The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is an American television series that was broadcast on NBC from September 22, 1964, to January 15, 1968. It follows the exploits of two secret agents, played by Robert Vaughn and David McCallum, who work for a fictitious secret international law-enforcement agency called U.N.C.L.E. (the U nited N etwork C ommand for L aw and E nforcement).
Background
There were 105 episodes (see 1964 in television and 1968 in television) created by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer that made up this series. The first season was broadcast in black-and-white.
James Bond creator Ian Fleming contributed to the show's creation. The book The James Bond Films reveals that Fleming's TV concept had two characters: Napoleon Solo and April Dancer ( The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. ). ("Mr. Solo" was originally the name of a crime boss in Fleming's Goldfinger .) Robert Towne and Harlan Ellison wrote scripts for the series, which was originally to have been titled Solo . Author Michael Avallone, who wrote the first original novel based upon the series (see below), is sometimes incorrectly cited as the creator of the series (such as in the January 1967 issue of The Saint Magazine ). At one point, Fleming's name was to have been connected more directly with the series. The cover of the original prospectus for the series showed the title Ian Fleming's Solo . Solo was originally slated to be the "solo" star of the series, the only "Man". But a minor walk-on by a Russian agent named Illya Kuryakin caught fire with the fans, and the two were permanently paired.
Premise
The series centered on a two-man troubleshooting team working for U.N.C.L.E.: American Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn), and Russian Illya Kuryakin (David McCallum). Leo G. Carroll played Alexander Waverly, the British head of the organization (Number One of Section One). Lisa Rogers (Barbara Moore) joined the cast as a female regular in the fourth season.
The series, though fictional, achieved such notability as to have artifacts (props, costumes and documents, and a video clip) from the show included in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library's exhibit on spies and counterspies. Similar exhibits can be found in the museums of the Central Intelligence Agency and other agencies and organizations involved with intelligence gathering.
U.N.C.L.E.'s archenemy was a vast organization known as THRUSH (originally named WASP in the series pilot movie). The original series never explained what the acronym THRUSH stood for, but in several of the U.N.C.L.E. novels written by David McDaniel, it was expanded as the T echnological H ierarchy for the R emoval of U ndesirables and the S ubjugation of H umanity, and described by him as having been founded by Col. Sebastian Moran after the death of Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls in the Sherlock Holmes story "The Final Problem".
THRUSH's aim was to conquer the world. Napoleon Solo said, "THRUSH believes in the two-party system: the masters and the slaves." So dangerous was the threat from THRUSH that governments, even those most ideologically opposed such as the United States and the USSR, cooperated in the formation and operation of U.N.C.L.E. Similarly, if Solo and Kuryakin held opposing political views, the writers allowed little to show in their interactions.
Though executive producer Norman Felton and Ian Fleming had developed the character of Napoleon Solo, it was producer Sam Rolfe who created the organization of U.N.C.L.E. Unlike the nationalistic organizations of the CIA and James Bond's MI6, U.N.C.L.E. was a worldwide organization composed of agents from all corners of the globe. The character of Illya Kuryakin was created by Rolfe as a Russian U.N.C.L.E. agent.
The creators of the series decided that the involvement of an innocent character would be part of each episode, giving the audience someone with whom it could identify. Through all the changes in series in the course of four seasons, this element remained a factor — from a suburban housewife in the pilot, "The Vulcan Affair" (film version: "To Trap a Spy"), to the various people kidnapped in the final episode, "The Seven Wonders of the World Affair".
The Organization
Main article: U.N.C.L.E.Season 1
The show's first season was in black and white. Rolfe created a kind of Alice in Wonderland world, where mundane everyday life would intermittently intersect with the looking-glass fantasy of international espionage which lay just beyond. The U.N.C.L.E. universe was one where the weekly "innocent" would get caught up in a series of fantastic adventures, in a battle of good and evil. In its idealistic depiction of an international organization that transcended borders and agents of all nationalities worked together, Rolfe's U.N.C.L.E. anticipated Gene Roddenberry's interstellar United Federation of Planets in "Star Trek" two seasons later. Rolfe also blended deadly suspense with a light touch, reminiscent of Hitchcock. In fact, U.N.C.L.E. owes just as much to Alfred Hitchcock as it does Ian Fleming, the touchstone being North by Northwest , where an innocent man is mistaken for an agent of a top secret organization, one of whose top members is played by Leo G. Carroll. This role led to Carroll being cast as Mr. Waverly in the show.
