50 years ago tonight, September 22nd, 1964, NBC-TV premieres/debuts a new top secret international agent (or spy; in this case agents, or spies) series, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Developed by Sam Rolfe and co-creator Norman Felton (who sought and got advice from Ian Fleming of the James Bond series of books), this series was about the fictitious secret international espionage and law enforcement being done and exploits by the agency U.N.C.L.E.s two top agents, Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn) and Russian Illya Kuryakin (David McCallum) with Leo G. Carroll playing Alexander Waverly, the British head of the organization (Number One of Section One.) (Barbara Moore would join the cast in the abbreviated season four as Lisa Rogers.) Vaughn and McCallum would become huge stars from their work on this series, and the subsequent TV and feature films based on the series. Kuryakin was originally not suppose to be a regular character on the series, until the focus group gave positive feedback for the character. The U.N.C.L.E. acronym stood for United Network Command for Law and Enforcement. The main chief adversary organization for U.N.C.L.E. was THRUSH (originally entitled WASP in the pilot.) THRUSH believed in a two-party system; masters and slaves. The series theme music was composed by Jerry Goldsmith, who had previously worked on several feature films, but his new work as composer of this TV series theme would gain him the most recognition he had received to that point and Goldsmith would soon be recognized and be hired to compose many TV series well into the first decade of the 21st century (Goldsmith would leave us in 2004, but with many memorable themes -- both for TV and feature films.) (In the second season of the series, a new, first adversarial, combination for TV and film themes would be started when Lalo Schifrin was hired to make a new arrangement of Goldsmiths theme to start when the series went to airing and filming in color for the 1965 - 66 TV season.) The Man from U.N.C.L.E. would last on NBC for three and a half seasons until January 15th, 1968, when it would be replaced on the schedule by Rowan & Martins Laugh-In. For the celebration of the 50th anniversary of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. below the title card image for the series first season is a video of the Classic black & white first season long opening from episode 7, November 10th, 1964, The Guioco Piano Affair, and two alternate openings from season 1s The Deadly Decoy Affair and The Vulcan Affair. And then there is the closing from The Guioco Piano Affair. Speaking of Vulcan, also from season 1 and presenting many of the guest stars that appeared on this series, are an appearance on the episode 9 of season 1, The Project Strigas Affair, by William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy (soon to be the stars of a then near future science fiction series on NBC, starting in 1966 - 67 season, Star Trek.) In The Project Strigas Affair episode Shatner and Nimoy play adversaries with Shatner a special agent with U.N.C.L.E. and Nimoy an agent with THRUSH, with Nimoys boss played Warren Klemperer (yes, future Col. Klink.) There are two times that Shatner and Nimoy act together on that episode, with some rather humorous lines in light of in hindsight there then future roles on Star Trek:
Posted on: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 15:33:37 +0000
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