in the hardcover annuals that TV Tornado (like other weekly magazines produced), there were U.N.C.L.E. strips...and they were in color (or colour, as the British spell it)!

The Spies Who Love ME-Week 5

Here's some facts and trivia about the eps in Sunday's...

...group of shows...

10pm (ET) Man from U.N.C.L.E.

"The Deadly Game Affair" has a mad scientist ready to revive Adolph Hitler is he can find someone with the right blood type.
Alexander Scourby, a popular tv/radio narrator who also played authority figures (both good and evil) on tv handles the Nazi scientist role with scenery-chewing relish.
Janine Gray, whose character, Angelique, was meant to be an ongoing villainess with a lust for Napoleon Solo, had appeared on numerous British shows like The Saint, Danger Man (aka Secret Agent), and The Avengers. She was also in the pilot for Get Smart.

11pm (ET) Mission: Impossible

"The Question" is one of the few foreign espionage episodes in the final season.
Defector Gary Lockwood is a familar face to genre fans, playing both the transformed Gary Mitchell in the Star Trek pilot "Where No Man Has Gone Before" as well as doomed astronaut Frank Poole in 2001: a Space Odyssey!
Lynda Day George, though listed in the credits, doesn't appear due to her pregnancy.
Elizabeth Ashley served as the IMF's femme fatale in her second time on the show. (Ironically, the first time, Ashley played a mobster's wife whom George's character, Casey, impersonated!)

Midnight (ET) Get Smart

"Maxwell Smart: Alias Jimmy Ballantine" features Tim Herbert as safecracker Jimmy Ballantine.
Herbert also played Killer Moth on the 1960s Batman tv series...in an episode the public never saw that was loosely-based on her first comic book appearance!
But you lucky ducks can see it HERE!

"Casablanca" gives Don Adams a chance to do his Humphrey Bogart imitation as well as featuring Gordon Jump as the Chief's aide, Hobson.

1am (ET) The Saint

"Island of Chance" shows a tuxedoed Roger Moore in an enviroment he'd become very familar with as James Bond, a high-stakes casino!

Be here on Sunday for a classic comic story based on one of these series!

Captain's Library GET SMART "Infiltration Caper"

Would you believe the spies you're supposed to infiltrate want you to infiltrate the spies who employ you?

Only Maxwell Smart could end up in that situation...

Illustrated by Henry Scarpelli, this tale from Dell's Get Smart #7 (1967) captures more of the vaudville-humor flavor of the show itself than most of the comic stories.

Unfortunately, it was also the last new issue of the comic.

Scarpelli illustrated a number of Dell's tv adaptations, including The Beverly Hillbillies, Bewitched, Hogan’s Heroes and McHale’s Navy.

He eventually ended up at Archie Comics, where he did both comic book stories, and illustrated the both the Archie daily and Sunday newspaper strip for 15 years!

The writer is Alan Reife, who also wrote The Adventures of Jerry Lewis for DC.

The Spies Who Love ME-Week 4

Here's some facts and trivia about the eps in Sunday's...

...group of shows...

10pm (ET) Man from U.N.C.L.E.

"The Shark Affair" features one of leads of another 60s spy series as the...well, not so much villain as anti-hero!
Robert Culp, who would play secret agent/tennis pro Kelly Robinson on I Spy a year later, delivers an astounding turn as Captain Shark, a Captain Nemo-esque survivalist who plans to ride out nuclear armageddon with the best and brightest mankind has to offer, whether they want to join him or not.
Also in the cast are two familar faces from Star Trek; James Doohan (Scotty), and Meg Wilie (The Keeper, the head Talosian from "The Cage"/"The Menagerie" as well as The Last Starfighter.

11pm (ET) Mission: Impossible

"Boomerang" is one of the "IMF vs Organized Crime" episodes that dominated the final season.

Midnight (ET) Get Smart

"Strike While the Agent is Hot" features Max taking over as the union rep for CONTROL's agents, trying to solve a puzzle and prevent a crime while discovering KAOS has better working conditions for their agents!
"The Only Way to Die" has Max declared dead so he can go undercover.
Look for a very young Gordon Jump (WKRP in Cincinnati) in his first appearance as Hobson, The Chief's assistant before Larabee.

1am (ET) The Saint

"Simon and Delilah" features future James Bond Roger Moore with his Miss Moneypenny, Lois Maxwell when both are involved in the kidnapping of a starlet from a big-budget biblical movie set!
And, no, there are no romantic scenes between them!
But there are a number of moviemaking in-jokes, especially about Italian movies!

