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Mission: Impossible (1966 - 1973)
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Pow
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 14, 2021 10:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

From the Patrick J. White Mission: Impossible book.

By the time Mission began filming, a personality conflict had already developed between William Read Woodfield & Mission creator Bruce Geller.

Woodfield was surprised by Geller's aloofness & began to suspect that Bruce had no idea where the show was going.

There was always an antipathy between Bruce & Bill. You hear the word genius bantered about, some felt that both Bruce & Bill were geniuses. What's gonna happen when you have two geniuses with tremendous egos? Some also felt that Bruce didn't have an appreciation for Balter & Woodfield.

Geller would acknowledge the pair in press interviews but face-to-face, he remained curiously silent. This conflict would come to a boil two seasons later, with near-disastrous results.

Note from me from here on: What a shame that Geller would not recognize Balter & Woodfield's invaluable contributions to his creation. Personality clash? Jealousy? Who knows exactly?

I've read that Gene Roddenberry had a different problem with writers regarding Star Trek. He would take ALL the credit for anything on his series. Writer/Story Editor Gene Coon significantly contributed concepts to the show that are now iconic. He was as important as Roddenberry to the show's development.

Writer Dorthy Fontana greatly expanded the Mr. Spock character and the Vulcan race. At one point in the first season of Trek, Leonard Nimoy approached Roddenberry due to the Spock character not really being fleshed out to the fullest.

People that knew the situation would observe that Roddenberry would have fans praise him for aspects for the series that others had created. Gene would smile and thank them, never giving credit where it was due.

I guess it is ego with some of these creators. They've managed to conceive some fantastic idea for a series. But then others come in after the fact and also add marvelous ideas to the show that the creator didn't think of at the time.

I think that they feel that since they created a show that anyone who helps it along came late to the party. The creator did the hard work of coming up with the premise in the first place. Now others arrive to "improve" upon the creator's original concepts.

Perhaps they fear that others will steal undeserved credit, perhaps they are envious that they, the creator, did not come up with the wonderful ideas that others did?

Maybe it's a case of insecurity, as though they were not clever enough to create facets of their show that become popular? Kinda like the series is their child and now some folks have come along to tell me how to raise my kid?

A shame they cannot all play nice in the sandbox, eh?
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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 15, 2021 12:32 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Rodenberry was the "face and cheerleader" of Trek much the same way Stan Lee was for Marvel Comics. Lots of good reasons why at the time (for both men) . . . it "uncomplicated" the story expressed for public distribution and consumption .

The last thing in both men's minds at the time was an accurate reporting of "facts".

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PostPosted: Mon Dec 20, 2021 9:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Patrick J. White's Mission: Impossible Book.

Mission caught on in a big way during its third season (1968~1969). Creator Bruce Geller was amused by the sudden popularity. He found that the things people used to damn the show for, they now praised it.

Douglas S. Cramer was hired by Paramount Television and his job was to control costs on the three shows then on the air.

Cramer found the people doing Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry and his people, were open to conversations about budgets and weren't impractical. Mannix was not as complicated a series, and the producers on it knew how to do the show. Bruce Geller paid no attention to Mission's budget at all.

Bruce Geller's initial reaction to Cramer was to ignore him. Eventually, confrontations arose. Studio pressure made Geller angrier and more intractable.

Script Consultants William Read Woodfield & Alan Balter were appointed as producers for season three of Mission.It was met with mixed results.

They were two of the best writers that the show would ever have, but they were considered terrible producers.

The Mission staff could talk to them as writers, but as producers they became too dictatorial and it became a clash of temperaments down the line. Thepair had little trouble with the writers and the cast, who loved them. They did have trouble with the crew, and were far less amiable with Bruce Geller.
Woodfield's resentment of Geller, which stemmed from year one, had intensified, and apparently Alan Balter agreed with his partner that Geller should retire from the series and leave Mission to them.

How many TV shows that I blissfully watched and enjoyed greatly, like Mission, never knowing any details---or anything at all---regarding feuds & fights involving creators, the studio, the network, the producers, script writers directors, casts, and crews. It is amazing how these shows did not often reflect any of the background battles going on with their weekly episodes that were so great.

As fascinating as these kind of books are about a TV series production like Patrick J. White's can be; it also makes me wonder about any TV series that I am currently enjoying and how are things really going behind the scenes? Could they contribute to the lowering of quality of a show (Sliders), or even the demise of it?





