Get Smart

Don Adams died earlier this week. September 25th, to be exact. The phrase "I asked you not to tell me that" came to mind. And that got me to thinking of other catch phrases from the show, like "I missed him by that much" or maybe "Would you believe...."

I was quite surprised at the richness of my memories of Get Smart when I read those phrases. It's like I could hear them again as I did when I was a kid. Bob Denver's death last week didn't affect me very much but maybe that was because Gilligan's Island wasn't nearly as interesting a show.

Get Smart ran for 5 seasons and began in 1965 when I was 4 years old so I was 9 when it ended. The shows I remember so well were probably all from the last couple of years.

At left are Agent 86 (Max), the Chief and Agent 99 (whose name is never given on the show).


HBO is supposed to be releasing DVDs of the shows in 2006 but they aren't being shown on television now. At least not nationally in the US. They are being broadcast in several other countries--I hope the world forgives us. LOL Fond as my recollections are of Get Smart, it was quite a silly show. For example: "Zis is KAOS, we don't Dududu here"

Or the gimmicky items like the shoe phones illustrated in this picture or the phone booth that hid an elevator. Of course this was all spoofing the spy movies of the 60s like James Bond and the 007 legend.

Wow. Seeing those 1969 era television sets really takes me back. Color tvs were just becoming widely available and affordable around then.
This is from Wikipedia:
As late as 1964 only 3.1 percent of television households in the U.S. had a color set. The number of color television sets sold in the U.S. did not exceed black and white sales until 1972, which was also the first year that more than fifty percent of television households in the U.S. had a color set.