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Mission: Impossible (1966 - 1973)
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Krel
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 16, 2014 1:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Pow wrote:
Probably a combo of what Conrad said & the info from TWWW book I should imagine.

Yeah, Red West, Elvis's high school buddy & former bodyguard, was one of the intrepid part of the stunt company for TWWW.

Dick Cangey was another one. Former boxer who got Conrad interested in learning the manly art of self defense.

In season one of TWWW you see Conrad do more judo/karate type moves during his fights.

After Cangey got him into boxing you see West do more boxing moves in his elaborate fight scenes on the show.

Red West became good friends with Robert Conrad, and appeared in many of his later projects.

Robert Conrad had a black belt in Karate, and used it in the show. Dick Cangey convinced him that boxing would be a better choice for the time period. He convinced RC by fighting off several assailants from three directions simultaneously. RC became such a convert that the studio built a boxing ring for him, so that he could practice between takes.

Bud, thanks for the very funny images you put into my head. Laughing

David.
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Pow
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PostPosted: Sun Dec 28, 2014 7:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I see the movie Topkapi is on TCM this week.

M:I creator Bruce Geller said that this film was the inspiration for his classic TV show.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 31, 2017 10:53 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Pow wrote:
Somewhat along these lines I saw an interview with Robert Conrad about TWWW tv series.

They had a group of stuntmen that the series kept on as regulars, which was unusual for that time. The Stuntman's Association felt that was unfair & did not allow for other stunt people to appear on the show.

That definitely does seem to be a twist on the ways things are done in Hollywood. I think they usually cast the role and then find a stuntman or stuntwoman who vaguely resembles the actor.

The Wild, Wild West's way of doing it makes a lot of sense!
Very Happy
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Pow
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 31, 2017 12:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Red West, one of the stuntmen in TWWW stock company recently passed away.

I'm a great admirer of stunt men & women. Seems a sin that they don't have a category in the Academy Awards or Emmys. Long overdue.

Being a huge fan of TWWW, one of the things I like to do is spot whenever the show's superb stunt coordinator, Whitey Hughes, appears in various roles. And to catch Red too.

Dick Cangey is another one of the stunt crew to find in parts.

Dick was a former boxer who got Conrad interested in boxing. When you watch the first black & white season of TWWW, prior to Dick's joining the series, you'll notice Conrad's fighting style as West is more karate & judo moves.

Due to Cangey's background you can see that Conrad does more & more boxing moves in the fight scenes in the later seasons.

Sadly, Whitey & Conrad had a falling out & Whitey left the show before the series ended.

Dick wrote a book about his years on TWWW that gives you a nice look at the behind the scenes part of the show.

Jim West usually fought 4 or 5 guys in a brawl on most episodes...& won.

Someone once asked Cangey if Conrad could really take on 4 or 5 guys at once like he does as Jim West on the series? Dick said he wasn't so sure about that but he went on to say that if he had to take on Conrad he sure wouldn't mind if he had 3 or 4 more guys with him.


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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 02, 2020 12:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Who could resist watching a show that had jazzy openings like these! Very Happy

And notice how luscious Miss Bain looks in the second image. No wonder I had the hots for her when I was sixteen.


___________ Mission Impossible - 1966 - 1973


__________



_______ Original Mission Impossible intro - 1969


__________



_ Mission Impossible - Opening and Closing Theme



__________

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PostPosted: Sat Sep 19, 2020 4:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Good old MeTV has been showing Mission: Impossible for a few months, and I've come to appreciate it much more than I did previously.

I was surprised when I saw a few episodes when Steven Hill was absent, and some other member of the cast received the assignment from the recording. Barbara Bain did it in one episode!

Was that done because Steven Hill had left, but Peter Graves hadn't signed on yet? Or was Mr. Hill just ill or somethng?

