The Classic/Retro Pop Culture Thread

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Wild Wild Catch-Up Viewing

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"The Night of the Returning Dead"
Originally aired October 14, 1966

Jim and Artie, who establish they've been summoned via letter written by somebody who knew their top-secret whereabouts, explore a cave accompanied by the property owner, Carl Jackson (Peter Lawford), and Sheriff Ned Briggs (Alan Baxter), waiting for an appearance of a "night rider" who's been seen multiple times by Jackson's stable manager, Jeremiah. A ghost-white rider rides into view, Jim shoots a pink flare into the ceiling, the rider throws a knife at West, and the agents open fire on him. He gets away, to the astonishment of Jim and Artie, who knew their shots were on target. Jim subsequently questions Jeremiah (Sammy Davis Jr.), and, when he isn't forthcoming about the nature of the mysterious assailant, has him locked up in the smokehouse--against the objections of Jackson's fiancée, Elizabeth Carter (former recurring Savage flame Hazel Court). The agents then go back to the cave and try to summon the rider from outside via flute playing, in imitation of Jeremiah's usual actions when he's visited. The fright mask-faced rider comes out, ends up overpowering Jim in an on-foot brawl, and gets away on Jim's horse, unfazed by an explosive charge in the saddle handle that Jim had just conspicuously demonstrated. Jackson and Briggs find the rider's hat, which identifies him as Colonel Beaumont Carson--a Confederate officer whom Jackson thought he'd killed years ago when burning a shack.

In town, Jackson and Briggs conspire with rancher Tom Kellogg (Ken Lynch) and Judge Bill Mott (Frank Wilcox) to take care of the agents, lest they get info about Carter out of Jeremiah. Jim and Artie meet with Jeremiah, who's been released, and it turns out that he's working with the agents in portraying the rider, the whole thing being a ruse to pull an IM on Jackson. But Jeremiah demonstrates that the empathy for animals he's been claiming to have is real, as he upsets all the horses in the town's stable by concentrating. Outside, Jim and Artie are attacked unsuccessfully by some townies; and in the aftermath, it turns out that all of the horses in town have fled. Jeremiah claims to have had a visitation in the stable, and that the rider will be speaking through him that night at the courthouse. The conspirators determine that they'll have to eliminate everyone else who's at the courthouse...including, against Jackson's protests, Elizabeth.

The group assembles at the courthouse and a seemingly reluctant Jeremiah goes into his possession act, describing how, just prior to the outbreak of the war, Carson and his family were robbed while taking refuge in a shack and killed when the robbers burned it down. This is accompanied by the town's horses stampeding back through the street, trashing just the front of the courthouse. The fake spirit threatens worse if Jackson doesn't confess. Back at Jackson's ranch, the conspirators draw guns on the agents and Elizabeth and lock them in a cellar for disposing of later. Jim and Artie explain to Elizabeth how Jeremiah saw Jackson at the scene of the Carson family's killing. Meanwhile, the other three conspirators determine that they'll have to off Jackson as well, then go in to deal with the prisoners in the cellar first. They're taken by surprise by a makeshift pepper cannon, using a plastique charge from Jim's boot heel, and Artie fires three shots to make Jackson outside think that the deed has been done. Then Jackson is paid a visit by the ghost, and confesses after a mockup of the spirit doesn't fall to his bullets.

In the coda, Jackson and the conspirators are taken into custody by Army officers, and Jeremiah turns down an offer to join Jim and Artie in making a regular job of being disavowed by Grant's secretaries.

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To further clarify, they weren't robots. They were reanimated corpses. I was under the impression that the latter was the option that bothered you.

 

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Really Wild Post-55th Anniversary Viewing

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The Ed Sullivan Show
Season 19, episode 6
Originally aired October 16, 1966

Performances listed on Metacritic:

• The Four Tops - "Reach Out, I'll Be There"

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• Carroll Baker (actress) - sings a "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" medley
• Sergio Franchi (singer) - "Core'Ngrato"
• Sergio Franchi and the Kessler Twins - "Shadow of Your Smile"
• The Kessler Twins (singers-dancers) - "When In Rome I Do Like The Romans Do"

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• The Suzuki Violins (9 children from Japan playing violins) - "Invitation to the Dance."

