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Would You Believe? Remembering the Late ‘Get Smart’ Co-Creator Buck Henry’s TV Legacy
There’s no question that the world has lost an important comic voice with the passing — at age 89 — of Buck Henry, writer of films like Dustin Hoffman‘s The Graduate and Heaven Can Wait (which he co-directed with star Warren Beatty), both of which saw him Oscar-nominated. But for fans of Classic TV, it’s as the co-creator with Mel Brooks of the 1960s spy comedy Get Smart for which he will be most fondly remembered.
Get Smart, airing from 1965 to 1970, introduced much of the world to Don Adams as Maxwell Smart as Agent 86 and Barbara Feldon as Agent 99, both working for the secret government agency CONTROL and taking on the world-threatening KAOS. The show itself is a full-blown parody of the spymania boom created by the James Bond films throughout the 1960s, though what’s interesting is that a spoof usually comes at the end of a creative cycle, many of them signaling a last gasp of sorts from whatever subject is being parodied. Get Smart, on the other hand, came three years into the boom. When the show premiered in the fall of 1965, there had only been three 007 movies, with things really exploding at the end of that year with the release of the fourth, Thunderball.
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Donna McChrohan Rosenthal, author of the non-fiction exploration of the show The Life and Times of Maxwell Smart, explains in an exclusive interview, “Get Smart ran [from] 1965 to 1970. Concurrently, you had The Man from U.N.C.L.E. from 1964 to 1968, I Spy from 1965 to 1968, and The Wild Wild West from 1965 to 1969, [the latter of] which was espionage and gadgets set in the Old West. Get Smart outlasted all three. Meanwhile, James Bond movies launched what I suppose you’d identify as the mania in 1962. It continued to 2002, from Sean Connery through Pierce Brosnan. Then it started up again with Daniel Craig. I wouldn’t call any of this a last gasp. Far from it. But let’s face it, times change. The world changes. The political climate changes. Eventually, people are ready for something new.”
And now you can see what was going on back in the day for yourselves as we present this look back at all things Get Smart. Just scroll down.
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Why it Worked
As to the strength of Get Smart as a premise, Donna points to series creators Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, and the creative strength they brought to the concept. “Mel Brooks,” she says, “is a sight gag kind of guy. Think of Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, and The Producers. He came up with the shoe phone. Can you imagine anything more preposterous? You have to hold it up to your mouth after you’ve clomped through muck and filth wearing it. You’ve been crashing its presumably advanced technology into pavement and puddles. And to use it, you have to stop walking or running and squat down to take it off. That’s spoofing James Bond’s sophisticated spy gear in the broadest possible manner.”
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“Mel Brooks is no shrinking violet as a thinker and a philosopher,” Donna adds, “but he’s not primarily associated with subtlety. That’s more Buck Henry’s department — a soft-pedaled approach to fundamental issues, Cold War politics, and a growing suspicion of corporate America. You have to include executive producer Leonard Stern in ‘the idea’, too. He was in at the inception, and already had writing for The Honeymooners, Sgt. Bilko (“You’ll Never Get Rich”), and Steve Allen under his belt. He had a great deal to do with shaping the concept.”
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If James Bond and Inspector Clouseau Had a Baby …
As writer Buck Henry explains it to the Archive of American Television, he had been called into a meeting with executives who had already met with Mel Brooks. “In a beautiful example of bottom line, he said to me, ‘Have you noticed that the two huge hits wandering around the world out there in the film business are Bond and Clouseau? Get the picture?’ ‘Yeah, I get the picture,'” Buck said. Bond, of course, was James Bond, as played by Sean Connery and which was quickly becoming a global pop culture phenomenon. Clouseau was Inspector Clouseau, Peter Sellers’ bumbling French detective in the Pink Panther films, which had, at that time, two entries released.
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For his part, in a 1965 interview with Time, Mel commented, “I was sick of looking at all those nice sensible comedies. They were such distortions of life. If a maid ever took over my house like Hazel, I’d set her hair on fire. I wanted to do a crazy, unreal comic-strip kind of thing about something besides a family. No one had ever done a show about an idiot before. I decided to be the first.”
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Would You Believe the First Choice for Maxwell Smart Was Tom Poston?
Tom Poston, well known to television fans over the decades for everything ranging from On the Rocks and The Bob Newhart Show, to We’ve Got Each Other, Mork & Mindy, Newhart, Grace Under Fire and Committed, was actually first choice as Maxwell Smart. And ABC was the first network interested in the show.
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Explains Buck Henry, “It was written under a contract with ABC, and as soon as ABC read it, they asked for rewrites. And then they asked for more. And they said, ‘Well, we can’t impose this kind of stuff on a family having dinner in the homes.’ I think they thought it was sort of un-American.”
