Man From UNCLE 1966 NBC Promo

I Spy NBC 1966 Poster

Get Smart 1966 NBC Poster

These posters were part of a lot sold in May of this year. The UNCLE poster is by an artist named Allison (from the signature), and went for $84. The I Spy poster is by Gustav Rehberger, and went for $179. The Get Smart is by Mad Magazine veteran Jack Davis and went for $120. Originally, these were sold by NBC for just a few bucks, apparently. The best source I’ve seen on the posters is at the I Spy forum, where Tatia writes: “The eleven promotional posters produced to be given to NBC’s major affiliates as decorations for parties celebrating their 1966 season premieres were Bonanza, Daniel Boone, Flipper, Get Smart, Hey Landlord, I Spy, The Monkees, Star Trek, T.H.E. Cat, The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. NBC did offer the Bonanza, Get Smart and I Spy for sale for a very limited time afterwards.”

Check out Heritage Auctions yourself for a bevy of past collectibles.

I’ve been inspired to write this entry this evening after accidentally flipping through channels tonight and seeing (as one often does) in the Adam Sandler movie Happy Gilmore a familiar, highly recognizable face over a t-shirt that read, “Guns don’t kill people. I kill people.”

Forever typecast as a villainous imposing henchman due to his size, Richard Kiel in person couldn’t be more the opposite in real life. When he smiles, it’s warm and genuine, and there’s not a hint of the steel that Roger Moore so deftly dodged in a pair of 70s-era Bond films. I can speak with authority on this — you see, I, like many others before me, have had my head crushed by Richard Kiel.

If you told my five-year-old self that I would one day willingly placed by tender skull in the hands of the metal-mouthed monster from The Spy Who Loved Me, I would have pissed myself and then told you that you were crazy. By the time I hit Kindergarten, I was already a fan of Bond (watching the cleaned-up versions that came on network TV). Bond was all action and adventure, and I never worried about the fate of the world because I knew that such movies always have happy (well, aside from OHMSS) endings. I was never scared of the villains either. I think that, even at that young age, I realized that actors were actors. Christopher Lee got rid of his third nipple at the end of the day and collected a paycheck to play the role of a neurotic assassin.

I was OK with all of the villains but one — Jaws. I didn’t see him as an actor. He was big, he had metal teeth, he could bend steel. This was not a costume that someone could wear, I thought. Those are his real teeth! I didn’t trust him even after Moonraker. I feared for that poor little pig-tailed blonde girl. It’s funny to look back on it now, but I was genuinely scared of Jaws. I had some horrible nightmares about getting bitten. If I developed a problem, this might have spelled the end of my being able to watch the 007 films, and would have pre-emptively eradicated Mister 8 and my life long enthusiasm for espionage fiction.

Luckily, one of the other things that I watched regularly was a show called You and Me Kid,  that aired on the Disney Channel. It was typical educational kids morning television fare, but one of the segments featured celebrities and their children. One morning I caught Richard Kiel and (I believe) his son in one of these segments, and it changed my entire opinion of Jaws. He’s been one of my favorite characters ever since, the one bright spot in Moonraker for me. Here’s an interview with Richard and David Letterman from circa the time that You and Me Kid segment was filmed, and you can see how unscary he is when not in character. Listen to the tale about his bouncing days that comes just before the video ends:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDH_fyIs05c

I’m including a post about Kiel in the midst of this week’s James Bond spotlight because the role of Jaws was the one that made Kiel a name in Hollywood. But his non-007 “spyography” is quite impressive. He was the henchman Otto in 1967′s A Man Called Dagger, for instance. In this trailer, you can see a few seconds of him brawling with the film’s star, Paul Mantee:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogFWyqphNpo

He was in some of the best episodes of The Wild Wild West, playing Voltaire, a henchman to Dr. Miguelito Loveless (played by the amazing Michael Dunn):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsS6W7nV980

He was also in the I Spy episode “A Few Miles West of Nowhere,” and the It Takes a Thief episode, “The Galloping Skin Game.” Oh, and he was in two episodes of the Man From UNCLE — “The Vulcan Affair,” and “The Hong Kong Shilling Affair,” where he played “Merry”:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNYIMzF6K3g

