Here’s What Happened to Actress Barbara Feldon Before, During and After Playing Agent 99 on ‘Get Smart’

She was born Barbara Ann Hall on March 12, 1933, in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, graduating from Bethel Park High School and training as an actress at the Pittsburgh Playhouse. She graduated from the Carnegie Institute of Technology, the predecessor to Carnegie Mellon University, with a bachelor of arts in drama. In 1965, the Sunday News of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, chronicled things as follows: “Barbara left her native Pittsburgh for the big city in quest of a Broadway career. Jobs were scarce when Barbara came to New York, but she picked up a job in the once-famous Copa Line, a nightclub famous for the pretty girls in its chorus. This lead to a showgirl part in the Beatrice Lillie revival of the Ziegfeld Follies.”

It was her stint with the Ziegfeld Follies that reportedly led to her becoming a contestant on television’s The $64,000 Question in 1957, winning the grand prize in the category of William Shakespeare. Not long after, the quiz show scandals broke out. “The scandal,” Barbara told the Philadelphia Daily News in 1965, “didn’t rub off on me. It was more on Twenty-One than The $64,000 Question. My friends used to joke about it; they would tease me about getting the answers in advance. It was all joking, but sometimes there is a seriousness behind joking.”

Barbara invested some of her winnings (“Some wisely, some I didn’t,” she said) and ended up spending much of the rest of it. As she observed, “I was too young. I really didn’t know what to do with it, but there isn’t very much of it left.”

In the same piece, Barbara’s then-husband Lucien Verdoux-Feldon (an ad man who she would marry in 1958, taking his last name in the process) commented, “People didn’t think of her as an actress, but as a freakish sort of thing. She had offers for personal appearances in Las Vegas, but it blew her chances of a Broadway show because it had — well, destroyed her actress image. So she just sort of went into retirement. And she still hates to talk about it.”

“The best I ever had was small parts in off-Broadway flops,” she said, “and I found going around and sitting in sleazy offices was just too awful. I decided to give it up. I decided to try modeling, but the two top model agencies told me I’d never make a model; thin-faced girls were in and I have a full face. So I decided to try commercials, but a commercial producer said he wouldn’t even turn his camera on to test me, because nobody would buy anything I sold.”

Throwing up her hands in frustration, she decided to leave acting behind. Instead, she and Lucien took most of what was left of her game show winnings and opened an art gallery, which didn’t last long. Reflected Barbara, “An art gallery is a hobby, not a business.”

Then, though, when she least expected it, she found the world of modeling and commercials open up to her. She told The Sentinel of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, “One night at a party, I met the fabulous [fashion model] Gillis McGill who asked if I’d thought of modeling. ‘It would amuse me to help you become a top model if you’re interested,’ she said. Then she got me a job modeling for Pauline Trigere.”

In 1965, the Republican and Herald of Pottsville, Pennsylvania, published a profile of the actress, commenting, “The living Barbara has been earning since she made her first commercial about four and a half years ago has been a very good one. In that pitch, she soft-sold a deodorant pad while wrapped in a bath towel. It was an eye-catcher … Not long after, she was put under contract as a TV spokeswoman.”

The contractor was Revlon, which hired her to sell their hair pomade for men, Top Brass. To do so, she was seen lounging on an animal-print rug, purring and referring to the males in the audience as “tigers.” This is the thing that made people really start to pay attention.

“When you become known,” mused Barbara, “you’re in demand. Not long ago I was called in to do a Class A commercial for a floor wax company. All they did was zoom in with a camera on my eyes. They probably could have used any eye, but since I was known they wanted mine. And who was I to object? Every Monday morning after the commercial had been aired, there was a $200 check in the mail. I used to race to that box every week.”

And she had no embarrassment whatsoever regarding doing commercials — and not just because of the money. “Commercials are an excellent training in getting experience in acting,” she said. “As far as discipline goes, you can’t beat it. Even though you do the same scene over 40 or 50 times, you have to retain spontaneity. You must remember to stress each word properly and come in on a split second when that camera rolls.”

In terms of acting, she reflected to The Pittsburgh Press, “At 19, I was in the resident company from Tech at William Penn Playhouse (now Apple Hill) in Delmont. I knew for certain after that season I wanted to act. The following summer I went to Little Lake Arena Theater and did Dracula and something by Noel Coward. Next season I was at White Barn. It’s funny, but in a way that was the season that was responsible for my whole career. Colleen Dewhurst was there that summer and I got to know her well. She married George C. Scott, who, in turn, got me a role in an episode of the East Side/West Side TV series.”

In 1964 and 1965, Barbara made a number of television guest appearances beyond East Side/West Side on such shows as Mr. Broadway, The Nurses, Flipper, Slattery’s People, 12 O’Clock High and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Then, of course, she was cast as Agent 99 on Get Smart, who, along with Maxwell Smart, kept the world safe from the likes of the evil KAOS.