Tom Poston, speaking to the Archive of American Television, refers to the pilot that ABC had turned down which featured a villain named Mr. Big, who was actually a midget. “These are quotes,” says Tom. “‘You can’t have the head of an international criminal empire called Mr. Big be played by a midget. America has great respect for its criminals.’ Honest to God, he turned it down saying those things.”
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Adds producer Leonard Stern, “So we now had a Get Smart script and no commitment, and it was the end of the pilot season. The script had been written for Tom Poston, and it was much more physical in the Harry Langdon/Buster Keaton style.”
Noted Tom, series co-creator Mel Brooks was in the “polo lounge” of some place looking down in the dumps, and when an NBC executive asked him what was the matter, he said, “Well, they just turned down my pilot at ABC.” The executive pointed out that they had a guy named Don Adams under contract and they were looking for a show, so he wanted to take a look at it. NBC loved it and gave the pilot the green light with Don Adams, with Tom admitting “I didn’t know enough to mourn.”
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Leonard laughs, “The only comment I had from the network when they saw the pilot was a note that told me to change Don Adams’ strident delivery. That was negated by an imitation of Don Adams done by one of the astronauts on the first moon flight. When something went wrong, he said, ‘Sorry about that, chief.’ Within four weeks, everybody was doing their version of Maxwell Smart’s voice.”
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Don Adams as Maxwell Smart, Agent 86 of CONTROL
Born Donald James Yarmy on April 13, 1923, by 1965, Don Adams had established himself as a stand-up comic, appeared on The Steve Allen Show in the late 1950s, was a regular on both The Perry Como Show and The Bill Dana Show; and provided the voice for the animated Tennessee Tuxedo. So when he was offered a role that was to be a takeoff of James Bond, he simply wasn’t interested. Until he heard it had been written by Buck Henry and Mel Brooks, which caused him to commit to the show immediately.
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Buck Henry feels that Don brought a comic’s timing which, he says, “was very good for this guy who was very boastful, and very stupid. He brought a lot of the running gags, the runners. His, ‘Would you believe?’ joke was something that had come from his act. There were two or three things like that. And then there’s his look; he looks like a cartoon, he looks like someone drew him. It was really a nice, very sharp edge, sort of the opposite of what Tom Poston would have done, I think, which was interesting.”
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Added Don back in the ’60s, “It kind of took on its own character after I did about five or six shows. Then the writers just wrote for the character. It was in Time magazine and Newsweek. People were saying it on the streets, ‘Would you believe?’ The astronauts were saying, ‘Sorry about that, Chief.’ It was a show that was so far ahead of its time.”
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As to the character, in a 1966 interview with the Saturday Evening Post, he commented, “Maxwell is a fighter for the forces of good, but is not a hero like other agents, Bond, Bulldog Drummond, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Such a type in the popular image does not fumble, is superb with women, knows wine, dresses right. Maxwell is fumbling and bumbling. The average guy looks at Bond or the U.N.C.L.E. hero and they’re suave, beautiful, perfect, and the guy knows he could never do it their way. Most people are not like that, not six-[foot]-two, not handsome, not marvelous with women. Maxwell tries to be these things, but he misses. He’s not superhuman. But he believes in what he is, and wants to do his best.”
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Barbara Feldon Is Agent 99
Barbara Feldon, born on March 12, 1933, got her start as a model, securing her biggest gig in a TV commercial for a hair pomade for men called Tom Brass by Revlon. From there, she made a number of TV guest appearances. Get Smart producers were asked to watch that commercial to consider her for Maxwell Smart’s fellow CONTROL agent, 99. They did and she was signed.
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“99 was really a line drawing; she was a cartoon,” Barbara relates to the Archive of American Television. “She was a cartoon with warm current going through it, but she didn’t have many aspects. She was a very selective little package. 99 didn’t have a name. She also didn’t have a background. Presumably to be hired at CONTROL headquarters, she had to have a background, but that’s top secret. Did I ever give a thought to 99’s background? Not for one minute. She was totally preoccupied with adoring Max. That was her. Everything else was shoved out. There was just no room in the container for a past or a future. It was all Max, all the time.”
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A Question of Height
One thing that hadn't been taken into account when Barbara Feldon was signed as 99 is the fact that she's actually a little bit taller than leading man Don Adams. Observes producer Leonard Stern, "Don was so respectful of her talent that it never became an issue, and Barbara would work not to appear taller than Don."
Comments Barbara, "For all the people who watch the show and say, 'Why is she slouching like that? Is that low-esteem? What is it that?' It wasn't. Don would have liked a shorter leading lady, and I wanted to please my co-star."