But as we noted before, the James Bond films really brought Kiel into the limelight. COBRAS agent Wes Britton writes in his Spy Television that Kiel gained the role after Bond producer Broccoli saw him in a failed TV show, Barbary Coast, a sort of Wild Wild West take-off starring William Shatner. Lucky for Kiel, but luckier for the Bond folks, who found in him a perfect physical match for the part of Jaws, a towering thug who hides an inner tenderness. Here are some classic fight scenes between Jaws and Roger Moore’s James Bond in The Spy Who Loved Me:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLNLXJSdaj0

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zD0JqFmCrCs

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wmZrU6VQzE

Jaws returned in Moonraker, where he began as a villain again, but slowly, through the guidance of love, comes to be a hero in the end. Here’s his last scene of villainy, which culminates in his finding a pretty young lady to hold his attention instead:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcHVXwC0roY

It’s late as I write this, but I can’t think of any other Bond henchmen who return from one movie to another (Had it happened before Jaws made a return in Moonraker? Has it happened since? Remind me in the comments section). Kiel believed that his media friendliness helped with the decision to bring his character back:

The press were there waiting to do their interviews but Roger Moore and Barbara Bach were late, and the director Lewis Gilbert was late. And the press had already interviewed [producer] “Cubby” Broccoli dozens of times. So since I was there, they started to hit on me with all these questions. The press can be very nasty–at press conferences like that, there are always one or two people who are very rude and adversarial. It’s like during a Presidential press conference, there’s always the person who asks the loaded question trying to embarrass the president or make him look bad. But I’d had enough experience doing press conferences and interviews that I was able to deal with it.

I remember, at the Royal Premiere, this interviewer from one of the British tabloids asking, “Mr. Kiel, have you seen all the James Bond movies?” I said, “Well, I believe so. Most of them, if not all of them.” “So you’ve seen all the James Bond movies. Now let me ask you a question: Who do you think makes the best James Bond?” Here I am, working with Roger Moore and we’re getting along really, really well; and of course, I’d grown up on the Sean Connery movies and, like a lot of people, I liked Sean Connery as Bond very much. But if I say Connery, it’s gonna be splashed in the headline, RICHARD KIEL PREFERS CONNERY TO MOORE, and I’m gonna make Roger Moore mad. And if I say Roger Moore, then I’m gonna make all the Sean Connery fans angry with me….

…Then, all of a sudden, it was like God gave me the right answer: I said, “Well, I kinda go for George Lazenby myself.” [interviewer laughs] The whooole cadre of press, there were maybe 40 of them, all laughed like you just did. And they were not only laughing at what I said, they were kind of laughing at the guy getting zinged, the guy who asked the loaded question….

…Mr. Broccoli was there, and I guess he determined, “Hey, here’s a guy who can hold his own with the press and has the right answers.” So he sent me out with various Bond girls, we got to go to different places, I got to bring my wife and my family, and it was a huge success. And I think that was part of the reason that they decided to keep the character of Jaws alive and to bring me back for another film [Moonraker], because I was good at promoting the films around the world.

(This excerpt comes from an amazing piece that is, ostensibly about a B-movie called Eegah, in which Kiel got his first starring role, but that really is about Kiel as a young actor struggling in Hollywood, and then demonstrating what talents, learned and natural, that helped him gain a foothold in the industry. The interview can be found in Eye on Science Fiction: 20 Interviews with Classic SF and Horror Filmmakers by Tom Weaver.)

…But certainly there’s the fact that Jaws is awesome, both in the literal sense of the word, and in the way you use the word when something makes you jump up and point at the television screen in excitement. Jaws did, after all, come in first in a poll of Bond supporting characters last year, garnering 30% of almost 5,000 votes.

When, a few years back, I saw Kiel sitting behind a table at one of those conventions where celebrities turn up to sell their photographs and autographs, I resisted at first. I walked by his table a few times before thinking to myself, “Man, that’s Jaws. When are you ever going to get this opportunity again?” I went to the table, and was led to Kiel by his handler. I told him a condensed version of the above story about my fear of him pre-You and Me Kid, and he chuckled and said that many folks my age had told him the same story, and that he was glad he did the show. I asked how the photo thing worked.

“You kneel down,” he said. “And I will crush your head.”

I hesitated. A little of the old fear crept up inside me. But kneel I did, and two giant hands engulfed my face. I wish I could turn up the photo from my archives, as I’m sure the mixture of shock and excitement is equally registered in my (then-crushed) face.

