I watched a biography of Don Adams last night. Ya know? I really liked Get Smart when I was a kid.
“Missed it by that much.”
"Sorry about that, Cheif.*
“Would you believe…”
“That’s the second biggest [thing] I’ve ever seen!”
“And loving it!”
“Zis is KAOS! Ve don’t ‘phthththththt’ here!”
I haven’t seen the show in years, but it’s fun seeing how people dressed back then, the cars they drove, etc. Everyone wore suits! 99’s outfits were often (to my current eyes) hideous. And then there’s the whole Cold War thing. Yeah, everyone was paranoid about nuclear annihilation; but at least we had a well-defined enemy back then.
The show said that a new Get Smart movie is in the making. Their viewer poll suggested Adam Sandler should play Smart. I don’t know who will play Smart, but please don’t let it be Sandler!
I agree that Sandler as Smart would be a sign of the coming apocalypse. But as I think about it, I’m not sure who could possibly pull it off. Uhh… maybe Wayne Brady?
The Craw was Chinese, so he couldn’t pronounce R. So, of course, Smart couldn’t understand that it should be The Claw, not The Craw.
The Craw was missing his right hand, which had been replaced by a large magnet. He is introducing himself to Smart:
The Craw: “I suppose you can guess what they call me, because I wear this.”
Smart: “Lefty?”
And Hymie the robot, who could do anything a human could do, except one thing - set up a lawn chair. Then when Hymie was dying, he wanted Smart to send his love to the coffee machine in the hallway.
(That was the pilot, BTW, one of the few actually written by Brooks and Henry.)
I was a fan of the show, and of the books. There was a series of novelizations by William Johnston that were even funnier than the show. Johnston was the master of weird novelizations of TV comedy shows of the time (he wrote another one of Captain Nice). I suspect the name was a pseudonym and would love to know his real name.
I really can’t abide Get Smart. I don’t know what it is; it’s clever enough, and not as relentlessly silly as other comedy shows of the time. Must be my aversion to 60s TV I guess (the only shows from that era I enjoy are Addams Family and Dick Van Dyke).
Barbara Feldon always appeared to be bouncing back and forth oddly during the show, which I since learned was because she turned her ankles sideways to make herself look shorter. Feldon is noticeably taller than Adams.
The one where Control is arresting Kaos agents and Kaos is kidnapping Control agents, eventually leaving only Max and Zeigfried.
The two parter with Don Rickles as Max’s old army buddy. I love the part where they give him the phone shaped like a cow horn and he moos into it.
The aforementioned Craw (although it wasn’t the pilot. It was the first of the regular series. The pilot was shot in black and white and was called Mr. Big)