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• Allan Sherman - does song parodies "Smog Gets In Your Eyes" and "Lessons"

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• Jerry Stiller & Anne Meara (comedy duo) - sketch about the last two people on earth meeting each other
• Pat Cooper (stand-up monologue)
• Eddie Albert (actor) - dramatic reading of the "Ballad of William Sycamore"
• Dick Albers (trampoline act)
• Cameo: Frank Robinson (of the Baltimore Orioles, 1966 World Series MVP)
• Audience bows: John Patterson, June Havoc, and a bobsled team.

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"The Night of the Flying Pie Plate"
Originally aired October 21, 1966

Note how they've toned down the colorfulness of the stills at this point.

Arriving after hours on the really fake town set of Morning Glory, Arizona, Jim meets with assayer Ben Victor (William Windom) at a saloon about getting a large amount of gold dust he's carrying on behalf of the government safely locked up. Local preacher Hellfire Simon (Ford Rainey) enters to read the evangelical riot act to the sinning swillers, and when the bartender tries to beat him up, Jim intervenes, finding himself the subject of a barroom brawl. As he's mopping up, the crowd hears a strange noise and steps outside to see a pink object fall accompanied by a bright flash in the distance. Simon doesn't miss a beat working this into his sermon.

The townsfolk walk out to find a glowing retro-saucer on the ground that makes the exterior of the Jupiter II look roomy. After Simon is repelled by an invisible force, out steps Leslie Parrish painted green (with garish-looking red blush and lipstick). She introduces herself as Morn and claims that she and her sisters, Alna and Pan (Arlene Charles and Cindy Taylor)--with whom she communicates via thought projections--are from Venus, and that they need 400 pounds of the common fuel mildum--what Earthlings call gold--to get back home. The townsfolk are incredulous about fulfilling this request until it's noticed that the ladies' outfits are adorned with precious stones, also said to be common on their planet.

Federal troops arrive to take government possession of the assayer's office, while back at the saloon, Jim tests the stones by cutting glass with them, and Artie pops in to verify their authenticity as gem expert Dirk DeJohn. Victor is ready to do business with the "out-of-town visitors," but Simon protests that the green women are evil--EEEEEVIL! After a meeting between the agents in which it's established that Jim summoned Artie with a telegram about the titularly described object (which is never referred to as a saucer in the episode, though I switch to that for variation) and that Jim believes it's all a con, West is attacked and overcome by some local toughs in the stable. They take him to the saucer to off him while making it look like the visitors did it, but he gets free with the help of a knife concealed in his saddle and gets the drop on them, following which he has a chat with Morn in which he unsuccessfully tries to get into her pie plate but does get to first base. Our hero Jim having to explain to an alien woman the Earth custom of kissing kinda seems familiar, doesn't it? As West leaves, we see a white-skinned eye peeping out a hole in the saucer.

The local miners have difficulty just scrounging up 150 pounds of mildum, so it becomes a subject of local interest that the government has more than enough gold in the office's vault. Later, Alna and Pan are found having fallen faint outside the assayer's office and are brought inside, where they use their "anesthesia projectors"--gas guns. Artie plays possum while donning a miniature gas mask, and Victor smugly enters, also sporting a miniature mask. Victor and his pair of toughs clean out the vault and wagon their goods back to the saucer. Artie snoops around outside the object but is spied upon and knocked out. Meanwhile, Jim's on a nighttime picnic with Morn, noting with interest how her skin tone comes off on a napkin, though she tries to sell it as Venusian makeup. They return to the pie plate, where Jim hears Artie groaning from inside and Victor comes out to pull a gun on West. He takes Jim into the mock-up, where Artie is tied up in green make-up for weakly explained reasons; introduces the three ladies as the Courtney sisters; and reveals the ringleader of the operation--the one man who had to be in on it, Simon. Evoking another recent popular song, Simon threatens Jim by quoting a few lines from Ecclesiastes.

