The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was a popular American television series that ran on NBC from September 22 1964 to January 15 1968 for 104 episodes. 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.

Background

The show revolved around a fictional Secret International Law-Enforcement Agency, the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement; it was engaged in a constant struggle against a vast organization known as THRUSH. The meaning of the acronym was never revealed in the series, but one of the many original novels based upon the series speculated it stood for Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity. Another explaination was Terrorism, Harassment, Revenge Unlimited - Supreme Headquarters.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

THRUSH's aims were, essentially, to conquer the world. So dangerous was the threat from THRUSH that governments, even those most ideologically opposed to one another, had cooperated in the formation of U.N.C.L.E. James Bond's Ian Fleming contributed to the T.V. show's creation. ("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.

Related Topics:
James Bond - Ian Fleming - Goldfinger - Robert Towne - Harlan Ellison

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The stories centred around one of the organization's two-man troubleshooting teams, the American Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn), and the Russian Illya Kuryakin (David McCallum); they were well-trained in martial arts, and had a range of useful spy equipment, including hand held satellite communicators to keep in contact with the U.N.C.L.E. headquarters. THRUSH had an equally impressive range of weaponry, much of it only in development before being destroyed by our heroes; their most notable item was the sniperscope, enabling them to target gunfire in total darkness. A major design defect of the sniperscope was that its image intensifier's power supply emitted a distinctive whining sound when operating. This weapon was built around a US Army-surplus M1 carbine.

Related Topics:
American - Robert Vaughn - Russian - David McCallum - Martial arts - Spy - Satellite

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The creators of the series decided that the involvement of an innocent character would be an integral part of each episode, giving the television audience someone they could identify with. Through all the changes in series in the course of its four seasons, this element remained a constant factor -- from a suburban housewife in the first episode, "The Vulcan Affair," to the various people kidnapped in the final episode, "The Seven Wonders of the World Affair."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Some episodes of the series may be seen as exhibiting extreme "campiness" when viewed by modern audiences, for example one scene (filmed on Chatsworth Boulevard in Northridge, California, a public street) featured a villain in an ice-cream truck being pursued by Kuryakin and Solo. The fleeing villain, yanking the sticks from what appear to be Popsicles, throws them as grenades at his pursuers, whereupon they explode. For some reason Illya's Karmann Ghia seems unable to catch up to the lumbering ice cream truck, which would allow the heroes to simply shoot the miscreant.

Related Topics:
Northridge, California - Ice-cream truck - Popsicle - Karmann Ghia

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The U.N.C.L.E. headquarters in New York were most frequently entered by a secret entrance in the back-room of a laundry. Other entrances included a barber shop and a tailors' establishment (Del Floria's Tailor Shop). Unlike 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. A few of the last episodes had an "U.N.C.L.E. car", which was developed from an American Motors concept car.

Related Topics:
New York - I Spy - American Motors

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The show's episodes followed a naming convention where each title was in the form "The Something Affair" (examples: "The Vulcan Affair", "The Mad, Mad, Tea Party Affair", "The Take Me To Your Leader Affair", "The Deep Six Affair".) Other shows that followed similar conventions were The Wild Wild West, whose episodes were all titled "The Night of the Something"; the 1951-1959 Dragnet, whose episodes were mostly titled "The Big Something"; Rawhide, most of whose episodes began with "Incident at..." or "Incident of..."; and Friends, whose episodes were mostly titled "The one with..." or "The one some preposition...".

Related Topics:
The Wild Wild West - Dragnet - Rawhide - Friends

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

A catchphrase often heard was "Open Channel D!" when agents used their pocket radios (often built into pens).

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Leo G. Carroll played Alexander Waverly, the British head of the organisation.

Related Topics:
Leo G. Carroll - British

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~