Get Smart
Get Smart is an American comedy television series parodying the secret agent genre that had become widely popular in the first half of the 1960s with the release of the James Bond films. It was created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, and had its television premiere on NBC on September 18, 1965. It starred Don Adams as agent Maxwell Smart, Barbara Feldon as Agent 99, and Edward Platt as The Chief. Henry said that they created the show at the request of Daniel Melnick to capitalize on James Bond and Inspector Clouseau, "the two biggest things in the entertainment world today". Brooks described it as "an insane combination of James Bond and Mel Brooks comedy".
The show generated a number of popular catchphrases during its run, including "Sorry about that, Chief", "...and loving it", "missed it by that much", and "would you believe...". The show was followed by the films The Nude Bomb and Get Smart, Again!, as well as a 1995 revival series and a 2008 film adaptation. In 2010, TV Guide ranked Get Smarts opening title sequence at number two on its list of TV's top 10 credits sequences as selected by readers. The show switched networks in 1969 to CBS. It ended its five-season run on May 15, 1970, with a total of 138 episodes.
The Museum of Broadcast Communications found the show notable for "broadening the parameters for the presentation of comedy on television".
Premise
The series centers on bumbling secret agent Maxwell Smart, also known as Agent 86, and his unnamed female partner, Agent 99. They work for CONTROL, a secret US government counterintelligence agency based in Washington, D.C., fighting against KAOS, "the international organization of evil". While Smart always succeeds in thwarting KAOS, his incompetent nature and insistence on doing things "by the book" invariably cause complications.The enemies, world-takeover plots, and gadgets seen in Get Smart were a parody of the James Bond film franchise. "Do what they did except just stretch it half an inch", Mel Brooks said of the methods of this TV series.
Production
commissioned Mel Brooks and Buck Henry to write a script about a bungling James Bond–like hero. Brooks described the premise for the show that they created in an October 1965 Time magazine article:I was sick of looking at all those nice, sensible situation 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.
Brooks and Henry proposed the show to ABC, where network executives called it "un-American" and demanded a "lovable dog to give the show more heart", as well as scenes showing Maxwell Smart's mother. Brooks strongly objected to the second suggestion:
They wanted to put a print housecoat on the show. Max was to come home to his mother and explain everything. I hate mothers on shows. Max has no mother. He never had one.
The cast and crew contributed joke and gadget ideas, especially Don Adams, but dialogue was rarely ad-libbed. An exception is the third-season episode "The Little Black Book". Don Rickles encouraged Adams to misbehave, and he ad-libbed. The result was so successful that the single episode was turned into two parts.
The first four seasons on NBC were filmed at Sunset Bronson Studios, while the final season, shown on CBS, was filmed at CBS Studio Center.
Production personnel
Brooks had little involvement with the series after the first season, but Henry served as story editor through 1967. The crew of the show included:- Leonard B. Stern – executive producer for the entire run of the series
- Irving Szathmary – music and theme composer and conductor for the entire run
- Don Adams – director of 13 episodes and writer of two episodes
- David Davis – associate producer
- Gary Nelson – director of the most episodes
- Bruce Bilson – director of the second-most episodes
- Gerald C. Gardner and Dee Caruso – head writers for the series
- Reza Badiyi – occasional director
- Allan Burns and Chris Hayward – frequent writers and producers
- Stan Burns and Mike Marmer – frequent writers
- Richard Donner – occasional director
- James Komack – writer and director
- Arne Sultan – frequent writer and producer
- Lloyd Turner and Whitey Mitchell – frequent writers and producers of season five
Characters
In 1999, TV Guide ranked Maxwell Smart number 19 on its 50 Greatest TV Characters of All Time list. The character appears in every episode.
' works alongside 86 and is another one of the top agents at CONTROL. Her actual name is never revealed. In the episode "A Man Called Smart Part 3", Max calls her Ernestine and she says, "Too bad that's not my name." In another episode, "99 Loses CONTROL", she uses the name Susan Hilton, but later in the same episode tells Max that it is not her real name. When 99 marries Max in Season 4, Admiral Hargrade snores when the minister says her name, making it inaudible.