Be here tomorrow for a classic comic story based on one of these series!

Captain's Library THE SAINT "Death in the Sky"

Though the tv show ran for several years in America...

...there was no comic book based on it.

Rumor was that The Saint's creator Leslie Charteris was unhappy with 1940s-50s comics based on his novels and refused to allow one based on the tv show.

However, in England, there was a comic strip as part of the TV Tornado comic anthology weekly...

These weeklies had color covers and centerfolds, but the rest of the interiors were b/w.

TV Tornado later merged with other weeklies, first with Solo (from which this story was taken), then with TV Century 21.

The Saint strip survived both mergers, but ended in 1969 when The Saint tv series was cancelled.

Regrettably, both the artist and writer of the strip are unknown.

The Spies Who Love ME--Week 3

Here's some facts and trivia about the eps in Sunday's...

...group of shows...

10pm (ET) Man from U.N.C.L.E.

"The Quadripartite Affair" finally gives Illa Kuryakin equal on-screen time and features David McCallum's then-wife, Jill Ireland as the innocent character caught up in the intrigue...who is irresistably-drawn to Illya.
The initial plan was to make her a recurring character, but when Illya proved to be incredibly-popular with women, it was decided to leave him romantically-unattached.
Jill would appear the next year on Star Trek as Mr Spock's first love in "This Side of Paradise".
The ep features a veritable whos-who of '50s-'60s genre performers including...
Roger C Carmel, who would play loveable rogue Harry Mudd in both classic and animated Star Trek, as well as the only villain to battle both Batman and The Green Hornet, in a rare heroic role.
He would also reappear on UNCLE as other, evil, characters.
Anne Francis would play the first recurring UNCLE villainess before becoming karate-chopping private eye Honey West in her own short-lived series.
John Van Dreelen seemed born to play arrogant villains, and did so in everything from Mission: Impossible to Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, to Wonder Woman and even Get Smart!
Richard Anderson was going through a period in the 60s-70s playing bad guys on The Green Hornet, Mission: Impossible, and other shows before being cast as good-guy Oscar Goldman on Six Million Dollar Man.
Trivia note: both Anne Francis and Richard Anderson appeared in the 1950s classic Forbidden Planet, but had no scenes together!

11pm (ET) Mission: Impossible

"Underground" is from the final season of the show, when the IMF battled organized crime more than Communists and terrorists.
Guest villain Peter Mark Richman was equally at home playing heroes and villains for several decades on shows from the original Twilight Zone and Outer Limits to Star Trek: the Next Generation.

Midnight (ET) Get Smart

"Last One In is a Rotten Spy" was the final episode of the first season.
Alice Ghostly, who appeared in literally every comedy series in the 50s-60s-70s, steals the episode.
She would make one more appearance as a different character two seasons later, but the producers were so pleased with her work that they cast her as the second lead on their 1967 super-hero spoof, Captain Nice, playing the hero's annoying mother!
"Anatomy of a Lover" opened the second season with the return of Dick Gautier as Hymie the Robot.
Laurel Goodwin, who played the Chief's niece was Yeoman Colt in the original Star Trek pilot "The Cage".

1am (ET) The Saint

"Counterfeit Countess" features two actresses with numerous genre credits.
Villainess Kate O'Mara menaced Doctor Who, The Persuaders, Department S, and Adam Adamant, among others.
She also appeared in a rare good-girl role as Miss Moneypenny's assistant in the documentary Welcome to Japan, Mr Bond, about the making of You Only Live Twice.
Alexandra Bastedo was best-known as the telepathic heroine of the super-spy team The Champions. She also had roles in The Starlost, Department S and its' spinoff, Jason King (as different characters), the original Casino Royale,.
Her final on-screen appearance was in Batman Begins.

Be here tomorrow for a classic comic story based on one of these series!

Captain's Library GET SMART One-Page Tales

Would you believe...

 ...Steve Ditko, co-creator of Spider-Man, Dr Strange, The Creeper, and The Question penciled this page from Dell's Get Smart #2 (1966)?

BTW, It's the inside front cover, so there's no color.

 Then Ditko penciled the inside back cover, as well.

BTW, Both pages were inked by Sal Trapani.

 Ditko and Trapani returned in Get Smart #3 to do another inside cover one-pager.

(D&T also did the longer stories that appeared in those issues.

We'll present those in the near-future.)

But the last one-pager, from Get Smart #4 was by the new regular artist, Tony Tallarico.