U.N.C.L.E. headquarters in New York City was most frequently entered by a secret entrance in Del Floria's Tailor Shop. Another entrance was through The Masque Club. Mr. Waverly had his own secret entrance. Unlike the competing TV series I Spy however, the shows were overwhelmingly shot on the MGM back lot. The same outside staircase was used for episodes set throughout the Mediterranean and Latin America, and the same eucalyptus dirt road on the back lot in Culver City stood in for virtually every continent of the globe. The episodes followed a naming convention where each title was in the form of "The ***** Affair", such as "The Vulcan Affair", "The Mad, Mad, Tea Party Affair", "The Waverly Ring Affair", and "The Deadly Quest Affair", the only exceptions being, "Alexander the Greater Affair", parts 1 & 2. The first season episode "The Green Opal Affair" establishes that U.N.C.L.E. itself uses the term "Affair" to refer to its different missions.
Rolfe endeavored to make the implausibility of it all seem not only feasible but entertaining. Frogmen emerging from wells in Iowa, shootouts between U.N.C.L.E. and THRUSH agents in a crowded midtown Manhattan movie theater, top secret organizations hidden behind innocuous brownstone facades—this was a parallel universe that lay just beyond our own.
The series also began to dabble in science fiction-based plots, beginning with "The Double Affair" in which a THRUSH agent, made to look like Solo through plastic surgery, infiltrates a secret U.N.C.L.E. facility where an immensely powerful weapon called "Project Earthsave" is stored; according to the dialogue, the weapon was developed to protect against a potential alien threat to Earth.
Rolfe left the show at the conclusion of the first season.
In its first season The Man from U.N.C.L.E. competed against The Red Skelton Show on CBS and Walter Brennan's short-lived The Tycoon on ABC.
Seasons 2-4
Switching to color, U.N.C.L.E. continued to enjoy huge popularity, but the new producer, David Victor, read articles that called the show a spoof and that is what it became. Over the next three seasons, five different show runners would supervise the U.N.C.L.E. franchise, and each one took the show in a direction that differed considerably from that of the first season. Furthermore, U.N.C.L.E. had spawned a swarm of imitators. In 1964, it was the only American spy show on U.S. TV; by 1966, there were nearly a dozen. In an attempt to emulate the success of ABC's mid-season hit, Batman , which had proven hugely popular on its debut in spring of 1966, U.N.C.L.E. moved swiftly towards self-parody and slapstick.
This campiness was most in evidence during the third season, when the producers made a conscious decision to increase the level of humor (though season two had moved in this direction in episodes such as "The Yukon Affair" and "The Indian Affairs Affair"). With episodes like "The My Friend the Gorilla Affair" (which featured a scene in which Solo is shown dancing with a gorilla) the show tested the loyalties of its supporters and this new direction resulted in a severe ratings drop, and nearly resulted in the show's cancellation. It was renewed for a fourth season and an attempt was made to go back to serious storytelling, but the ratings never recovered and U.N.C.L.E. was cancelled midway through the season.
Episodes
Main article: List of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. episodesTheme music
The theme music, written by Jerry Goldsmith, changed slightly each season. Goldsmith only provided three original scores and was replaced by Morton Stevens, who composed four scores for the series. After Stevens, Walter Scharf did six scores, and Lalo Schifrin (who later wrote the Mission: Impossible theme) did two. Gerald Fried was composer from season two through the beginning of season four. The final composers were Robert Drasnin, Nelson Riddle and Richard Shores. The music reflected the show's changing seasons – Golds
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