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We Need to Talk About the Cone of Silence
One of the hallmarks of the James Bond films were the various cool gadgets given to 007 by Q-branch. Maxwell Smart had devices, too, but somehow they didn’t work quite as efficiently. “The Cone of Silence,” explains Ron Magid, author of The Get Smart Files, “was Get Smart‘s poke at government extravagances, a hugely expensive piece of equipment that was continually on the blink. Max would inevitably insist that the Cone of Silence be employed every time a top secret discussion took place within The Chief’s office. Despite his objection, ‘But Max, it doesn’t work!’ the chief would ultimately give in, and live to regret it! The Cone of Silence was matched by an utterly ridiculous English model, the Umbrella of Silence! ‘The Umbrella of Silence?!’ Max asked the head of British CONTROL, to which the foreign bureaucrat replied, ‘England, old boy!'”
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Edward Platt Is The Chief
The man in charge of CONTROL is The Chief, played by Edward Platt. He was actually an operatically trained bass-baritone who made his Broadway debut in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Allegro. He enjoyed other stage successes, appeared in the films Rebel Without a Cause and Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest, as well as making numerous guest starring appearances on television. Get Smart was actually a show he felt was ideal for him.
"Ever since TV came on the scene," he related to TV Guide in 1969, "I had hoped for a comedy series. I get a big kick out of comedy. It has been around for a long time. I'm sure when Adam found Eve, he had something funny to say."
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The Shoe Phone
"The most memorable gadget in the show's entire run was Max's shoe phone," says Ron Magid, "a device that caused Agent 86 untold embarrassment in public (little old ladies in supermarkets would discreetly nudge Smart and exclaim, 'Your shoe is ringing!') and nearly always blew his cover as a CONTROL agent when he was working in disguise. To operate the phone, Smart would remove it from his foot, take off the sole to reveal a standard dialing mechanism, and place his call. Once in a while he'd encounter some interference from nosy operators, such as the one who tried to determine from where Smart was making his collect call. To this indignity, Max retorted, 'I'm sorry, operator, this is an unlisted shoe!'"
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Dick Gautier Is Hymie the Robot
Actor Dick Gautier, who starred in the original Broadway production of Bye Bye Birdie, and years later would star as Robin Hood in Mel Brooks’ TV series When Things Were Rotten, played Hymie the Robot, Max’s best friend on the series. In speaking to People in 1985, Dick Gautier commented, “Don Adams would come up after a take shot and say, ‘Dick, that was absolutely one-dimensional.’ Hymie never stifled my career. He only enhanced it. I know kids who were named Hymie, because they looked like me.” Ouch. Sorry about that, Hymies.
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Says Ron Magid, “Everybody’s favorite agent (besides Max and 99, of course) was Hymie. Hymie was programmed to respond literally to commands. Oftentimes, Max would forget that Hymie was a robot and order him to ‘grab a waiter’ in a restaurant, for example, at which point Hymie would leave and return several moments later carrying the maitre d’ over his head! Hymie was originally a KAOS robot that Max intercepted and who was reprogrammed by CONTROL to serve “the forces of niceness.’ He eventually became Max’s best friend and served as best man at Max’s wedding to 99! Gautier brought a warmth to Hymie’s robotic personality, and an element of pathos as well.”
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And Then There Was Poor Agent 13
If you want to feel sorry for anybody on Get Smart, it would have to be Agent 13, who would inevitably pop up serving his family from the tightest of containers, include coffee machines and garbage pails.
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Bernie Kopell Is Siegfried
Every hero needs his arch-nemesis, and Maxwell Smart’s was Siegfried, the head of enemy organization KAOS. Bernie Kopell, who appeared on numerous other TV shows, is probably best known for his long-running stint as Doc on The Love Boat. Offers Ron Magid, “As James Bond must battle Spectre, the men from U.N.C.L.E. must conquer Thrush, so Maxwell Smart, Agent 86 of CONTROL, must match his razor sharp wits against those dirty dogs of KAOS. The most brilliant of Smart’s opponents was a neo-Nazi fighter ace known as Conrad Siegfried. One particularly sidesplitting encounter between these two intrepid men of action occurs on a park bench where Siegfried, disguised as an old woman, has arranged to meet Smart. Both men had agreed to come unarmed, but since neither trusts the other, they came heeled to the hilt with the latest top secret weaponry! The joke is that they insist on removing one piece of equipment at a time, trading off one device for another, and each is stunned to learn that the other knows everything about their supposedly top secret arsenals!”
