Man from UNCLE

The Man from UNCLE premiered 49 years ago. I've been reminded of this by a friend posting about it on Facebook. Normally, I wouldn't make note of an anniversary not divisible by 5, but I thought I'd share my comments here, especially in light of the fact that a Man from UNCLE movie is currently in production.

I watched the second half of that first episode of The Man from UNCLE. And the second half of the rest of the episodes until they moved it to a different night. Because back then, primetime started at 7:30pm. The Man from UNCLE (MFU) came on at 8pm, but another show, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, started at 7:30. My father, a former Navy man, wanted to watch the show with the submarine and we had only 1 TV. I can't be too upset with my father, though. He was also a space buff, so when Star Trek started, he decided that's what we were going to watch. And in checking IMDB, not always the most reliable source, I see different dates for MFU and Voyage.... If not Voyage, then what was on opposite MFU? I've been remembering it for nearly 50 years now as Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. hmmmm......

I also have to admit that at first, MFU was just another show for me. I loved it, but I also loved every other action/adventure show I got to watch. I was a very big fan of 77 Sunset Strip and a show that a lot of people don't remember, The Roaring 20s. I hated going to bed at 10pm. The best shows were on at 10, like The Fugitive (if my memory is serving me correctly). I wanted to watch the shows my parents were watching.

My father didn't control the TV in the earlier hours. Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Star Trek (do I really need to provide a link for this?) were the exceptions. I became a fan of Voyage, too. My sister, with the earliest bedtime, got to choose until 9pm, her bedtime, on most nights. Then I got to choose from 9-10, when I had to go to bed, and my parents then watched what they wanted. There were plenty of arguments until 9pm. How I got to watch the second half of MFU, and then the whole show is beyond me. She didn't watch it, so there must not have been anything else on she wanted to watch.

What made MFU stand out for me was Illya. As David McCallum's role as Illya increased, so did my love for the show. I was only 11 when it first came on, and I went through puberty with that show. But while I playacted some UNCLE with a friend in junior high, my first fan stories were other shows, and I wrote only a few things.

I never wrote in to the show. I didn't have friends who watched the show until my second year of junior high, midway through the series. I really had no idea it was anything more than another show with a popular actor who made it into the teen magazines. Star Trek was the show that did that for me because it was everywhere, in newspapers and magazines. But when I think of Man from UNCLE, I'm transported back to that time. I hope the upcoming movie is good.


~~~o0o~~~

Finally!

My long awaited Man from UNCLE DVDs are here. Copyright battles (there are 2 copyright holders of Man from UNCLE) kept these from being made for the longest time, but now, they're available and I've got them and life is good. UNCLE was the show for me in the '60s. David McCallum was my first main celebrity crush (I don't really count Edd "Kookie" Byrnes.) and Peter "Herman's Hermits" Noone was another from around the same time.

Some other stuff happened today, but they pale in light of this wonderful package waiting for me when I got home.

Feeling:

~~~o0o~~~
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Hot Damn!

Man from UNCLE DVDs! on July 25th. I've been waiting for this for so long. Many years ago, they released a few VHS tapes of the series, then stopped. The show was hung up in limbo over the rights, I believe, and I never thought I'd see the day they were released in DVD. I've contented myself to watching them on American Life Channel, annoying commercials for senior products and all. To have the DVDs, with extras including commentary by Robert Vaughn, is simply heaven.

Feeling:

~~~o0o~~~
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The Man from UNCLE

The Man From UNCLE will probably always be my favorite TV show, not for itself, but for what it did for me. I was 11 when it first aired and went through puberty with it. I formed an emotional attachment to the show and Illya Kuryakin/David McCallum (I adored David McCallum and didn't appreciate Robert Vaughn who played Napoleon Solo until I was much older) and still get a thrill when I see McCallum in something. I saw him in three not very good plays here in NYC specifically because he was in the cast. I got his autograph after one of them.

And the show got me started writing fiction — fan fiction, more than a decade before I ever heard the term — because it was cancelled and I wanted more adventures. And I wrote fan stories for other shows, too. My best friend in junior and senior high and I became friends because we both loved Man From UNCLE (MFU) and The Monkees.

I bought the books, and spent a few bucks tracking down the last 3 (fairly rare next to the earlier ones because fewer were printed). I bought the digest-size magazines that featured a MFU story every issue. I was an UNCLE junkie and I still have the books and mags. The lunchbox, with intact thermos, came after the show was off the air for a number of years. I'd never gotten media tie-in lunchboxes when I was a kid. But when I saw the set at a Creation (science fiction and comic books) fan convention in the late-'70s for a reasonable price (meaning, I had enough cash left to buy it), I had to have it.

I did buy a crudely-built, homemade "pen communicator" at a con and played with it endlessly. It was the show I missed more than any other (tho now there are many others I miss as much or more), cancelled as part of the backlash against TV shows in the mid-to-late-'60s. By then, after 3 1/2 seasons on the air, Napoleon and Illya became iconic characters and it didn't matter that Illya's name was misspelled (it should've had one L only).

In 1980, I discovered my then-best friend had also grown up a MFU fan. She said she'd read MFU stories if I wrote them. At that point, I hadn't written fiction for nearly 10 years, but with the promise of an audience, albeit of one, I took the bait and wrote five. She read and liked them and when she found out about fanzines, she gave me the info, I got the stories published, and was soon doing my own zines. I really believe that if it weren't for that, I wouldn't be writing original fiction now and I wouldn't be finishing the draft of my first novel (not a spy story, as one might expect, but science fiction tho with an element of suspense).

And I met my best friend of the past nearly 20 years because she wrote me a letter of comment (LoC) after reading my MFU fan fic stories. We became fast friends and collaborators and go to fan conventions together to this day.

So I can honestly say that The Man From UNCLE had a positive and longlasting effect on my life. And how many folks can say that about a TV show.

Feeling:

man from uncle

Solo aka The Man from UNCLE

Wow, what a trip. American Life Channel just aired the 90-minute, original Man From UNCLE pilot, with Will Kuluva as Mr. Allison (later replaced by Leo G. Carroll as Mr. Waverly, following a misunderstanding when NBC said to lose the "K character"), and in color. The show, as is fairly well known, was called "Solo," and the episode was "The Vulcan Affair," same as when it was reshot. To see something over 40 years old that never aired was way cool.

Man from UNCLE, and Illya Kuryakin/David McCallum (and since his popularity was a big reason why the show was a hit, so NBC must have been grateful for the misunderstanding), were a big part of my teen years. I went through puberty with that show. I started writing fiction seriously thanks to that show (earlier fanfic efforts didn't go anywhere, but once I started writing UNCLE fic in 1980 and continued for the next 15 years, my love for writing was solidified). I met my best friend because of that show and the fanfic I wrote (she sent me an LoC (Letter of Comment) when she read my stories in a fanzine. J wrote fanfic, too, and we've been friends now for 21 years come February. I've had plenty of beloved TV shows over the years, but except for The Equalizer, which brought me in contact with my second best friend and SF collaborator, no other show has had as much influence on my life as The Man from UNCLE.

Now if they'd only release the show, in its entirety, in DVD....

Feeling:

man from uncle