Before I became a hopeless Bond tragic, my appetite was whetted for the cloak and dagger world by one of the great spy TV shows of its time, The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
In the midst of the 60s, during the Cold War and the general public’s Hollywood fuelled fascination with secret agents and spy games, the man from U.N.C.L.E changed television history. Debuting in 1964 on the NBC television network as a more family friendly alternative to James Bond, the show wasn’t an instant hit. Despite its winning premise, it was repeatedly trounced in the ratings by McHale’s Navy, and the Red Skelton hour, but it was the network’s decision to gear the show towards kids and teenagers by sending its actors on weekend promotional tours and moving the show to Mondays (and later on a teen friendly Friday nights), that would eventually turn the show into one of the 60s’ biggest pop culture phenomenon.
Early episodes focused on two very different characters. An overconfident American secret agent and ladies man Napoleon Solo, but it was his Russian sidekick, Illya Kuryakin that stole nearly every scene he was in and turned the blonde Beatle-esque character into a teen idol at a time when the phrase was relatively new.
Thousands of hysterical fans crowd at the star promotional appearances, celebrity magazines persist over his home life with then wife Jill Ireland, and record labels saw him for novelty singles and instrumental albums. As Illya, the enigmatic international man of mystery, he was intelligent, loyal, efficient, witty, and helped set the template for what we now call the buddy cop genre.
Before there was Gibbs and McGee, before Mulder and Scully even before Starsky and Hutch there was Napoleon Solo ( Robert Vaughn) and Illya Kuryakin (David McCallan). Sometimes Illya’s Russian heritage confused some simple folk (FBI director J Edgar Hoover was rumoured to have hated the show because of it) and inspired others ( a popular man from U.N.C.L.E fansite states that devotees “continue to dream of a world with a cocky extrovert American and a shy, introverted Russian can be the best of friends”) is still discussed among fans of the show, who write fanfiction and lengthy blog posts about the actors’ excellent on-screen chemistry.
When season two debuted in September 1965, the Man From U.N.C.L.E was the biggest show on television. Children gathered round the set clutching their official Man From U.N.C.L.E toys and membership cards, teams swearing over (or were enraged by) the romantic repartee between the two leads and the woman of the week, whilst adults enjoyed the tongue in cheek humour of it all. It was at this point that the show and finally found its footing and despite frequent changes in the production and writing staff, it mostly stuck to the same winning template.
Each episode was a new mission, or “Affair”, as the on-screen episode title referred to it. Each promised a new threat from a special guest star. Aiding or accidentally hindering Solo and Illya is usually and otherwise ordinary person who just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time or have some connection to the villain. These ‘innocents” were often fashionable dressed young women with improbable names like Salty Oliver, Jo Jo Tyler and Mimi Doolite. Villains are often killed quickly or offscreen by their own kind, hostages rescued, and everybody ends up sharing a meal with thankful U.N.C.L.E chief Alexander Waverly (Leo G Carroll)
By today standards some might argue that the show’s format hasn’t aged well, noting cheap special effects literally everything on the set is made of foam or cardboard or the dated ethnic humour and every foreign accent is heavily exaggerated, there is a sort of comfort food quality to its predictability. The good guys always win, the bad guys failed miserably, and show draped itself in lovable trademarks such as “Open Channel D”.
BACKGROUND
The series followed the adventures of two secret agents, who work for a secret international counterespionage and law-enforcement agency called U.N.C.L.E. U.N.C.L.E. was an organization made up of agents of all nationalities. It was charged with the weighty responsibility of “maintaining political and legal order anywhere in the world”, it’s multinational makeup, and international scope allowed it to leap boarders with a single bound. Its charter was to protec and defending nations regardless of size or political persuasion.
U.N.C.L.E. operated in Communist and Third World countries the same way that it did in the Western nations. In the episode entitled “The Shark Affair,” (episode 4 from season 1, from 1964) enforcement agent of U.N.C.L.E. Napoleon Solo reveals that U.N.C.L.E. is sponsored by the US, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Greece, Spain, Italy and Yugoslavia. Its primary opponent is the independent international criminal organization, was THRUSH.
There were only a few recurring characters, but the series attracted many high-profile guest stars. William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy appeared together in an episode two years before Star Trek premiered.
Werner Klemperer of Hogan’s heroes fame and James Doohan (Star Trek) appeared in the number of episodes but each time playing a different character. Barbara Feldon (Get Smart), Joan Crawford, Janet Leigh and Sonny and Cher also made appearances, even English funny man Terry Thomas all played a part in the shows ultimate appeal.
Props from the series are exhibited at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum and at the museums of the Central Intelligence Agency together with other US intelligence agencies.
The series won a Golden Globe award for the best TV series of 1966.
Originally, co-creator Sam Rolfe wanted to leave the meaning of U.N.C.L.E. ambiguous so it could refer to either Uncle Sam or the United Nations” or the however concerns by the MGM legal department about using “U.N.” for commercial purposes resulted in the producers’ clarification that U.N.C.L.E. it was an acronym for the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement. Each episode had an “acknowledgement” to the U.N.C.L.E. in the end titles.
Interestingly Ian Fleming the creator of James Bond, contributed to the concepts after being approached by the show’s co-creator, Norman Felton. In the book The James Bond Films, it was revealed that Fleming had proposed two characters, Napoleon Solo and April Dancer who (later appearing on the spin-off series The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. The original name proposed was Ian Fleming’s Solo however it was shortened to, ‘Solo’.
