My mom was a great stickler for early bedtimes for kids, which explained why at age eight I was in bed long before 8:30--but I was a night owl always and still awake. Our house was small--four rooms and a bath, my room off the kitchen--and if the TV wasn't on quite low enough I could still hear the dialog faintly since I slept with the door open.

Which is why I scrambled out of bed and trotted into the living room and asked, "Who was that talking? It sounded like Tennessee Tuxedo."

"It's Don Adams," my mom said. "Now go back to bed."

At that time Adams was a regular on The Bill Dana Show as Byron Glick, the house detective (and also the voice of cartoon penguin "Tennessee Tuxedo"). I tucked away the name for future reference and noticed it again in the Fall Preview TV Guide for 1965, as the star of a comedy spy series. It was the beginning of a long love affair between me and Get Smart.

Since there was only one television, ably managed by the adults in the household, and Dad thought Smart was...well...stupid, I managed to watch the show during the original run through a twist of fate: we weren't home on Saturday nights. That was the night my mom and dad went duckpin bowling and I went along, too, occasionally to Legion Bowladrome (which was still there the last time I drove by it) or to Town Hall Lanes on Atwood Avenue, but mostly to the Garden City Lanes, run by the Zarella brothers, Tom and his brother Ray. They started out in a smaller place, but eventually the bowling business was so good they built a huge, 36-lane building on Sockanossett Road on the outside edge of Garden City Shopping Center. (I used to wish for a bookstore the size of Garden City Lanes. The bowling craze of the 60s eventually waned. Garden City Lanes is gone and the lot occupied by a strip mall.) It had a snack bar with live attendants instead of machines, a jukebox, a billiards room and two roomy bathrooms; when I was really bored I would go in the ladies' room and act out adventure stories between "customers."

My dad was friends with everyone, so it was no trouble to go up to Tom or Ray or whomever else was manning the desk that night, Vinny or Bobby or Teddy, and ask them if they could change the channel of the TV behind the desk at 8:30 so I could watch Get Smart. I'd stand at the counter for the entire half hour, out of the way of the customers as much as I could, hands on my fists, eyes glued to the adventures of Max and 99. The only nights there were trouble was when the Providence College Friars had a big game. I learned to loathe basketball very early on! :-) But syndication was my real friend. I was into all things Smart from magazine articles (remember TV Radio Mirror, Modern Screen, Photoplay and all the other great movie and TV magazines? Heck, remember when TV Guide actually had good articles?) to the nine original novels by William Johnston published in paperback by Tempo Books.

There are rumblings of a Get Smart DVD release, but not wanting to take any chances, I was dubbing off some of those I had kept from the Nick at Nite run last night. They annoy me because not only are they time-compressed slightly (the opening theme sounds a bit like a wind-up toy) but they are still the syndication copies with bits very expertly edited out; I know they're gone because I have the originals of my favorites practically memorized. But some Get Smart is always better than none. I watched ten of them, one after the other, with as much delight as I had forty years ago--and can't believe I didn't record some other favorites, like "Ship of Spies" and the first Harry Hoo story.

Here's what ran tonight:

"Mr. Big" -- the pilot episode, done, as many series in the early 1960s, in black and white; Michael Dunn, perennial villain Dr. Loveless from my Friday night favorite The Wild, Wild West (I was a geek from childhood--my favorite WWW character was Artemus Gordon), was the KAOS villain. Max meets 99 for the first time as well.

"Aboard the Orient Express" -- with the strangest KAOS operative you'll ever see; contains one of two Johnny Carson cameo appearances; this time he's the conductor--he comes in to stamp passports claiming they are "just entering Lichstenstein." He leaves, the train squeals as it goes around a curve, and he is back saying they are now leaving Lichstenstein. Max asks sarcastically, "What took so long?" and Carson replies briskly, "Floods. They had to evacuate the country."