Last edited by Pow on Fri Jan 26, 2024 12:47 am; edited 1 time in total
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 15, 2022 1:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Pow wrote:
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.

This surprised me, because Hill's acting on Mission: Impossible always seemed very quiet and unemotional. Confused

But I haven't seen those episodes in a long time, so I might be remember it wrong.

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PostPosted: Tue Feb 15, 2022 4:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

You're not wrong in your assessment of Steven Hill's acting on M:I, Bud.

His Dan Briggs was a very calm, cool, almost aloof character. That may have been M:I creator Bruce Geller's intention. An emotional & larger-than-life persona would have been totally at odds with a secret agent who heads a team of professional operatives embarking on highly dangerous assignments.

Both the audience and the team aren't going to have confidence in someone like that, let alone the team leader, who is volatile and over-the-top mentally and emotionally.

Given Mr. Hill's intense theater background and training perhaps the role was a difficult one for him to inhabit. Briggs is almost a stoic character into which we get very little insight to. He has to perform as a leader and the brains of the operation, so he has to play a very remote, calm, cool and collected individual much of the time.

Maybe that kind of part is a death sentence to a colorful and intense actor such as Hill?

Martin Landau, as you may well know, was offered the role of Mr. Spock on Star Trek by creator Gene Roddenberry before Leonard Nimoy was.

Landau, like Hill, was a graduate of NYC's prestigious Actor's Studio School lead by famed instructor Lee Strasberg.
And Martin had done many, many stage roles just as Hill had done.

Landau turned down the role of the Vulcan science officer on board the star ship Enterprise. He said that he recoiled at the role when he read the character profile for Spock.

To repress all emotion and not show it was the total opposite of why Landau became any actor he said. To do this part would have been torture to him. He got into acting to express all types of emotion, not suppress it. He felt "Lennie," who was a buddy, was one of the few actors who could have ever successfully pulled off the role of Mr. Spock.

So maybe Hill's role as Briggs was too cold blooded for him and that's why he gave the producers a difficult time during the first season, and why he was ultimately fired.

Now I've never read that anywhere, it's just me hanging out my Sydney Freeman (psychiatrist on M*A*S*H TV series) shingle and taking a stab at it.
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 12, 2022 8:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thought it might be fun to read TV Guide critic Cleveland Armory's November 12, 1966 TVG Review for Mission: Impossible.

Quite a team it is in Mission: Impossible. First of all, there's the boss, Agent Briggs (Steven Hill). He's very businesslike, but his business, remember, is to make each Impossible: Mission not only possible, but also probable.

Second, there is Cinnamon Carter (Barbara Bain), the kind of girl who, when asked by the man she is with if she can attract the attention of the guards away from him says quietly, "If they look at you, I'll resign from the sisterhood of women."

Third, there is Barney Collier (Greg Morris), the wizard of odds and ends. He can sabotage the TV system of an entire Latin American country without anybody thinking he is anything except an exterminator.

Fourth, there is Willy Armitage (Peter Lupus). He never says anything, but you can just know if he did, he'd mean every word of it. Once, when he was asked if he could carry 400 pounds, he let loose a torrent "Sure," he said.
Besides all these, there are excellently cast guest stars. As you've probably gathered, the missions are very big stuff, there's very little time for small talk. What there is is left pretty much to Cinnamon —who's also responsible for pretty much all the humor. It's quite a burden, but she shoulders it womanfully. And the fact is the very quiet of Mission: Impossible adds greatly to its suspense.

One week the team has to oust a Balkan dictator. "As usual," Briggs tells them, "Assassination is out as a matter of policy."

Another week, masquerading as a carnival group, they have to smuggle a cardinal (Cyril Delavanti) out of prison. Here the carnival music in the background was alone worth the price of admission. On top of it all, the show was a two-parter. And, we promise you, it was so exciting that all week long, between those two parts, we could still hear that faint carnival music.

And we never thought of Secret Agent.
Sidebar: I should explain that last sentence by Amory. In the beginning of his review, which I edited out of my post, he goes on ranting and raving at CBS for canceling the British import espionage TV show Secret Agent starring Patrick McGoohan.

So, his praise for Mission: Impossible is flattering to the series.
Amory could be a cranky fellow about TV shows. He didn't hand compliments out easily or often. But I loved reading his reviews, even if they were negative about a TV series I was a fan of. His wit & snark are hilarious to read. Something of a lost art regarding TV reviewers today.