Originally, Solo (Robert Vaughn) was to be the focus of the series, but the Russian agent Illya Kuryakin played by a dashing young Scotsman (David McCallum) drew so much enthusiasm from fans, and he became the most popular one of the team. Leo G Carroll played Alexander Waverly the British Chief of the organization. Barbara Moore joined the cast as Lisa Rogers in the fourth season.
The main protagonist that constantly made U.N.C.L.E fight for freedom more difficult U.N.C.L.E.’s primary adversary was THRUSH (WASP in the pilot movie). The original series never divulged who or what THRUSH represented, nor was it ever used as an acronym.
However in the U.N.C.L.E. novels written by David McDaniel, it stands for the ‘Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity, described as having been founded by Colonel Sebastien Moran after the death of Professor Moriarty, at the Reichenbach Falls in the Sherlock Holmes in the short story “The Final Problem” .
THRUSH’s aim was to conquer the world. THRUSH was considered so dangerous an organization that even governments who were ideologically opposed to each other – such as the United States and the Soviet Union – had cooperated in forming and operating the U.N.C.L.E. organization. Similarly, when Solo and Kuryakin held opposing political views, the friction between them in the story was held to a minimum.
The pilot episode “Solo” was filmed in colour from late November to early December 1963, with locations at a Lever Brothers soap factory in California, the television pilot made as a 70-minute film was originally titled Ian Fleming’s Solo and later shortened to Solo. However, in February 1964 a law firm representing the James Bond movie producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R Broccoli demanded an end to the use of Fleming’s name in connection with the series and an end to use of the name and character “Solo”, “Napoleon Solo” and “Mr. Solo”. At that time filming was underway for the Bond movie Gold Finger in which Martin Benson was playing a supporting character named “Mr. Solo”, being an
American Mafia boss murdered by Aric Goldfinger. The claim was the name “Solo” had been sold to them by Fleming, and Fleming could not again use it. Within five days Fleming had signed an affidavit that nothing in the Solo pilot infringed any of his Bond characters, but the threat of legal action resulted in a settlement in which the name Napoleon Solo could be kept but the title of the show had to change.
The role of the head of U.N.C.L.E. in the pilot was Mr. Allison, played by Will Kuluva, rather than Mr. Waverly, played by Leo G. Carroll, and David McCallum’s Illya Kuryakin only had a brief role. Revisions to some scenes were shot for television, including those needed to feature Leo G. Carroll. The pilot episode was reedited to 50 minutes to fit a one-hour time slot, converted to black and white, and shown on television as “The Vulcan Affair”.
As it happens NBC in New York was not happy with the pilot. An executive wanted to drop the Russian character, Illya Kuryakin, from the cast, but he could not remember his name, saying “K– K–”. Felton replied “Kuluva?” and the executive replied, “That’s it.” Felton did not argue as he wanted to replace Kuluva anyway. When later asked who the replacement was, Felton replied, “Leo G. Carroll”. The executive said that he was too old to replace David McCallum as Solo’s sidekick. Felton explained he had replaced Kuluva, and that it was too late to get rid of McCallum, the contracts already having been signed. It has been rumoured for years that the executive in question was Grant Tinker , then the husband of Mary Tyler Moore and later chairman of NBC.
Additional colour sequences with Luciana Puluzzi were shot in April 1964, and then added to the pilot for MGM to release it outside the United States as a B movie titled ‘To Trap a Spy’. This premiered in Hong Kong where it was thought he could do the least damage. in November 1964. The extra scenes were reedited to tone down their sexuality, and then used in the regular series in the episode “The Four-Steps Affair”.
Beyond extra scenes for the feature film, and revised scene shots and edits made for the television episode, there are other differences among the three versions of the story. Before the show went into full production there was concern from MGM that the name of THRUSH for the pilot’s international criminal organization sounded too much like SMERSH, the international spy-killing organization in Fleming’s Bond series. The studio suggested Raven, Shark, Squid, Vulture, Tarantula, Snipe, Sphinx, Dooom [sic], and Maggot (the last used in early scripts). Although no legal action took place, the name was dubbed as “WASP” in the feature version To Trap a Spy. The original pilot kept THRUSH (presumably since it was not intended to be released to the public in that version). Felton and Rolfe pushed for the reinstatement of “THRUSH”. It turned out that WASP could not be used, since Gerry Anderson’s British television series ‘Stingray’ was based on an organization called W.A.S.P. (World Aquanaut Security Patrol). By May 1964, THRUSH was retained for the television episode edit of the pilot. Despite this, WASP was used by the feature film in Japan in late 1964, and it was left in the American release in 1966.
Another change among the three versions of the pilot story was the cover name for the character of Elaine May Donaldson. In the original pilot it was Elaine Van Nessen; in the television version and the feature version it was Elaine Van Every. Illya Kuryakin’s badge number is 17 in the pilot, rather than 2 during the series, and Solo’s hair, after new footage was added, changed back and forth from a slicked back style to the less severe style he wore throughout the series.
With the popularity of the show and the spy craze, ‘To Trap a Spy’ and the second U.N.C.L.E. feature ‘The Spy with My Face’ were released in the United States as an MGM double feature in early 1966.