"Double Agent" -- Max "goes bad" (to infiltrate KAOS, of course); more great Max and 99 interplay.

"Kisses for KAOS" -- 99 romances an art dealer who's really a KAOS agent; this is the episode about the explosive paint; I liked this one especially when I was younger because we got to see Max shirtless. :-)

"The Only Way to Die" -- Max pretends he's dead while CONTROL tries to find out who's behind the explosions at national monuments; Agent 13 in a mailbox and a really funny scene where a mourning 99 is entertaining a visiting millionaire and bursts out crying every time the guy mentions something that reminds her of Max (oh, yes, and Max leaping over the bar).

"Island of the Darned" -- my very, very favorite episode--I can recite lines verbatim--a Get Smart reworking of Richard Connell's short story "The Most Dangerous Game"; I loved it because it was slightly more serious than comic. Harold Gould is villanous KAOS agent Hans Hunter and in probably one of the funniest exchanges ever, Hunter is telling Max about all the animals he has stalked in his lifetime, including, he adds as he strokes the visible scar on his left temple, "...have you ever heard of the great white rhino?" Max stares at the scar, impressed. "That was done by the great white rhino?" Hunter replies, "No, this was done by a small blue convertible." Max's eyes widen. "The great white rhino was driving a small blue convertible?" Pure Max.

"Appointment in Sahara" -- the title a spoof of the then bestseller, Appointment in Samara; Max and 99 vs. the desert; 99 sees a mirage of an ice cream stand and Max tried to eat her last salted button...

"The Groovy Guru" -- this one is soooooo 60s, hippies and all; a cult favorite--Max and the lie pill is hilarious; Larry Storch plays the Groovy Guru.

"99 Loses Control" -- this is apparently on a list of lower-rated Get Smart episodes and the premise is a little strange--99's gonna suddenly up and leave CONTROL after meeting some guy on vacation? But I ate it up; it's wildly romantic for the Max and 99 "'shippers" as we would call them today. (Frankly I've always wondered if she did it to get a rise out of Max.)

"The King Lives" -- Don Adams the old movie buff and his sister concocted this Get Smart take on the old Anthony Hope warhorse The Prisoner of Zenda, which Adams plays complete with Ronald Colman voice for Max's double, King Charles of Caronia. Johnny Carson's second cameo as a footman given the unenviable job of presenting the many-titled Princess Marta to Max.

Coming up: Get Smart's take on D.O.A. and The Fugitive, Max and 99 join a motorcycle gang, and the inevitable happens in the form of a ring and a vow...

You know, I just realized, of all the stories I kept, not one of them has Seigfried in it?

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:02:00 PM

Comments:

No episodes with Siegfried? Shame on you! ("This is KAOS...ve don't shame here...")

Great post, by the way--Get Smart is, along with Green Acres and The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, among my very favorite sitcoms of all time. I wouldn't be too surprised to see a first season release of Smart any day, particularly since they could cash in on the show's 40th anniversary this year.

Oh, and always glad to hear from a Wild, Wild West fan--we played it as kids and I always ended up being Artemus (which was cool with me, he was the cat with the disguises). I've been receiving the WWW episodes once a month from Columbia House and enjoying the heck out of them.

# posted by  Ivan G Shreve Jr : 12:02:00 PM

 

Oooh, I LOVE "Get Smart!" It was one of the few shows during my childhood my whole family would sit down and watch. Dad loved the adventure and the references to HIS childhood; Mom loved the interplay between Max and 99 and the spoofs; us girls got a kick out of the slapstick.

I was equally happy to see it later when it ran in the early morning on TV Land while I was in college. I'd catch it while I was having breakfast.

The "Prisoner of Zenda" parody mentioned is my favorite of the episodes I remember, since "Prisoner of Zenda" also happens to be my favorite book and it was fun to see Max (attempt to) swashbuckle. ; 0 )

# posted by  Emma : 9:40:00 PM

 

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