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| an overview by Alice Dryden |
| In 1964, the third James Bond film was released and the popularity
of 007 reached an unbelievable height. Spy movies were hot property, and
television companies were also keen to buy secret agent adventures. "Danger
Man" and "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." became successful small screen drama
series, modelling themselves on the excitement, glamour and danger of the
world portrayed in "Dr. No", "From Russia with Love" and the newly released "Goldfinger", but on
September 18, 1965 the espionage craze took an entirely new direction. It
went into comedy.
"Get Smart" had a simple premise. Take a Bond film, stretch its more
ludicrous elements -- the gadgets, the villains, the girls -- to the point of
parody, and replace Agent 007 with Agent 86, a frighteningly clumsy and
stupid anti-hero whose character is flawed by vanity, greed and cowardice
yet is fundamentally decent. While James Bond effortlessly gets everything
right, Maxwell Smart flounders through his assignments making catastrophic
decisions but triumphs through luck, charm, gizmos and, of course, the help
of his brilliant and beautiful partner, Agent 99. He works for the American
government in the form of CONTROL, reporting in to a long-suffering
Chief, and against KAOS, a free-lance collection of nasties, crooks and
maniacs with dreams of world domination. This was the mission statement of
a sitcom which ran for five years and achieved cult status on a par with
the more serious television spies. From a '90s perspective it is difficult to realise how ground-breaking "Get Smart" was. It was one of the first sitcoms not to be based around a family unit; despite pressure put on by NBC, the network which aired the show, Mel Brooks and Buck Henry refused to write in a lovable mother for Max and there are no cute kids (with the exception of Dr. T, a gum-chewing newsboy who appeared in "The Mysterious Dr. T" and was won over to CONTROL by the charms of 99). There was, initially, a cute dog, Fang, but the mongrel playing the role proved to be as pea-brained as his character and was written out to save on filming time and headaches; a fate later suffered by "Friends'" monkey Marcel. Whereas most sitcoms ended on a cosy moral about family values, if the end of a "Get Smart" episode carried a message it was usually faintly anti-establishment; "the good guys are just as nasty as the bad guys" or "our Government is in a mess" were surprisingly serious statements lurking behind the cheesy punchlines. When 99 expresses regret at an opponent's messy death Max replies "But 99, we have to destroy, shoot and kill -- we represent all that is wholesome and good in the world!" Death was a newcomer to the sitcom. Violence and killing shocked even in serious dramas, and its becoming a subject to joke about ("If only he had used his baton for niceness instead of evil!" says Max sadly when musical villain The Maestro has been shot by his own cannon) broke a long-standing television taboo. It was also acceptable for the Bad Guys to kill but not the Good Guys; at this stage the Men from U.N.C.L.E. were still, on occasion, utilizing sleep-darts despite Thrush's ruthlessness. While CONTROL never came up with anything as dastardly as KAOS' attempts to eliminate Max and 99 by turning them into waxworks or bronze statues ("Couldn't you just do our baby shoes?"), amplifying sound so the vibrations from their heart-beats would destroy their brains or simply sawing them in half, it was apparent that the Chief's boys could play quite rough. The KAOS agents, of course, deserved their fates -- but Max often looked far too pleased about administering them.
The effects of this fresh attitude would have made no impact at all if "Get Smart" had not been tremendously popular. Luckily, it was. Few sitcoms attain a cult following at the level of "Star Trek" or "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." but this one came close, with tie-in novels and comics, toys including a kit version of Max's Sunbeam Tiger, and a novelty record released by Barbara Feldon ("She is doing her carressin' with a tiny Smith and Wesson, and that means that you've been messin' with...99!").The stars were stopped in the street for autographs and called upon to address societies. An obscure black-and-white pilot rejected several times for being too weird blossomed into a show with universal appeal which was syndicated worldwide (its buyers having to find a native actor with a funny enough voice to dub Max's lines). The secrets of its success may have mystified network bosses but were obvious to its audience. "Get Smart" worked. It appeared when James Bond was ripe for pastiche, spoofed him brilliantly and moved on to become an institution of its own. Though the timing of its arrival and the charisma of its actors were essential factors, triumph was ensured by the fact that it was -- is -- very, very funny. The writing combination of Mel Brooks, who departed from his usual medium of film for the first time to write Get Smart for TV, and Buck Henry, whose "The Graduate" is a cult classic, produced scripts in which ridiculous plots, eccentric characters, witty dialogue and punchy sight gags jelled perfectly together. (Don Adams, having learned who was writing the show, accepted his part on trust.) Every comic has a James Bond sketch in his repertoire, but to keep the formula going forover a hundred episodes "Get Smart" had to transcend its origins as a Bond pastiche and become something in its own right. From the beginning it did not rely exclusively on Bond but borrowed from "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." ("The Man From KAOS") as well as