Get Smart was a parody of the James Bond films, which were exploding in popularity at the time. Created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, it struck a chord. “Naturally, I’m excited about it,” Barbara related to Republican and Herald  prior to the show’s debut. “When I heard last, five scripts were already written and four more were in story outline form. From what I’ve been told, they’re real wild — anything goes. The characters in the show, including spy dog Fang, are archetypes of inefficiency.”

“I’m looking forward to the family relationship of doing a show with the same people each week,” she added. “When you do one show guest appearances, you’re just about getting to know the crew, the performers and the most comfortable place to rest between takes and then the week ends. I’m not complaining, because I love TV. It’s just like playing a game. You go in and they shoot away. You sometimes work long hours, but I don’t find it very hard work. It’s incredible to think you can earn a living doing this.”

Even then, she had a very clear vision of what she ultimately wanted out of life, telling the Philadelphia Daily News, “My ambition is certainly not to become a star, although being a star would help me achieve it. My ambition is just to enjoy life; to travel, to sample things, to meet people, to talk to people. That’s the kind of ambition that is hard to achieve if there’s a financial tourniquet hampering you in the form of bills and debts. For that reason, money is good to have. But I don’t really want much in the way of material possessions. I don’t want a house. As for clothes, I have a small but very good wardrobe. I really don’t need anything more.”

Regarding Get Smart itself, she enthused to Pennsylvania’s The Sentinel, “We happen to have a marvelous work set-up. Congenial family atmosphere on the set, Don Adams, who can be so funny when he should be, is just the dearest man. Unlike a lot of comedians, he doesn’t work at being funny all the time. For me, it’s a 12-hour day, four days a week job. I take the body home at eight, get vegetables from the fridge and that’s it. Then on Friday night, Lucien flies out and we have the whole weekend together, including Monday. Every six weeks I’m off a week and then I come to New York.”

There’s no question that the character of 99 had an appeal for the audience, and Barbara felt she knew why, explaining to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “I have a spoofy quality. What I do isn’t funny. It’s my attitude toward what I do. I perform as honestly as I can, but there’s a part of me that’s just not buying it. That’s the wink at the audience. I invite them not to buy it either.”

“Acting is a game to me, like canasta,” she added to The Post-Standard of Syracuse, New York, in 1967. “It’s not a way of life. It keeps me busy and it earns me a good living, but that’s about all it means to me. I’d like to try one great, neurotic role just to see if I could do it, but for one performance. I could never go for a long run of tragedy. There’s a gay atmosphere around our show. It’s always fun to go to work. Comedy is a pleasant way of life. But I didn’t plan this. I don’t plan. You just see what comes up. I thought I was just doing a pilot, but it’s turned out fine.”

Ed Robertson, host of the TV Confidential podcast and radio show, comments, “Barbara Feldon and Don Adams were one of the great comedy pairings of the ‘60s. She was basically the straight man to Don Adams. There would be a little sarcasm towards the end of their run, but basically her job was to prop up Maxwell Smart and she did a marvelous job.”

Other things did not turn out as well. For starters, her marriage to Lucien came to an end in 1967, and, because of Get Smart, she had to face the one downside of her career that she had more or less relocated to California from New York. “Two years ago, when I first went out to California, I was still married and Lucien stayed in New York, so I was on that plane, shuttling back and forth every couple of weeks whenever I had a weekend off. We both realize now that our marriage had to be falling apart then, or we would never have agreed to such long separations. In a way, this had made the divorce easier. There’s been no one shattering blow. It was all so gradual, at least I didn’t have to recover from a terrible emotional shock.”

On top of that, she felt she had “held hands” with the city of New York and was scared to let go, having a deeply felt need for the bustle of the city, people on the streets, even the all-night delicatessens. “I was afraid to be by myself,” Barbara mused, “so I clung to the city where there is always somebody or something to fill up the time. I’ve become much more self-reliant since I moved to California. I had a lot of time out there, by myself, especially when I first moved out. I learned if you can’t depend on yourself, you ain’t got nobody. I have almost no interest in acquiring things. I don’t care about possessions. Eventually, they own you and they tie you down and I want to be free. I’m working hard now so that soon I can be free to get on a boat or a plane any time I want and go any place I want. I’m hooked on traveling.”

Barbara certainly kept busy during the Get Smart years. On television, she appeared in two episodes of Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, which gave her the opportunity to sing and dance; The Red Skelton Show, The Name of the Game and Matt Lincoln. On the big screen, in 1967 she had uncredited roles in the Caprice and Point Blank, and costarred with Dick Van Dyke in Fitzwilly, about a butler and staff of an aged philanthropist who will do anything they can — legal or not — to help raise funds for her charitable activities.

Pop culture historian Geoffrey Mark opines, “Fitzwilly is one of these gems of a movie that, for whatever reason, has not become iconic. Dick Van Dyke is brilliant in it and Barbara plays his love interest and she’s brilliant in it. She was playing a version of herself: a beautiful, sensual, highly-intelligent woman with a strong moral compass and a loving heart. That’s what the character is and that’s who Barbara is.”