Simon plans to fake the plate leaving by blowing up the mock-up with Jim and Artie inside. Some of the gimmicks used in the ruse are explained, such as a balloon with flares as the landing plate, and Simon having been tugged from the plate via a fine wire. But once alone, Jim gets free with his trusty boot dagger and the agents burst out to take on the crooks...Simon ending up trapped inside the plate when it blows, while the agents have commandeered his getaway traveling salvation show wagon.

In the coda, Jim spies what he describes as being more of a flying saucer out the window of the train, but Artie--already fretting about how long it's going to take the makeup to come off--is reluctant to report it to Washington.

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I see what you did there. I wish I didn't.

This was all explained, though I had to go back and refresh myself. The killing apparently happened right between secession and the breakout of the war. Jeremiah only saw Jackson, but the others were involved. When he first tried to go to the authorities, the town was in chaos because the war was breaking out. He then spent years in a traveling circus trying to find Jackson again, which he recently had. By now Jackson was such a big man that nobody was going to believe Jeremiah over him, hence the unusual measures taken to get him to confess.

Now I'm thinking how cool it would've been if they'd gotten Sammy on M:I playing himself as a guest agent--using his fame and show biz contacts as part of the scheme. (We've still got one season of that show to go...I'll cross my fingers.)

FWIW, she said she was just making masks of the faces, implying that cosmetic surgery on the corpses wasn't involved.

 

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Really Wild Post-55th Anniversary Viewing

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The Ed Sullivan Show
Season 19, episode 7
Originally aired October 23, 1966

Performances listed on Metacritic:

• Peggy Lee sings "Nice and Easy" & "Walking Happy"

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• Duke Ellington & his Band perform "David Danced" while Bunny Briggs tap dances
• Jim Nabors sings "Swanee" and "Cuando Calienta Ed Sol"
• Mirella Freni & Gianni Raimondi (Metropolitan opera singers) - "La Boheme"

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• Kovac and Ravovsky (Gypsy Ballet duo from Hungary) - perform a pas de deux
• Joan Rivers (comedy routine) - topics include small town life and flying
• Norm Crosby (comedy routine)
• Upstairs at the Downstairs (4-person comedy troupe with Madeline Kahn) - perform a song about New York City
• The Muppets - sketch with monster father & son puppets

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• Tanya the Elephant (trained animal act)

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"The Night of the Poisonous Posey"
Originally aired October 28, 1966

The town set's sign indicates a dramatic population decline from 2008 to 132. Upon riding in, Jim and Artie are immediately roped by the posse of Sheriff Blayne Cord (Shug Fisher), having been misidentified as murdering coach robbers by a local, and are immediately walked up to the gallows. A sleeve gun-fired smoke grenade gives the agents the opportunity to relieve the hangmen of their arms, upon which the sheriff's attitude completely changes, as he reveals that it was all play-acting and unveils a celebration of the duo being the first visitors since a new anti-crime ordinance was passed, which includes giving them the key to the city. They decide to stay, but Jim has to shoot a tarantula on Artie's pillow, and recognizes a funeral procession consisting of several notable criminals, including Latin American killer Gallito (Eugene Iglesias)--the tarantula fitting his M.O.--Caribbean boxer Brutus the Bonebreaker (Percy Rodriguez), arsonist Cyril (Mike Masters), sadistic gunslinger Little Pinto (H.M. Wynant), explosives expert Snakes Tolliver (Christopher Cary), and gluttonous Cossack Sergei (George Keymas). When the agents try to leave town to send a telegram, their horses are impounded.