I'm really enjoying the DVRed episodes I've watched in the last few weeks. Very Happy

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PostPosted: Sun Sep 20, 2020 2:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The decreasing of Steven Hill's role as M:I team leader Dan Briggs was due to Hill's ongoing clashes with the network, as well as M:I creator Bruce Geller.

Among actors Hill was considered an incredible talent.

Lee Strasberg, founder of the prestigious Actor's Studio school in NYC referred to Steven as one of America's finest actors.

M:I co~star Martin Landau said that "there were two young actors dominating the scene when I first started acting and they were Marlon Brando & Steven Hill."

According to Landau, Hill's work was nuts, volatile, mad and exciting.

Hill's fiery reputation concerned CBS when it came to casting Steven.

By 1965 Hill was a devout Orthodox Jew. Hill's contract specified that he must be able to attend prayer services which required him to leave the M:I set before sundown every Friday.

He also would not work on Jewish holidays.

These stipulations did not prove to be an issue during the filming of the M:I pilot. In time it would cause major headaches for the production.

As the series began its weekly shooting it became evident that they would often have to film until midnight on Friday.

Hill had to leave every Friday in the afternoon in order to make it to services. This could result in him having to walk right out in the middle of a key scene that was being shot.

Hill could also be unpredictable during filming. Dust could float down from a rafter and he would go ballistic and retreat to his dressing room refusing to come back out.

Unfortunately this all culminated with both CBS & Geller having to fire Steven.

Martin Landau always felt there was a certain self-destructive part to Steven. He said that when Hill was on top of his game there was no better actor alive.

However, Steven could also self-sabotage himself.

That is why you see episodes where Hill is only in 'em at the beginning and then disappears for the rest of the story, Bud.

His admirable devotion to his faith and his intense but recalcitrant nature would sadly end his time on M:I after the first season.

To this day there remain fans of the show that believe that Peter Graves character of Jim Phelps was always the M:I team leader for all seven of the show's seasons.

The Complete Mission: Impossible Dossier by Patrick J. White


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PostPosted: Sun Oct 11, 2020 2:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Some M:I Trivia.

Originally titled in the pilot script by creator Bruce Geller as "Briggs' Squad," The group were formally a Special Forces team performing wartime missions.

Squad Members : Albert Ney, a wheeler-dealer; Jack Smith, women can't resist him; Barney Collier, expert in ballistics, demolition, submarines, with degrees in bioelectric chemical engineering, permutative mathematics; Willy "the Arm" Armitage, ugly, ill-educated and one of the strongest men in the world; Little Terry Targo, a mild-mannered martial arts expert, three-time felony offender, and professional killer; and Martin Land, a master of disguise, quick change artist, superb pickpocket, fluent in 15 languages, able to hold his breath for 6 or 7 minutes, master magician.

Their leader is David Briggs who has a PhD in analytical psychology and who is a highly paid behavioral analyst.

Briggs lead them and, for better or for worse, turned them into what they are... In each case he made them unfit to live like normal human beings.

Briggs feels that these men have a death wish, a streak of larceny, a competitive instinct, a desire for adventure.

They will end up in the electric chair or serving a long term in prison.

Brigg's who feels the weight of responsibility for having molded this team during the war now wants to channel these men and their skills for good.
This will help them as individuals and benefit the world.

Briggs reunites his team in order to plan an assault upon three powerful men who are meeting aboard a yacht.

The men are all evil dictators who are meeting to divide a vast fortune.

Surrounding the yacht are three heavily armed destroyer escorts.

Briggs' Squad plans to steal the treasure by using a World War II Japanese five-man submarine, a helium-filled balloon, a gold-plated gun and bullets, a dozen canaries, an electric train set, a case of liquor, a bulletproof suit, and a dozen fresh roses.

Geller decide to drop the high seas caper and instead had the team stealing two nuclear warheads from a heavily guarded hotel safe and out of the reach of a Latin American dictator.

This plot would be used for the pilot episode for the TV series.

As Bruce Geller rewrote his pilot script he would make still more alterations along the way.