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We Now Present Mr. and Mrs. Smart
Throughout the run of Get Smart, it was obvious that 99 pined after Max, and that Max was completely oblivious to her feelings. However, in season 4, the duo were married and the show was able to have some fun intermixing parodies of the spy game and marriage. In the show’s fifth season (which switched networks from NBC to CBS), 99 gives birth to their twins. Unfortunately by this point, the show was running out of creative steam, the babies didn’t help and that was the final year.
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In an interview with wouldyoubelieve.com, Leonard Stern explained of the marriage, “I think you’re always affected by marketing research, which I think does great disservice to creativity and is questionable at best. I think they then showed that the show was in some kind of decline and we had to do something to renew audience interest. So that became getting married. And so the subsequent year that had helped, but now we’re once again showing signs of losing the audience, so why not have a child? We had already had a dog, so we couldn’t look upon that as a savior. I felt that there always are signs that you’re in trouble. I think the core audience was always loyal and might possibly been bombarded by having the children. I remember watching The Dick Van Dyke Show, I was a great fan of it, and they had the boy. I felt he inhibited them and I believe they felt the same way, because ultimately he was always upstairs in his room or certainly off camera.”
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Get Smart Again … and Again … and Again!
Throughout the 1970s, the popularity of Get Smart boomed when the show went into reruns, its popularity probably eclipsing what it had experienced during the original run. The result was various attempts to bring it back over the years. The first such effort was 1980’s big screen adventure, The Nude Bomb, which had Max (no 99) coming out of retirement to stop KAOS from launching a weapon that will destroy all clothing, except for those created by them. Yeah, it was pretty much as dopey as it sounds. The film was also known as The Return of Maxwell Smart.
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Get Smart Again is a 1989 TV movie that brought Don Adams and Barbara Feldon back, as well as Bernie Kopell as Siegfried. It seems that Max and 99 have to stop a resurrected KAOS (which is back thanks to a corporate takeover) from using a weather control machine that threatens the world. Fairly successful, six years later the film inspired a new series called Get Smart that aired for seven episodes in 1995. Max and 99 are more background characters, while their bumbling son, Zach (Andy Dick) is at the center of things. Sadly, nobody was buying it.
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Then There Was the ‘Get Smart’ Movie
In 2008, a movie reboot of Get Smart was released, which the studio describes as follows: “When members of the nefarious crime syndicate KAOS attack the U.S. spy agency Control, the Chief (Alan Arkin) has to promote his eager analyst Maxwell Smart (Steve Carell) to field agent. Smart, partnered with veteran Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway), blends inexperience, enthusiasm and ineptitude as he works to thwart a world-domination plot hatched by the wily KAOS chief, Siegfried (Terence Stamp).”
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Of the film, director Peter Segal explains, “Our goal was to embrace the spirit of what Mel Brooks and Buck Henry created and bring it into a new generation. The movie pays homage to the touchstones of the series; it’s irreverence, political satire and some of the catchphrases that are now part of our culture, but with a fresh story, a [modern] point of view and a style and energy all its own. The idea was to make a movie that offers as much to new viewers as longtime fans and, bottom line, to just make it funny as hell so it doesn’t matter if you know the history or not.”
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Sounding very much like Maxwell Smart, Steve Carell adds, “I’d say it’s 80 percent comedy, 20 percent action, 15 percent heart, 35 percent romance, 10 percent adventure and probably less than 1 percent horror. Put that all together and you have more than 100 percent, which is more, really, than you can expect from any movie.”
The film was a moderate success, but pretty much failed to connect with the audience. Donna McChrohan Rosenthal comments, “It’s mystifying, isn’t it? Steve Carell has so much talent, and clearly had tremendous affection for the role. He didn’t make a bad movie. Don’t get me wrong. But it lacked the original magic. I guess the best answer is that TV series are not repertory theatre. It’s not like Hamlet where a succession of great actors can turn in spectacularly unforgettable performances, each one as good as the next.”
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Don Adams and Barbara Feldon Remember the Show Fondly
Following the writing of The Life and Times of Maxwell Smart, Donna McCrohan Rosenthal stayed in touch with both Don Adams and Barbara Feldon, and still communicates with Barbara. Conveying their feelings about the show, she says, “They liked the characters and what they did with them. Remember that Don Adams brought some of the Maxwell Smart persona from his nightclub act. He’d essentially field-tested the material and knew how well it worked. Don and Barbara could hardly have missed that they were famous and that the show was a success, but I remember, for instance, being at a party for Get Smart in the 1990s. Don was tremendously moved by the outpouring of regard and respect for the show. I had the impression that he hadn’t realized how deeply Get Smart had taken hold.”
Whether or not there will be another version of the show remains to be seen, but we have no doubt that the original Get Smart will live on for all eternity. Would you believe it? Would you believe a couple of centuries? How about the next 40 minutes?
Sorry about that, Buck!