Next Jim attends the funeral to learn more about the deceased, and when questioned by the notorious attendees, identifies himself as a government agent. He finds himself in an unsuccessful tussle, then is made to attend their meeting in a room at the parlor, which their chairman, Lucrece Posey (Delphi Lawrence), joins via a secret entrance. She kills Snakes via poisonous scratch after he tries to give her an exploding gavel. She then sets her derringer sights on West, but is interrupted by the flamboyant arrival of Ascot Sam (Artemus Gordon), who feigns having a score to settle with Jim. The confirmation of West's identity motivates Posey to give him a Goldfinger-style demonstration of her plan to organize crime like a business. She believes that West was tipped off by somebody in her gang, and he tries to make a break with the aid of a flash bomb slipped to him by Artie, but is knocked out and tossed in the ice house.

While Jim is tied up by Pinto in a deathtrap involving a couple of ice cakes set to slide down into him by a burning rope, Artie takes advantage of his position on the inside and Posey's belief that there's a fink in her gang to set the crooks against one another by faking attempts on each of them using another's M.O. E.g., a tarantula in Brutus's signature mailed glove, and Sergei's saddle being treated to burst into flame. But Artie's outed when the real Ascot Sam shows up for the next meeting.

Jim gets free from his ropes just in time for Artie's arrival down a chute, and West take out Pinto with a spear hastily fashioned from a broom and a knife. Out on the street Brutus takes rifle shots at Jim, who commandeers the sheriff's pistol only to find that it's filled with blanks. He nevertheless manages to get in close enough to bluff Brutus with it, and a brawl ensues in which the villain accidentally falls on and triggers his own rifle. Jim then fatally unhorses Sergei with one of the town's banners, and enters the funeral parlor to confront the last villain standing, Posey...but she has a hidden exit and a bullet-firing pipe organ up her sleeve. Outside, Jim learns that Artie took out Ascot Sam and inadvertently helped the disguised ringleader to escape on a coach.

In the train coda, we learn that Artie successfully pursued and apprehended Posey, but is so sore from riding that he's driven to tears when the agents receive an assignment via telegraph.

Other than the violent indeed deaths, this one was about as close to a pair of Batman episodes as another show gets.

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Don't know if I have enough interest to rent that, but the singles should be coming up.

Definitely live vocals.

I was thinking that I could see a Kessler Twins / Jim & Artie crossover, then we got the Courtney sisters.

They showed this sketch, or one like it from another date, on a Best of installment.

Looks like there will be more of the IN COLOR! stills in upcoming episodes--the ol' airdate vs. production order thing, no doubt.

Mark Lenard? Montalban?

I guess.

It's got even more entendre going on than I realized when I wrote it.

Only if Trek was homaging WWW. Keep in mind that at this point, only a handful of Trek episodes had aired, and I don't recall that trope coming up so early. Likewise, the WWW episode, coming so early in its own season, was no doubt shot before any of them had aired.

This would be a good place to mention that the Wiki list of WWW episodes includes a column listing Artie's disguises for each episode. For this one, one of them says "Mr. Spock type". I have to assume they meant the green makeup, which wasn't particularly Spock-like but was very generic '50s Martian, so that's quite the stretch.

Must've gotten on good with Spelling from his Mod Squad appearances.

 

55 Years Ago This Week

August 6

• Graduate student Jocelyn Bell of the University of Cambridge radio telescope observatory became the first person to discover a pulsar, while doing the routine job of analyzing data from the radio receivers. She found "a peculiar train of radio signals" that repeated every 1.33 seconds on the 81.5 megahertz radio frequency when the telescope was viewing a particular section of the sky (within the area occupied by the constellation Vulpecula), and she and Chief Astronomer Antony Hewish were surprised to find the signal appear again at the same time the next day. Confirmation that the regular pulses were coming from the source would take place on November 28. The stellar object would be designated originally as Cambridge Pulsar 1919 (because of its coordinates of 19h 19m right ascension) and would later be referred to as PSR B1919+21.
• A nonviolent general strike was called by Palestinian representatives in East Jerusalem to protest Israel's administration of the formerly-Jordanian city, most notably the directive that teachers in the city's schools would have to teach an Israeli-approved curriculum. "We have called a general strike so that the world will hear your outcry," a notice read, "and to prove you are steadfast in your refusal to accept the plans and the laws of the Zionists and that you belong to the Arab nation on both banks of the Jordan. Long live Jordan on both banks, long live Arab Jerusalem." The next day, Palestinian residents refused to show up to work, and the protest leaders announced that they would never accept citizenship in Israel, nor participate in the upcoming municipal elections.
• KMPX of San Francisco became the first radio station in the United States to take advantage of new FCC regulations, and to go to a progressive rock format. The programming on the 106.9 FM frequency began a trend toward FM radio stations making the transition from "easy-listening" music to "album rock" music.