Kiel continues to work, although he doesn’t see as many of the traditional movie “heavy” roles any more. But anyone who doubts the talent of Richard Kiel need only look at him, and look back on times when he was defeated onscreen in hand-to-hand combat by the likes of Robert Vaughn, Robert Conrad and Roger Moore…to take a dive like that is true acting. He could have massacred those guys altogether. Trust me, I know — the man has crushed my head.

Richard Kiel is currently running a 2-for-1 deal on autographed photos. Check out his website for more details.

Armstrong and Robert Culp...not the best picture of either of us.

It’s a bad month for 60s spies. While I confessed to not knowing much about Mission: Impossible with the passing of Peter Graves, I became a fan of I Spy after meeting Robert Culp last year at the New York Comic Con. I was quite sad to read at Spy-Fi Channel that he’d passed away today at the age of 79.

There are a variety of posts on Culp, and especially his character Kelly Robinson, in the archives of Mister 8.

Despite not being a criminal, as far as I know, it’s sort of alarming to pick up the phone to hear someone on the other end introduce themselves as a “special investigator.”

In the meantime, this is part two of a story that we began last week. Gold Key Comics’ I Spy #4, February 1968, story by Paul S. Newman and art by Alden McWilliams.

I wanted, because the comic series (I’ve never read it in graphic novel form, and think it’s best enjoyed an issue at a time, like an old Republic serial [wink, wink]) and the movie are still fresh in my head, to point out a few references in the original text that you all might enjoy. The first comes in issue #11, in the back matter, as Adrian Veidt gives an interview on the Committee to Re-Elect the President:

Man From U.N.C.L.E. reference in Watchmen

The second is not technically a spy fic reference, but an Outer Limits reference. For the sake of my Culp-loving pals over at the I Spy Forum, however, I want to point out the television clip in issue #12 (from the episode “Architects of Fear” which has similarities to the conclusion of Watchmen):

Robert Culp in Watchmen

Don’t forget that I met Robert Culp a few weeks ago. And on Friday, hours before seeing the film, I was standing at the base of Madision Square Garden, wondering if Pale Horse was going to play there anytime soon. I’m practically Captain Metropolis over here….

Film Score Monthly "I Spy" Soundtrack

Am Riff:

e|--------------------------|
B|--------------------------|
G|--------------------------|
D|--------------------------|
A|---------6-7----------8-7-|
E|-5-5-8-8------5-5-8-8-----|

[See the full tablature]

The late Earle Hagen was sort of a chameleon in the world of composing. Whereas many of the other names in the pantheon of spy theme writers are celebrities — Barry, Mancini, Goldsmith, etc. — Hagen carved out a steady career for himself that seems mostly overlooked by the public at large. At my grandmother’s house, the first two notes of the Andy Griffith Theme, one of Hagen’s, is all it takes to get someone started, but I doubt many of the scores of listeners know Hagan’s name.

He is a talent deserving of wider recognition, and nowhere is that more evident than in his scoring for the television series I Spy. Tasked with making the transition from comedies to action thrillers, Hagen succeeded with one of the great television themes of the 1960s. Score aficionado Deborah Young wrote in a 2001 appreciation of Hagen’s work for Film Score Monthly, which later released a collection of the I Spy score:

Earle Hagen could not have been more innovative or original with I SPY. The scores he wrote were produced in Los Angeles but he frequently returned to record live and on location. The result was that every one of the 82 episodes received an original score (excluding the main themes, of course); two-thirds of those were composed by Hagen, with the rest created by distinguished composer and friend, Hugo Friedhofer. The result was what he named “semi-jazz,” a perfect marriage of local themes with the American sound. You never forgot whom you were rooting for, or where they were.

The main title was the first to feature graphic art, live action and animation, all cut to a specific tempo that he had requested. Listen to that first pulsing primal heartbeat, as you see the shadow of a tennis player, moving against a flow of foreign names. Every upward sweep of his racket is punctuated by the pluck of a violin, and the tension is built by saxophone. Then, the graceful cipher wheels slowly and his racket has become a handgun. The weapon fires; the detritus is red and assembles to form the words I SPY. The main theme is rendered fully by the burst of violins over the black, white and red of the title, eliciting both the imminent tension of the series and the embraceable humanity of its two players. As the title drives to its pounding conclusion, a split-screen “preview” of the hour is wrought under the arresting eyes of Robert Culp. Fans of Stewart Copeland’s eclectic, dissonant score for The Equalizer might just recognize Hagen’s I SPY as a major influence.

