The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is an American spy fiction television series"Sept 22 (Tuesday) "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." Agents of the United Network Command for Law Enforcement shield society from assorted tribulations. 8:30 P.M. on NBC." produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Television and first broadcast on NBC. The series follows secret agents Napoleon Solo, played by Robert Vaughn, and Illya Kuryakin, played by David McCallum, who work for a secret international counterespionage and law-enforcement agency called U.N.C.L.E. (United Network Command for Law and Enforcement). The series premiered on September 22, 1964, and completed its run on January 15, 1968. The program was part of the spy-fiction craze on television and, by 1966 there were nearly a dozen imitators. Several episodes were successfully released to theaters as B movies or double features. There was also a spin-off series, The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., a series of novels and comic books, and merchandising.
With few recurring characters, the series attracted many high-profile guest stars. Props from the series are exhibited at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum and at the museums of the Central Intelligence Agency and other US intelligence agencies. The series won the Golden Globe Award for Best TV Show in 1966.
Originally, co-creator Sam Rolfe (of Have Gun – Will Travel fame) wanted to leave the meaning of U.N.C.L.E. ambiguous so it could refer to either "Uncle Sam" or the United Nations. Concerns by the MGM legal department about using "U.N." for commercial purposes caused U.N.C.L.E. to become an acronym for the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement. Each episode had a spurious "We wish to thank" acknowledgement to U.N.C.L.E. in the end titles.
Background The series consists of 105 episodes originally broadcast between 1964 and 1968, produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Arena productions. The first season was produced in black-and-white, the remaining seasons in color.
The first episode was broadcast on September 22, 1964, as part of the Tuesday night NBC lineup, but moved to Monday nights, a half hour earlier, the following January."The National Broadcasting Company will make changes in its Monday and Tuesday evening television programing in January... N.B.C., planned to switch "The Man From U.N.C.L.E.," now on Tuesdays, to Mondays at 8 P.M. The one hour program about an agent for a secret organization combating international crime would replace two half-hour shows ... On Tuesday from 8:30 to 9:30 P.M. "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." will be succeeded by ..."
Ian Fleming contributed to the series after being approached by co-creator Norman Felton. According to the book The James Bond Films, Fleming proposed two characters, Napoleon Solo and April Dancer (later appearing on the spin-off series The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.). The original name for the show was Ian Fleming's Solo. Robert Towne, Sherman Yellen, and Harlan Ellison later wrote scripts for the series. Author Michael Avallone, who wrote the first original novelization based upon the series (see below), is sometimes incorrectly cited as the show's creator.
Originally, Solo was the focus of the series, but David McCallum as Russian agent Illya Kuryakin drew so much enthusiasm from fans that the agents became a team.
Premise
The series centered on a two-man troubleshooting team working for multi-national secret intelligence agency U.N.C.L.E. (United Network Command for Law and Enforcement): American Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn), and Russian Illya Kuryakin (David McCallum). Leo G. Carroll played Alexander Waverly, the British chief of the organization. Barbara Moore joined the cast as Lisa Rogers in the final season.
The series, though fictional, achieved such cultural prominence that props, costumes, documents, and a video clip are in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum's exhibit on spies and counterspies. Similar exhibits are held by the museum of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Thrush U.N.C.L.E.'s primary adversary was Thrush (called WASP in the first film, To Trap a Spy). The original series never divulged whom or what Thrush represented, nor was it ever used as an acronym. The novels written by David McDaniel say that it stands for "Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity", described as having been founded by Colonel Sebastian Moran after the death of Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls in the Sherlock Holmes short story "The Final Problem". But in a second season episode, guest star Jessie Royce Landis plays a character who claims that she founded Thrush. Producer Felton always insisted that Thrush was not an acronym and stood for nothing, and "Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity" was never used by any other of the novelists.
Thrush's aim was to conquer the world. Thrush was considered so dangerous an organization that even governments who were ideologically opposed to each othersuch as the United States and the Soviet Unionhad cooperated in forming and operating the U.N.C.L.E. organization. Similarly, whilst Solo and Kuryakin held opposing political views, the friction between them in the story was held to a minimum. Although executive producer Norman Felton and Ian Fleming conceived Napoleon Solo, it was the producer Sam Rolfe who created the global U.N.C.L.E. hierarchy, and he who included the Soviet agent, Illya Kuryakin. Unlike the American CIA, the British MI5, or the Soviet KGB, U.N.C.L.E. was cosmopolitan, a global organization of agents from many countries and cultures.