The Albert Ney & Jack Smith characters would be eliminated and replaced by a stunning female in her twenties named Cinnamon.

Cinnamon is a total waste of a woman who is hooked on alcohol and narcotics.

Terry Targo the hit man who loves his work remained as part of the team but would also eventually be dropped as a team operator.

Willy Armitage would also remain although he is now a woman-beating strip joint bouncer.

Martin Land is still a top magician but he's also a thief.

Barney is a cheating 21 dealer and compulsive gambler.

Briggs tells the team that because they did so much that was fascinating & exciting in the past, they now find themselves bored by life.

Briggs will help them by bringing them back into a life that is dangerous and adventurous since he owes them all for having created them all in the first palce.

With the sale of the pilot the show's title was renamed I.M.F (Impossible Missions Force), then Mission:Impossible.

In order to make the characters more palatable for television their unsavory pasts were erased and they were now all secret agents working for the government.
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 22, 2020 2:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

By January of 1967, 25 of the 34 television shows that had debuted in September of 1966 had been canceled.

Mission:Impossible had ended their season with only a 51 share in the all important Nielson ratings.

Many thought that the series days were numbered due to their low ratings.

Fortunately it would be the CBS Network's founder and chairman of the company, William Paley, whose faith in M:I would save the show from the axe.

For its second season in September of 1967, M:I was moved from its first season Saturday evening schedule to Sunday nights at 10 p.m.
It was a good move for the series and it would run in that slot for three seasons.

Another factor aiding the show was that it was up for six Emmy Awards for its first season and it won four Emmies.

It won for Best Dramatic Series, Outstanding Writing Achievement in a Drama, Editing, and Outstanding Continued Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Dramatic Series (Barbara Bain).

Few viewers that evening of the Emmy Awards were aware that they were seeing the last of Steven Hill on the show.

Hill would continue to work in film and television and viewers would see him again as part of the cast of the long running TV series "Law & Order."

Thank God, M:I was saved from the cancellation graveyard.

Back then the television networks were more open to saving a decent series even if its ratings did not make it a smash hit.

The wonderful sitcom "The Dick Van Dyke Show" was going to be canceled after its first season. The show was left to air in reruns that summer where it gained enough of an audience to have the network reconsider and renew the show where it had a successful six year run.

Also, the pleadings of creator Carl Reiner & producers Danny Thomas & Sheldon Leonard certainly didn't hurt.

Today it is almost unheard of for any network to give their shows a reprieve from cancellation.

In the past a network would give a series an entire season to make it or not. Nowadays TV shows that premiere in September can be history by November or December.

How many great TV series have we lost after only one season this way?
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Krel
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 22, 2020 6:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

When they talked Peter Graves into taking over the show, they emphasized the glamours side, wearing tuxedos at parties and such. He spent his first episode filming in the desert, grimy and dressed in dirty clothes. Laughing

David.
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 23, 2020 3:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

I'm sure they told Peter that it was a vary glamorous desert, and that his outfit was all the rage that year! Cool

Nomad chic, you might say . . . Rolling Eyes

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Pow
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 24, 2020 3:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

"Trek" from September 17, 1967 was the name of the episode where Peter Graves was filming in the desert.

Graves said that when he was hired for M:I he was excited about wearing the tailor-made-suits each week on such a classy production.

Instead, he laughed, he winds up shooting his first episode in the desert, 3 days growth of beard and wearing khakis.

The end of the episode called for Graves to be picked up and dropped of by a helicopter dangling a rope ladder.

Peter was told by the director that it would be great if they could get a shot of Graves stepping on the rope ladder.
The helicopter would then rise up about 3 feet.

Peter said fine and the helicopter went up 15 feet instead.

The director told Graves they'd edit it all together in order to make his character Mr.Phelps appear as if he was riding along on the rope ladder as the helicopter flew through the desert.

Peter said why not just shoot the whole scene with him on the ladder and they did.

Graves spent a couple of hours hanging on the rope ladder as the helicopter flew around the desert. He loved doing it and had no straps, restraints, or safety harness for the stunt.