spoofing non-espionage television programs and films, including "Casablanca" and "The Prisoner of Zenda." Some of the show's many memorable villains, such as Bronzefinger and Dr. Yes, had an obvious inspiration, but "Get Smart" also gave us The Claw (a very politically incorrect villain; Max thought he called himself "the Craw"), Rotten Rupert of Rathskeller and the inimitable Siegfried ("Zis is KAOS...ve don't shush here!"). The show spoofed the '60s as well as spies. Beatniks and hippies made frequent appearances, banning the bomb and advocating free love with gusto. One of the more memorable villains was the Groovy Guru, who advised his followers to Make War Not Love and plotted to subvert America's teenagers through the songs of his backing group, the Sacred Cows ("Yeah yeah yeah, bump off a square...KAOS swings...") The '60s flavour may have been topical at the time -- as were surprisingly many jokes, especially the political humour and jibes at the C.I.A. -- but today it makes Get Smart more appealing for its very datedness. A key reason for Get Smart's success was the excellent choice of actors. Don Adams moulded the part of Max to himself by virtue of a silly voice and routines incorporated from his previous stand-up act and his popular portrayal of hotel detective Byron Glick, made simple pratfalls hilarious and remained totally deadpan while on camera. Barbara Feldon's 99 combined a feminist outlook, deadly fighting skills and intelligence with seductiveness and, most astonishing of all, a puppyish devotion to the idiot Maxwell. The sheer chemistry of 99's blatant adulation and Max's ignorance of it far surpasses the suspense of Mulder and Scully's relationship. Ed Platt gave The Chief the ability to express complete anguish and frustration in a single despairing gesture. Bernie Copell turned his one-off villain Siegfried the Great into a regular guest star, and his leather-clad, duelling-scarred character regularly crossed Smart's path, both actors obviously relishing the encounters. In Don Adams' own words, "Max is what the guy on the street would be if he got to play James Bond." Certainly it is easier to identify with this hapless bungler than with suave, smooth, sophisticated Bond. Max drives fast cars but frequently crashes them; he meets beautiful women but is turned down (and on one occasion poisoned) as often as he is successful. The gadgets provided by CONTROL's equivalent of Q Branch sometimes save his life but also have a tendency to blow up in his face; he constantly walks into the transparent bullet-proof screen in his apartment, and the mishaps he has with the Cone of Silence (another sly joke; this was a rather bad novel and film of the period) would fill a book. Like Agent 99, the audience accepts Max's faults and finds them endearing. The Cone of Silence is one of the most enduring features of Get Smart . Located in the Chief's office, it consisted of two plastic bubbles which, when lowered from the ceiling to rest over the heads of the Chief and an agent, allowed them to converse without anyone else being able to hear. This, at least, was the theory. In practice anything could happen, and usually did once Max had insisted on employing the device. It provided a running gag for the sitcom's five years of running, and was resurrected for both 1980s films (one theatrical, the other made for television). Most episodes made use of outlandish gadgets, spoofing the scenes from Bond movies in which Q presents 007 with just the right tools for the job -- exploding cigarettes, tubes of paint which became flick knives, and guns concealed in anything from a ping-pong paddle to a prosthetic finger. But one gizmo became the trademark of Max, perhaps of the entire show -- the shoephone. Asked to name a gadget associated with James Bond, few people would give the same answer. But the dial-phone housed in Maxwell Smart's smart black shoe is linked to him forever. A ridiculous idea in the days before mobile phones, the image is now used to sell them. It is the catchphrases of the show above all which have made a lasting impression. Quotability is a sure measure of popularity; "Get Smart's" famous slogans were inescapable in late '60s America and remain in the public consciousness even when their source has been forgotten. The 'Would you believe...' gag ("I once taught a girl to swim twice across the Channel. Would you believe once across the Channel? How about twice around the bathtub?") was a favourite of advertisers during the show's peak period and still surfaces today. "Sorry about that, Chief!" is as well-known an expression as "Shaken, not stirred" -- and an opportunity for saying it is far more likely to occur in normal conversation.
Copyright© 1998 by Alice Dryden
Sources: "The Get Smart Handbook" by Joey Green; "The Life & Times of
Maxwell Smart" by Donna McGrohan |
Remarkable too was the presence of 99 -- an independent, single girl
who worked for a living and was obviously brainier, tougher and stronger
than her male partner. Although these facts were often the basis for jokes,
and 99 was given normal, healthy dreams of matrimony, the character
provided a positive television image for feminism. Barbara Feldon received
numerous letters from women who saw the character as an encouraging role
model. It is notable that 99 seldom killed anyone directly. While Max was
quite happy to shoot an adversary onscreen, 99 was more likely to knock out
or elude a pursuer -- arguably a more skilled and less wasteful method. She was in need of rescue more often than her partner, but she saved his
bacon on numerous occasions, handled a gun competently and utilized quick
thinking and karate chops. "Get Smart" represented emancipation for women as
well as for the sitcom.