Get More Smart
Secret
agent stories entered popular culture with Ian Fleming’s James Bond in the
1950s. Although there were only two
serious video versions – the first two Bond films and the superior Danger Man / Secret Agent / The Prisoner
television series with Patrick McGoohan – this transient fashion of the early
1960s has enjoyed a long half-life. Spoofs,
all of them good-natured, began almost immediately and continue today. Even James Bond is no longer the patriotic
functionary of a collapsing empire; he quickly became a self-parody in the
dizzy Roger Moore era, and has lately fallen into to the sensitive slough of
cultural despond by lesser writers and directors, failing to use the great
acting talents of Young Blue Eyes.
The
earliest and best takeoff of spy thrillers is Get Smart, which aired on television from 1965 to 1969. All the spy conventions are there – the
secret spy organizations (CONTROL and its evil opposite, KAOS), the stern but
fatherly director, two-seater drop-tops, glamorous clothes, beautiful women,
unnecessarily complicated gadgets, the mad villains, and lots and lots of
firearms. Secret Agent Maxwell Smart and
the gang at CONTROL take these usages and twist them into delightful illogic:
CONTROL’s government budget is so low that in one episode The Chief takes a
part-time job as a cleaner. Agent Smart
is brave and tough but not very smart, and is often rescued by gorgeous Agent
99 dressed in her Carney Street best. The
various mad geniuses are Bond villains who have had too much coffee, and the
gunfire, explosions, visual gags, falls, tumbles, and car wrecks are straight
out of The Three Stooges.
And
it is all wonderful, harmless fun.
In
cable-channel retrospectives the cliches’ “cutting edge” and “ahead of its
time” are employed with illogic and abandon.
Get Smart, happily, was
definitely of its time: Agent 99
dresses in swinging London style, and Max and the Chief are dapper in suits
with narrow ties. The Cold War, hippies,
Russians, Germans, desert sheiks, Chinese Communists, motorcycle gangs, the
threat of nuclear war, cooing seductresses, and South American dictators all
come in for a comic treatment that is no edgier than Leave it to Beaver. Cigarettes and cocktails abound in their
prelapsarian innocence, and Max and Agent 99 never, never, never overnight with
each other.
Repeated
lines from Get Smart were omnipresent in the 1960s, and many continue. Max’s nasal “Would you believe…?” survives,
though few know of its origins. A
typical “Would you believe…?” occurs when Max is in the hands of the villains,
and would go (my quote, from memory, is not precise) something like this:
Siegfried:
“You are in the hands of KAOS. Put down your weapons.”
Max:
“Would you believe that this island is surrounded by the 6th Fleet?”
Siegfried:
“I find that hard to believe.”
Max:
“Would you believe the 1st Fleet?”
Siegfried:
“No.”
Max:
“Would you believe two Boy Scouts in a canoe?”
A
very few of the other repeated gags:
Siegfried:
“Zis iss KAOS; ve don’t ‘shush’ here!”
Max:
“Missed it by that much.”
Long-suffering
99: “Oh, Max.”
Max:
“The old ____ in the _____ trick.”
Max
(when his schemes go disastrously wrong): “Sorry about that, Chief.”
Get Smart would be funny as
a stand-alone comedy without cultural references other than the fictional creations
of Ian Fleming and Patrick McGoohan. However,
Get Smart engineered takeoffs on
dozens of cultural markers, both transient and transcendent. The following is a partial list of books,
movies, television shows, and poems (and how many gags based on Samuel Taylor
Coleridge or obscure Czech films have you heard lately?) celebrated by the
brilliant writers and actors of a show only the superficial would dismiss as,
well, superficial:
One of Our Aircraft
is Missing
Bye, Bye Birdie
The Reluctant
Debutante
The Wild Ones
Peyton Place
Our Man in Havana
Murder on the
Orient Express
Ship of Fools
Charlie Chan
Casablanca
The Prisoner of
Zenda
Doctor No
Island of the Da(r)ned
The Man from
U.N.C.L.E.
The Girl from
U.N.C.L.E.
The Mummy
How to Succeed in
Business without Really Trying
Appointment in
Samarra
A Man Called Horse
The Greatest Show
on Earth
Cinderella
Snow White
Gilligan’s Island
Goldfinger
Somebody up There
Likes Me
Witness for the
Prosecution
The Fugitive
Zorba the Greek
The Good, the Bad,
and the Ugly
Treasure of the
Sierra Madre
National Velvet
Spartacus
Alfie
Goodbye, Columbus
Bonnie and Clyde
To Sir With Love
Ironside
Rear Window
The Great Escape
The Secret of Santa
Vittoria
Closely Watched
Trains
A Tale of Two
Cities
The Fugitive
House of Wax
The Avengers
“Rime
of the Ancient Mariner”
King Kong
The Grapes of Wrath
Ice Station Zebra
Rebecca of
Sunnybrook Farm
The List of Adrian
Messenger
Max:
“Would you believe that Get Smart is
the best television show ever?”
Siegfried:
“I find that hard to believe.”
Max:
“Would you believe that Get Smart is the most popular television show in
Khazakstan?”
Siegfried:
“No.”
Max:
“Would you believe that Get Smart is
funnier than Republicans?”
-30-
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