Innocent character The creators decided an innocent character would be featured in each episode, giving the audience someone with whom to identify. Despite many changes over four seasons, "innocents" remained a constant – from a suburban housewife in the pilot, "The Vulcan Affair" (film version: To Trap a Spy), to those kidnapped in the final episode, "The Seven Wonders of the World Affair".
Episodes
Solo – the pilot
Filmed in color from late November to early December 1963, with locations at a Lever Brothers soap factory in California, the television pilot made as a 70-minute film was originally titled Ian Fleming's Solo and later shortened to Solo. However, in February 1964 a law firm representing James Bond producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli demanded an end to the use of Fleming's name in connection with the series and an end to the use of the name and character "Solo", "Napoleon Solo" and "Mr. Solo". At that time filming was underway for the Bond film Goldfinger, in which Martin Benson was playing a supporting character named "Mr. Solo", an American Mafia boss murdered by Auric Goldfinger. The claim was the name "Solo" had been sold to them by Fleming, and Fleming could not use it again. Within five days Fleming had signed an affidavit that nothing in the Solo pilot infringed any of his Bond characters, but the threat of legal action resulted in a settlement in which the name Napoleon Solo could be kept but the title of the show had to change. Coincidentally, the TV series debuted only a few days after the Sept. 17, 1964 U.K. release of the Goldfinger movie with its "Mr. Solo" character, though U.S. release would not occur until 1965.
The role of the head of U.N.C.L.E. in the pilot was Mr. Allison, played by Will Kuluva, rather than Mr. Waverly, played by Leo G. Carroll, and David McCallum's Illya Kuryakin only had a brief role. Revisions to some scenes were shot for television, including those needed to feature Leo G. Carroll. The pilot episode was reedited to 50 minutes to fit a one-hour time slot, converted to black-and-white, and shown on television as "The Vulcan Affair".
Additional color sequences with Luciana Paluzzi were shot in April 1964, and then added to the pilot for MGM to release it outside the United States as a B movie titled To Trap a Spy. This premiered in Hong Kong in November 1964. The extra scenes were reedited to tone down their sexuality, and then used in the regular series in the episode "The Four-Steps Affair".
Beyond extra scenes for the feature film, and revised scene shots and edits made for the television episode, there are other differences among the three versions of the story. Before the show went into full production there was concern from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer that the name of Thrush for the pilot's international criminal organization sounded too much like SMERSH, the international spy-killing organization in Fleming's Bond series. The studio suggested Raven, Shark, Squid, Vulture, Tarantula, Snipe, Sphinx, Dooom, and Maggot (the last used in early scripts). Although no legal action took place, the name "WASP" was used in the feature version To Trap a Spy. The original pilot kept "Thrush" (presumably since it was not intended to be released to the public in that version). Felton and Rolfe pushed for the reinstatement of "Thrush". It turned out that WASP could not be used, since Gerry Anderson's British television series Stingray was based on an organization called W.A.S.P. (World Aquanaut Security Patrol). By May 1964, Thrush was retained for the television episode edit of the pilot. Despite this, WASP was used by the feature film in Japan in late 1964, and it was left in the American release in 1966.
Another change among the three versions of the pilot story was the cover name for the character of Elaine May Donaldson. In the original pilot it was Elaine Van Nessen; in the television version and the feature version it was Elaine Van Every. Illya Kuryakin's badge number is 17 in the pilot, rather than 2 during the series, and Solo's hair, after new footage was added, changed back and forth from a slicked back style to the less severe style he wore throughout the series.
With the popularity of the show and the spy craze, To Trap a Spy and the second U.N.C.L.E. feature The Spy with My Face were released in the United States as an MGM double feature in early 1966.
Season 1
The show's first season was in black-and-white. Rolfe created a kind of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland world, where mundane everyday life would 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.
U.N.C.L.E. headquarters in New York City was most-frequently entered by a secret passage in Del Floria's Tailor Shop. Another entrance was through The Masque Club. Mr. Waverly had his own secret entrance, hinted at in the episode "The Mad, Mad Tea Party Affair". The episodes were largely filmed on the MGM back lot. The same building with an imposing exterior staircase was used for episodes set throughout the Mediterranean area and Latin America, and the same dirt road lined with eucalyptus trees 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", and "The Waverly Ring Affair", etc. The only exception was "Alexander the Greater Affair". The first season episode "The Green Opal Affair" establishes that U.N.C.L.E. uses the term "affair" to refer to its different missions. Every episode was divided into four "Acts", numbered with Roman numerals, each of which had a title that referred to something that happened or was said within the act.