Hagan himself discussed his composing work for I Spy with the Archive of American Television, in a video interview available on YouTube.

Here’s another video, the opening credits of the first season of the show:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdvSD_lezvM

Notice that Culp’s name in the episode is Scott Kelly, a sort of portmanteau of his and Cosby’s names on I Spy. Jill Kelly is played by Ann Reinking, renowned for her work for Bob Fosse, especially in the musical Chicago, and her choreography for the revival of Chicago that spawned the Academy Award winning movie version.

Still, no excuses. I’ve let you down, all six of you, and I hope to make it up by tossing a bunch of new content at you this weekend. Hopefully. Time allowing.

First up is a continuation of the theme of the month, which you’ve probably forgotten by now, which is spy-surf music, guitar instrumentals with twangy, machine gun firing low E strings and clap-clap…clap drum patterns. In our first installment, we presented surf songs that took on James Bond themes…this time out, we’ll be presenting surf covers of classic 60s spy television! Like last time, clicking the album covers will take you to Amazon, where a portion (usually some pennies) of your purchase, I must admit, goes to me. I promise to spend it on something awesome.

Because it’s I Spy week (you may have forgotten that too, considering it started two weeks ago), we’ll start with a version of I Spy — this one by the Clee-Shays, whom we covered last time. Available on the collected album Dynamic Guitar Sounds of the Clee-Shays:

Next up is a track that’s not really a spy theme, so much as a detective theme…except I just remembered that it was the theme for the video game Spy Hunter, so take that! In any case, the track is Peter Gunn, the classic Mancini song, as done by the master, some say the inventor, of surf guitar: Dick Dale! You know Dale, as thanks to Pulp Fiction, it’s impossible not to — he wrote and recorded the song “Miserlou” that’s often thought of as the theme for the film. He’s also seen in a few 60s-era surf movies, dressed as a gypsy and, if I recall correctly, singing. This particular rip comes from his Greatest Hits, 1961-1976, but I think it was originally recorded for Rock out with Dick Dale and his Del-Tones. This is truly one of the best songs ever recorded by one of the greatest guitar players ever, and I hope you enjoy it!

We’ll stick with another classic surf band, the Challengers, with their version of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. The Challengers were formed from the disbanded Bel-Airs, a young Los Angeles band who are now best known for their song, “Mr. Moto” (they also did a version of Peter Gunn, but it doesn’t compare to Dale’s, and is missing that reverb surf sound). The Challengers were drummer Richard Delvy, Jim Roberts on keyboards, bassist Randy Nauert, and guitarists Glenn Grey and Don Landis, and they, alongside Dale and the Beach Boys, were responsible for kick-starting surf music as we know it today. This cut was originally recorded for the vinyl album Man From U.N.C.L.E., which also featured a version of “Secret Agent Man,” but was ripped from Killer Surf: The Best Of The Challengers.

Speaking of “Secret Agent Man,” that’s what we have up next. There are probably hundreds of covers of this song in the world, all feeding off the original instrumental version by the Ventures. I’ve listened to many of them, and I think this is one of the best, while still retaining the feel of the Ventures’ version. It’s by a band called Cosmonauti, an Italian band from Rome, who also do amazing covers of Ennio Morricone songs. It’s a bit difficult to find actual information on the band, but here’s what I could dig up: the band consists of Stefano “Justo” Giustiniani and Andrea “Joseph” Lauri on guitar, Massimo “Jr.” Petrozzi on bass, and Alessandro “Petrosh” Petrozzi on drums. Also, they are amazing. Aren’t those the essentials?

“Secret Agent Man” was the American theme song to the British show Danger Man. In the U.K., viewers of the show heard the following theme, “High Wire” The following version was recorded by Man Or Astroman?, whom we also discussed last time. This version has some thunderous keyboards and some crazy thereminesque sounds, and it’s also the only cover of “High Wire” that I know of to be in existence (silly me…the Clee-Shays have one on the album that I took the other songs from!). The song comes from the 7″ UFOs and the Men Who Fly Them…good luck finding that one. I got this one from an online compilation of rare and unfindable Astroman? songs.

And we’ll pick up next time with covers of Get Smart, Mission Impossible, The Avengers, and The Persuaders!