August 7

• Lunar Orbiter 5, launched six days earlier by NASA, transmitted the most clear pictures up to that time of the far side of the Moon, taken from an altitude of 1,660 miles and then processed on the spacecraft and televised back to Earth.
• The People's Republic of China agrees to give North Vietnam an undisclosed amount of aid in the form of a grant.
• George Harrison and Pattie Boyd, accompanied by Derek Taylor, visit the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco.

August 8 – The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is founded in Bangkok, Thailand.

August 9

• Operation Cochise: United States Marines begin a new operation in the Que Son Valley.
• An army of 100 Belgian mercenaries and 1,500 Congolese army rebels, under the command of former Belgian Army Major Jean Schramme retook control of the city of Bukavu in the eastern Congo, and drove 300 Congolese Army troops into Rwanda to be disarmed. The local population did not support the rebels, and troops sent by Congo's President Mobutu would drive the mercenaries out by the end of November.

Selections from Billboard's Hot 100 for the week:

Leaving the chart:

• "Don't Go Out into the Rain (You're Going to Melt)," Herman's Hermits (7 weeks)
• "Don't Sleep in the Subway," Petula Clark (10 weeks)
• "Here We Go Again," Ray Charles (12 weeks)
• "The Look of Love," Dusty Springfield (3 weeks)
• "Pictures of Lily," The Who (6 weeks)
• "You Keep Me Hangin' On," The Vanilla Fudge (5 weeks)

New on the chart:

"There Is a Mountain," Donovan

(#11 US; #8 UK)

"Gimme Little Sign," Brenton Wood

(#9 US; #19 R&B; #8 UK)

"(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher," Jackie Wilson

(#6 US; #1 R&B; #246 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time [2004])

"Reflections," Diana Ross & The Supremes

(#2 US; #4 R&B; #5 UK)

"The Letter," The Box Tops

(#1 US the weeks of Sept. 23 through Oct. 14, 1967; #30 R&B; #5 UK; #363 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time [2004])


And new on the boob tube:

• The Saint, "The Queen's Ransom"

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Timeline entries are quoted from the Wiki pages for the month or year and Mark Lewisohn's The Beatles Day by Day, with minor editing as needed.

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I also recall the Elvis comeback special employing something like that.

Jim Newsome's revenge!

No livestock on the streets during the celebration.

Ambition, treachery...SPECTRE 101.

None of these pyrotechnics seem to harm them, fortunately.

I find it a bit disappointing when they handwave a gotten-away villain having been caught during the commercial break.

The Courtney sisters were a trio.

You've got all sorts of options...54th Anniversary Viewing, Post-50th Anniversary Viewing, Belated 50th Anniversary Viewing, 50th Anniversary Catch-Up Viewing...

 

50 Years Ago This Week

August 6 – A baseball game was "called on account of grasshoppers" when millions of the insects swarmed into Hogan Park at Midland, Texas, during the second game of a doubleheader. In the Texas League game, the Amarillo Giants had beaten the Midland Cubs 5–4 in the first game. As Amarillo began the second game, grasshoppers dimmed the lighting and alighted upon many of the 857 spectators. Midland won 2–1 when the game was made up the next day.

August 7 – At 1519 hours GMT (11:19 a.m. EDT), the most powerful solar flare ever measured was observed on Earth.

August 8 – Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, ordered changes in the United States Navy's rules to permit women to serve on ships, become aviators, and attend the U.S. Naval Academy. Previously, WAVES were limited to stateside service. "There will be some who are concerned", said Zumbwalt, "But when you look at the level to which our society has developed, there is no reason in theory, in sociology or in equity why women should not have the same opportunities the men have".