Glad Pete had fun flying around like that but it seems astounding that the director would ever allow anything like that for the leading man to do on a TV series!

If the leading man is injured---or killed---the whole production could shut down.

And to not have any safety rigging for Graves really seems very unprofessional for a network show.

The prison in this episode should look familiar to television audiences as it appeared on many other TV shows.

The Wild Wild West, Bonanza, The Big Valley, The High Chaparral were just a few TV shows that utilized this exterior set.

Star Trek: TOS used it on their first season episode "Arena" as a Federation colony on the planet Cestus III.

The structure was originally constructed for the TV series Tales of the 77th Bengal Lancers which ran from 1956~1957.

On that show it was called Ft. Oghora and it cost $182,000 to build in the Vasquez Rocks location. It was torn down in the early 1970s and is now a parking lot.
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 24, 2020 8:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Pow wrote:
Glad Pete had fun flying around like that but it seems astounding that the director would ever allow anything like that for the leading man to do on a TV series!

Not surprising at all. This was the 1960s, when they were still firing live ammunition around actors in TV and movies. Actors thought nothing of doing things that would not be allowed in modern times.

Pow wrote:
The prison in this episode should look familiar to television audiences as it appeared on many other TV shows.

The Wild Wild West, Bonanza, The Big Valley, The High Chaparral were just a few TV shows that utilized this exterior set.

Star Trek:TOS used it on their first season episode "Arena" as a Federation colony on the planet Cestus III.

The structure was originally constructed for the TV series Tales of the 77th Bengal Lancers which ran from 1956~1957.

On that show it was called Ft.Oghora and it cost $182,000 to build in the Vasquez Rocks location. It was torn down in the early 1970s and is now a parking lot.

The fort was a popular tourist attraction, they demolished it because it was suffering from dry rot and was becoming unsafe.

David.
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2020 10:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Some M:I Trivia.

In the pilot episode from September 17, 1966, the gadgetry is kept to a minimum. As the show went on it would become famous for its wild and different gizmos in each episode.

M:I creator Bruce Geller did not envision that his show would evolve and become famous for its astonishing high tech gizmos. Geller only wrote the pilot for the series and no other scripts. He was the chief story editor and re-writer for M:I and made contributions to episodes that way.

Episode 8: "Odds On Evil" from October 22, 1966 was the first episode written by the writing team of William Read Woodfield and Alan Balter. Woodfield and Balter were considered by the producers and directors of M:I as the finest scriptwriters ever in the show's history.

It was said that they understood the series better than almost anyone else.

"Odds On Evil" would be nominated by the Writer's Guild but would lose out to Harlan Ellison's script for Star Trek:TOS classic episode "The City On The Edge Of Forever."

Episode 9: "Ransom" from November 11, 1966.

This would be the very first M:I story that was of a personal nature to one of the IMF members instead of being one of their special government assignments.

Mobster Frank Egan is facing a grand jury indictment. He forces IMF leader Dan Briggs to kidnap the key witness against him by holding the daughter of Dan's friend as a hostage.

10: "Elena" from December 10, 1966.

This episode was to have featured IMF leader Dan Briggs character in the lead but was rewritten to have IMF member Rollin Hand (Martin Landau) take over.

This was due to Steven Hill's volatile nature, as well as his demand for a restricted shooting schedule in order to fulfill his religious duties.

It would be the beginning of Hill being seen less frequently and his eventual firing by the season's end.

There are a number of M:I episodes from the first season where there are few or no gadgets. That would change in the following seasons as writers would begin to include amazing espionage technology with each episode.
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 14, 2020 1:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

The late sixties and early seventies were smack in the middle of the James Bond craze, and gadgets were a big part of that phenomenon.

For many of us, the appeal of Mission: Impossible was the brilliant plans and the technology which made them succeed. So, ramping up the technological quotient in the series was, in my opinion, a wise move.

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