The one's we have now pretty much describe the show that they're writing about, then they give a yah or nay to it. They rarely go for the funny bone, wit, or even snark. So, they're not as much of a hoot to read.
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 13, 2022 8:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

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Mike, that's an excellent contribution to All Sci-Fi — and God knows we need it! Rolling Eyes

I enjoyed being reminded of the by-gone days of TV Guide and the great reviews like the one in you posted. I used to love checking our TV Guide's list of movies to see what was coming on the late. shows.

Hell, some of the cover art, like the ones by Amsel, were worth the price of the issue!



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PostPosted: Thu Sep 15, 2022 4:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Always loved Amsel's artwork, thanks for the great photos of it, Bruce.

Interesting that Cleveland Amory did not mention in his review at all, Martin Landau's role as Rollin Hand as part of the IMF. Of course, Marty was listed as "Special Appearances by" in the credits. So Amory may not have known just how many times Marty was going to pop on Mission episodes throughout the season?

Still, Rollin does play a crucial role in the episodes that Amory was able to review, you'd think Landau deserved a sentence in the review. The carny music did.
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 25, 2022 2:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Pow wrote:
Marty was listed as "Special Appearances by" in the credits. So Amory may not have known just how many times Marty was going to pop on Mission episodes throughout the season?

I thought Landau was a regular cast member. Did he ever graduate to that status?
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 27, 2022 4:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Martin Landau did sign onto M:I as a regular cast member, Bruce, for its second season (1967~1968) but only for one year.

Mission: Impossible creator Bruce Geller never had any doubts as to who he would have play agent Rollin Hand on the show.

Geller had known Landau for years. They first met when Bruce was a young writer who wanted to learn about actors. Marty had been accepted into N.Y.C.'s prestigious Actors Studio where he not only was a student but became a teacher.

Geller took classes from Marty in order to find out about actors skills and mindset. Geller was fascinated by Landau's dexterity with accents and characters, and wrote the Rollin Hand role specifically for him.

Landau signed on to appear in the pilot for the show, but turned down a series option deal to be regular cast member. Martin didn't want to be tied down because he felt it would hurt his motion picture career. Determined to have him in the pilot, Geller hired Landau as a recurring role without signing him for the series, Landau would be listed as "Special Appearances by" during the first season.

Martin Landau was so satisfied with year one that he signed on as an official series regular for its second year — but only for one season.

Marty signed on for the third season of Mission, but a clash with the studio and network over salary would end in Landau — and his wife Barbara Bain — exiting the series after its third season ended (1968 ~ 1969).

Mission would manage to run four more seasons (1969 ~ 1973) without the Landaus. There were those that felt that without Marty & Barbara on the show anymore that it was doomed. They turned out to be wrong.

The Complete Mission: Impossible Dossier.


Last edited by Pow on Thu Jun 29, 2023 9:48 pm; edited 1 time in total
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 21, 2022 4:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

"Odds On Evil" October 22, 1966.

William Read Woodfield's and Alan Balter's opening episode introduces several firsts which would become commonplace.

Briggs masterminds but doesn't participate in the mission; the hiring of Nico Minardos in the role meant for Briggs suggests that Steven Hill's scheduling dictates were already causing production problems.

Cinnamon graduates from minor distraction to major player.

Most importantly, this is the first episode to rely upon elaborate electronic hardware.
The script would be nominated by the Writer's Guild of America, but would not win. Harlan Ellison's script "The City On the Edge of Forever" for Star Trek would beat out Mission, which crushed Woodfield and Balter.

The Complete Mission: Impossible Dossier.
Sidebar: Interesting to learn that even the creators of a new television series cannot always know how their "baby" will evolve over time.

Mission creator Bruce Geller did not realize how iconic that the imaginative IMF gadgets would be for his show. He apparently did not also realize that Cinnamon would end up being a vital agent for the IMF. And, he certainly did not anticipate that Steven Hill would end up becoming an issue during filming due to Hill's faith.

I have noticed that with any television show, but especially science fiction series, how different their first season can be compared to the later ones. The writers, cast, and production have a blueprint for their show, but that blueprint can surprisingly change over the course of a first season. Fans note a number of inconsistencies with terms, background information, even characters from season one of Star Trek compared to seasons two and three.