August 10

• A meteor came within 58 km (36 mi) of the Earth, entering the atmosphere over Utah at 20:28:29 GMT and departing 101 seconds later at 20:30:10 over Canada, before skipping back out. The fireball was visible in daylight, with the occurrence happening at 2:28 pm local time.
• Wings play at the Scandinavium Hall, Göteborg, Sweden. Police discover cannabis in Paul and Linda McCartney's possession and give them an instant fine equivalent to £800 and confine them to five hours in a prison cell.

August 11

• With the deactivation of the 3rd Battalion of the 21st U.S. Infantry, the last American ground combat units were pulled out of South Vietnam. The 1,043-man unit had been assigned to the U.S. airbase at Da Nang. Air and sea operations continued and more than 40,000 U.S. servicemen remained in Vietnam.
• Andrew B. Topping, 27, was arrested at the boat basin at New York's Central Park after paying $1,000 to Stewart J. Henry, an undercover federal agent posing as a killer for hire, to carry out a hit. Topping's intended victim was the President of the United States, Richard M. Nixon. Henry, a U.S. Secret Service agent, negotiated the terms the night before and then completed the sting.

August 12

• Arrowhead Stadium opened in Kansas City, with a preseason game for the Missouri Governor's Cup.
• The Corvair automobile, subject of Ralph Nader's book Unsafe At Any Speed, was exonerated by the NHTSA in a letter to all Corvair owners. Corvairs had been discontinued three years earlier.
• W. Averell Harriman and Cyrus Vance, the two original U.S. negotiators at the Paris peace talks, said in a press conference that President Nixon had missed an opportunity in 1969 to end the Vietnam War, at a time when the North Vietnamese had withdrawn most of its combat troops from South Vietnam's northernmost provinces.

Selections from Billboard's Hot 100 for the week:

Leaving the chart:

• "Couldn't I Just Tell You," Todd Rundgren (2 weeks)
• "Down on Me," Janis Joplin (4 weeks)
• "I Wanna Be Where You Are," Michael Jackson (11 weeks)
• "Too Young," Donny Osmond (9 weeks)

Recent and new on the chart:

"Motorcycle Mama," Sailcat

(June 10; #12 US; #12 AC)

"Get on the Good Foot, Pt. 1," James Brown

(Aug. 5; #18 US; #1 R&B)

"Play Me," Neil Diamond

(#11 US; #3 AC; #51 UK)

"Honky Cat," Elton John

(#8 US; #6 AC; #31 UK)

"Black & White," Three Dog Night

(#1 US the week of Sept. 16, 1972; #1 AC)

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Timeline entries are quoted from the Wiki pages for the month or year and Mark Lewisohn's The Beatles Day by Day, with minor editing as needed.

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Fun Donovan.

Distinctive oldies radio classic.

More classic than your next classic.

Psychedelic-era Supremes with a little more going for it than "The Happening".

Indeed.

When I was watching the episode, I wasn't sure what to make of the local law and their celebration. I thought maybe they were complicit with the gang, but by the climax, it seemed that they were just supposed to be clueless and of questionable competence.

'Cause I'm the unknown stunthorse
That made Trigger such a star

 

FWIW:
The Classic/Retro Pop Culture Thread | Page 224 | The Trek BBS

 

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Wouldja Believe More 55th Anniversary Catch-Up Viewing?

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Get Smart
"Hubert's Unfinished Symphony"
Originally aired March 19, 1966

Max and the Chief are there to get the name of KAOS's new Mr. Big. Unwilling to pass a group conversing backstage, Hubert (Andre Philippe) ducks into his dressing room and starts writing on a piece of sheet music, only to be shot by a silenced pistol. When the agents arrive, Max assumes that he must have left a clue in his violin, and deduces that Mr. Big's name is Stradivarius.