Get Smart came to an end in 1970 after five seasons and 138 episodes. In a 1971 interview with The Los Angeles Times, Barbara described being free of a series as playtime. “A long vacation,” she enthused. “Acting out my fantasies by singing and dancing on variety shows. Sampling the whole smorgasbord. You know the plateaus in your life when you reach a point where you have to climb into a new era of your life? Another chapter? I feel I’m there now. As a child, I wanted to be a boy. Tarzan was my idol. I swung from trees and yelled a lot. Then in the sixth grade, there was one of those plateaus and I became Margaret O’Brien and prayed a lot.”

One thing she was not interested in was another series, particularly given what she felt was the limited vision of those offering her jobs. “We all change,” she observed. “Life is full of variations. But can television change? Does it have to go on doing the same thing it always did? Is it ready for the liberated woman? What I mean is that after Get Smart I was offered three series and all of them were 99 all over again. The little wind-up lady, the mechanical doll programmed to react to Max. I want to play a flesh and blood woman. What we’re working on is a comedy about a woman who is a mature person. Mary Tyler Moore has broken the ice — that’s a mature woman she plays. But is there room for more? Is television ready for us? I want to play a thinking woman’s woman. A woman who is really into things.”

Over the years following Get Smart, Barbara not only guest-starred on different shows (Cheers and Mad About You among them), but 15 TV movies, ranging from costarring with Barbara Eden in Let’s Switch (1975) to A Guide for the Married Woman, Children of Divorce (1980) and Get Smart Again (1989). Needless to say, she reprised the role of 99 for that film and did so once more in a short-lived show simply titled Get Smart, with she and Don Adams taking a rear position to the characters’ son, Zach (Andy Dick). “When they asked me to do it,” she told the Indiana Gazette, “I couldn’t not do it. I love working with Don so much and I did want to be part of the show.”

She’s appeared in only three more movies: Smile (1975), No Deposit, No Return (1976) and The Last Request (2006).

During and after Get Smart she was also a panelist on different game shows such as The Hollywood Squares, Baffle, The $25,000 Pyramid, Rhyme and Reason, Three for the Money, Word Grabbers and Shoot for the Stars. “She was a very good player, especially on Pyramid,” says Ed. “Everyone points to Jeopardy as being the brainiest of the game shows, but to play Pyramid you have to be really smart and have the ability to convey information in a short amount of time. Like a lot of celebrities, Barbara took the game seriously, because she knew it was a lot of money for this particular person. It could often be life-changing. She never lost sight of that and she was appreciative that she helped make a difference.”

In 1968 she had begun dating Burt Nodella, a producer on Get Smart, and they were together for 12 years. In 1980, following their breakup and after having moved back to New York, Barbara starred with Laurence Luckinbill in the two-character play Past Tense at the Circle in the Square Uptown. “The experience is so fascinating to me on a personal level,” she emphasized to the New York Daily News. “I haven’t had the luxury, ever, in television of really being able to examine a character. Forget the fact that it’s Broadway and it’s theater and all of that. I must pull out of myself things that I do not play in life. It’s very weird, but I’m beginning to think of my character, Emily, as asserting herself through me. It’s like building muscles. When this play is over, I’m going to have certain personality muscles that had lain dormant until I played her. I will be perceptively changed by this character.”

Jim Colucci believes that Barbara’s story is a bit unusual, as he discovered while interviewing her. “She talks about the magic of discovering dance and being on stage in middle school and enjoying that era,” he explains. “But ultimately in her career, I think she didn’t find acting to be the be-all-end-all. It simply wasn’t as gratifying to her compared to dancing. Not that she didn’t enjoy some of the shows she was on or wasn’t grateful for them, but she made the comment that she felt she was missing part of the acting gene. When I asked her about her legacy and her success, she very endearingly, frankly and modestly said that she doesn’t feel her acting career was a giant success, because she didn’t really do all that much or try to do all that much.”

At this point — and not only because she’s 87 — acting simply isn’t important to Barbara anymore. But it’s not exactly a new feeling for her. “I’m ambivalent about my career,” she admitted to the Poughkeepsie Journal as far back as 1976. “I like it the way it is, because it doesn’t interfere with my life. There’s a real danger in becoming a success if you allow getting ahead professionally to interfere with getting pleasure out of life. When I take a job now, it’s because there’s something intriguing or fresh or enjoyable in the idea itself.  Let me give you an idea of how ambitious I am or am not. I’d love to star in the greatest Broadway hit of all time, provided I could get out of the show after the first week. I wouldn’t mind being in another hit TV show either, as long as I was certain it wouldn’t run longer than 13 episodes. That’s how ambitious I am.”

For more on Barbara Feldon, and to hear the actress discuss her life and career in her own words, check out the episode of TV Confidential in which Ed Robertson interviews her.