Several instances refer to her high level of professionalism; in one episode the Chief says an assignment requires extreme bravery and competence but since 99 isn't available, Max could do it. According to Feldon, 99 is deeply in love with Max and either overlooks or understands his quirks, while he is clueless about her affection yet often demonstrates his care through his concern for her well-being.
' is the head of CONTROL. His first name is revealed to be Thaddeus but his surname is never revealed. On some occasions he uses the "code name" "Harold Clark" for outsiders, but this is understood among CONTROL agents not to be his real name. He is supportive of Agents 86 and 99 and considers them to be his two closest friends, but he is often frustrated with Smart. When he was a field agent, his code name was "Q".
' is the Chief's assistant, even more slow-witted and incompetent than Max.
Ludwig Von Siegfried is a recurring villain, and the vice president in charge of public relations and terror at KAOS, though his title does vary. Despite his gruff and proper demeanor, he is as incompetent as Max.
is Siegfried's equally ruthless but often inept chief henchman, prone to silly behaviors which annoy his boss as unbecoming of KAOS.
' is a humanoid robot built by KAOS, but in his first mission, Smart manages to turn him to the side of CONTROL. Hymie had a tendency to take instructions too literally.
' is an agent who is usually stationed inside unlikely, sometimes impossibly small or unlucky places, such as cigarette machines, washing machines, lockers, trash cans, or fire hydrants. He tends to resent his assignments.
Six episodes. French's first role was the insurance man in "Too Many Chiefs", and subsequent episodes as Agent 44. He is the predecessor to Agent 13 in season 1. Agent 13 takes over the function of Agent 44 for seasons 2 to 4, but Agent 44, now played by Al Molinaro, returns in season 5.
Carlson is a CONTROL scientist and inventor of such gadgets as an umbrella rifle and edible buttons.
Dr. Steele is a beautiful, sexy, and brilliant CONTROL scientist who develops formulas while undercover as a dancer and strip-tease artist. She remains oblivious to Smart's clearly discomfited attraction to her. The character appeared in three episodes in season 3, replaced the next season by Dr. Simon who has the same cover.
Production notes
Gadgets
Telephones
In Get Smart, telephones are concealed in over 50 objects, including a necktie, comb, watch, and a clock. A recurring gag is Max's shoe phone. To use or answer it, he has to take off his shoe. Several variations on the shoe phone were used. In "I Shot 86 Today", his shoe phone is disguised as a golf shoe, complete with cleats, developed by the attractive armorer Dr. Simon. Smart's shoes sometimes contain other devices housed in the heels: an explosive pellet, a smoke bomb, compressed air capsules that propelled the wearer off the ground, and a suicide pill.Agent 99 used concealed telephones in her makeup compact and her fingernail. To use the latter device, she would pretend to bite her nail nervously while actually talking on her "nail phone."
On February 17, 2002, the prop shoe phone was included in a display titled "Spies: Secrets from the CIA, KGB, and Hollywood", a collection of real and fictional spy gear that exhibited at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. Flinders University in South Australia has researched medical applications for shoe phone technology after being inspired by the show.
Gag phones also appear in other guises. In the episode "Too Many Chiefs", Max tells Tanya, the KAOS informer whom he is protecting, that if anyone breaks in, to pick up the house phone, dial 1-1-7, and press the trigger on the handset, which converts it to a gun. The phone-gun is only used that once, but Max once carried a gun-phone, a revolver with a rotary dial built into the cylinder. In the episode "Satan Place", Max simultaneously holds conversations on seven different phones: the shoe, his tie, his belt, his wallet, a garter, a handkerchief, and a pair of eyeglasses. Other unusual locations include a garden hose, a car cigarette lighter, a bottle of perfume, the steering wheel of his car, a painting of Agent 99, the headboard of his bed, a cheese sandwich, lab test tubes, a Bunsen burner, a plant in a planter beside the real working phone, and inside another full-sized working phone.