Any TV production is still finding its way in the first year of a series. Eventually they are able to find the formula that works on a week-to-week basis for a show. However, I've found that the debut season of a show can be quite interesting to watch as they struggled to find exactly what worked for them and what did not work for them.
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 28, 2023 5:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Martin Landau told the story that he was talking with Lucille Ball about Mission: Impossible when the show was first airing.

Lucy, who gave Mission the greenlight & whose company Desilu produced the series, told Marty that "she didn't understand it?" Marty asked her if when she viewed the series does she do things like answer the phone, go to the bathroom, and so forth? "Of course I do," was Lucy's response. Landau then explained that "M: I is not that type of show. You must give your undivided attention to the plots due to all of the things going on within them."

Six months later, Marty ran into Lucy and she told him, "Now I get it, I watch the show without any interruptions."
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 28, 2023 9:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

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Wow, Mike! That is a wonderful story! Thanks for sharing it with the folks on All Sci-Fi!

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PostPosted: Sat Apr 08, 2023 4:19 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I missed this before but I think the following points from upthread are worth addressing.

Pow wrote:

I've read that Gene Roddenberry had a different problem with writers regarding Star Trek. He would take ALL the credit for anything on his series. Writer/Story Editor Gene Coon significantly contributed concepts to the show that are now iconic. He was as important as Roddenberry to the show's development.

Writer Dorthy Fontana greatly expanded the Mr. Spock character and the Vulcan race. At one point in the first season of Trek, Leonard Nimoy approached Roddenberry due to the Spock character not really being fleshed out to the fullest.

People that knew the situation would observe that Roddenberry would have fans praise him for aspects for the series that others had created. Gene would smile and thank them, never giving credit where it was due.

For FACT TREK we've dug through the Roddenberry papers and when you read the actual production memos it becomes apparent that Roddenberry was very heavily involved in the development of the show even when Coon was there. It's become fashionable to minimize the Bird's contributions to the show to the point that people have tried to give credit for things like the Prime Directive to Coon, which is untrue. Coon appears to gave coined the term "Prime Directive" but Roddenberry wrote about a non interference code in his 1965 second-pilot version of "The Omega Glory" some 14 months prior to Coon's arrival on staff.

And Roddenberry didn't always try to take credit for everything. There are a number of interviews with him and talks he gave where he credits other people. Here, for instance from a 1974 radio interview:

Quote:
SA: You had to create another civilization, like the Klingons. Where did you get the idea for that?

GR: That actually came from one of the writers, who did an episode and had them in it. They seemed to work as good heavies, so we kept them on. When people say I created Star Trek, yes, I created the basic idea and I guided the writers from then on, but many of the things on the show came from writers who did various episodes.



Pow wrote:

Martin Landau, as you may well know, was offered the role of Mr. Spock on Star Trek by creator Gene Roddenberry before Leonard Nimoy was.

That's not necessarily so. We covered this in our FACT TREK article "in Search Of... Spock". We asked Dorothy Fontana about it face to face and she said, "It was always Nimoy."

In that same radio interview above, Roddenberry flat out said Nimoy was it.
Quote:

SA: What about some of the characters on the show? Did you create them with certain actors in mind?

GR: Leonard Nimoy was the one actor I definitely had in mind. We had worked together several years previously when I was producing a show called The Lieutenant. Leonard had done a guest star thing. And I was struck at the time with his high, slavic cheekbones and very interesting face. And I thought to myself, if I ever do this science fiction that I want to do, he’d make a great alien. With those cheekbones, some sort of pointed ear might go well. And then I forgot entirely about it until I began to lay out the Star Trek characters. And then to cast Mr. Spock, I simply made one phone call to Leonard and that was it.


Hope that's of value.


We do a lot of primary source research to untangle popular, oft-repeated, and often a-historic Trek history on FACT TREK, for anyone interested. Heck, after 50+ years or no-one ever doing it, we did the detective work to figure out exactly why Trek ended up on Friday nights at 10.
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 14, 2023 11:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Mission: Impossible and Star Trek: TOS, were considered "sister shows" when both debuted in 1966. Both series were produced by Desilu, both filmed on the Desilu 40 Acres backlot. And both shows were imaginative and unlike any previous television series.

There was a difference between the two shows. Gene Roddenberry was known to sit down with NBC and discuss the ongoing budget challenges for Trek. Bruce Geller was known for refusing to ever discuss the budget issues for Mission.
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