A police lieutenant (Richard Webb) questions Max and the Chief, who are operating under aliases, and the people from the corridor who were the last to see Hubert alive--hall owner Badeff (Bert Freed); his assistant, Nicola Darby (Sarah Marshall); and narcissistic pianist Wolenska (John Myhers). Afterward, the agents question Agent 44, who's been undercover upside-down in a violin case, for any information he may have. When Max and the Chief discuss their plan while searching for clues onstage, Max insists that they use a ridiculous-looking contraption shown in the episode's Frndly still that I knew could only be the Portable Cone of Silence:

It works better that the regular one audibly, but they have trouble removing it afterward. Max manages to get out of his half to find various parties of interest sneaking around in the dressing room; first Nicola, then Badeff, then finally Wolenska, whose attention Max draws to the unfinished symphony that Hubert was writing. Between visits, Max tries to free the Chief from the Portable Cone, eventually succeeding...by accident, of course.

99 joins the investigation posing as a piano protege, observing Wolenska as he tries to play the symphony, the pianist bringing to attention to an unusual arrangement of notes that spell BADEFF...upon which we learn that he's Mr. Big and Darby is in cahoots with him. Max and 99 piece this together themselves afterward, only to be caught by Badeff, Darby, and a goon named Boris. The agents are kept backstage while Wolenska is playing, his piano set to explode when he starts the symphony, destroying the evidence. Max crosses an electrified floor using a Helio-Coat (a trench coat with two balloons that deploy, ebabling him to float); 99 shoots Boris and holds the others at bay with a violin gun that's fired by running the bow across the strings; and Max rushes onstage to TV Fu Wolenska and remove the bomb. Afterward, he's hurt that the audience doesn't applaud for his rendition of "Chopsticks".

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The Decades airings that I've just started recording skipped the "Ship of Spies" two-parter (April 2 and 9, 1966), which brings us to the penultimate episode of Season 1...

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Get Smart
"Shipment to Beirut"
Originally aired April 23, 1966

Multiple visits to Richelieu's salon result in Max making contact with the wrong models and buying their expensive gowns because they coincidentally drop phrases such as "smart," "86," and "chaos". Eventually he makes contact with Mildred Spencer (Judy Lang), but she's seen talking to him and abducted in the back before she can give him the info he needs. When she doesn't return, Max has the place raided by CONTROL agents. Richelieu has an alibi for Spencer's disappearance, but Max sees the dummy and insists that it's her. For some reason, the Chief thinks that this particular incident warrants taking Max off duty for psychological tests. We learn that the mannequin is her, covered in a fast-hardening solution. 99, who establishes that she has modeling experience, voluntarily goes undercover for Max's benefit.

Max has to keep in contact with her using a Cologne Phone, with which he has to spray himself in the face to talk. She confirms how Spencer was killed, and Max comes to the salon in disguise, sporting a bowler, umbrella, monocle, and goatee. He tries to stand still in a rain-simulating mannequin display to eavesdrop on Richelieu and his assistant, Luchek (Allen Emerson), talking about how they're smuggling the plans to Beirut in microfilm concealed in the gowns. Max briefs the Chief via shoe phone, following which he's caught by Luchek, whom he shoots with a gun concealed in a hairbrush. He finds 99 having been sprayed with the solution and gets her to a steam bath in time to get it off...though he's also brought a bunch of actual mannequins, assuming they're all victims needing rescuing.

Back in his office, the Chief bawls both agents out for acting off the books, but returns Max to active duty.

There's an Abbott & Costello-style running gag regarding, who, what, how, when, where, etc., though it feels half-baked.

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He sounds like very early Billy Joel to me in this one:

Happy to be of service.

Can't say I'd ever heard this one in my life, either. And as you can see, it slipped under my radar when it entered the chart, just entering the Top 20 this week. Add it to the list of oddball one-off forgotten hits that I might end up adding to my collection, but probably won't get around to.

Not sure what that means, but this one's got some pep.

A total obscuro to me, and not very memorable.

Now this one's a bona fide classic indeed!

It does have a good times-signy vibe. First-hand recollection? Maybe...