Irving Szathmary -- Theme from "Get Smart"

From iTunes

Doing these Thursday Reminiscings of Youth articles over the past couple of years, I've gone through at least a couple of theme songs for spy franchises. In fact, there was "Mission: Impossible" back in February and then the one for James Bond last month. Both of them had their debuts on the small and big screens respectively in the 1960s and they were joined by Matt Helm, Harry Palmer, Derek Flint and Napoleon Solo.

Of course, when you have a ton of a particular genre of movie and TV show clogging up a decade, then the times are ripe for parody of said genre. Though I know that the "Flint" and "Matt Helm" series were themselves tongue-in-cheek versions of spy-fi, the television effort to poke fun at espionage was the one and only "Get Smart" as created by the one and only Mel Brooks. Debuting in September 1965 (and ending in 1970), a smattering of weeks before I made my debut, this was a show that I grew up with daily in afternoon reruns as Maxwell Smart Agent 86 and his partner at work and in life, Agent 99, improbably succeeded in their missions for CONTROL against the evil forces of KAOS, despite Max's general incompetence and bumbling.

As with Bond and "Mission: Impossible", "Get Smart", which also had its run in Japan under the title of "Sore Ike Smart"（それ行けスマート...Go, Smart, Go） on what would later become TV Asahi, had its own plethora of memorable sayings (Sorry about that, Chief!/Missed it by that much.), characters (Siegfried, Agent 13, etc.) and devices/running gags. One of the favourite examples of that last one was the infamous Cone of Silence.

The late Don Adams was the star and occasional director of "Get Smart". I have my copy of the "Get Smart" handbook, and a couple of trivia items on him was that he was actually born Donald Yarmy, and that when he became an actor, he changed his name to Adams since he used to be one of the final guys called in to audition due to alphabetical order working against him; switching to Adams did quite the opposite. The other point which was truly surprising was that unlike his goofy alter ego, Adams had been a decorated Marine drill instructor, and after viewing some of those drill instructor videos on YouTube, I can only imagine how terrifying he was in real life in basic training. I would love to have seen how some of his recruits reacted to him playing Agent 86. Then again, I kinda wonder how he was when he was directing some of those episodes and he had a bad day on set.

But getting back to the main point, one of my favourite sequences was actually the opening credits. There was the urgent and twangy theme song by Irving Szathmary; maybe it isn't nearly as famous as the themes for those two spy franchises that I've already mentioned, but it's still fully recognizable and appreciated by me. Then, there was the battery of doors that Smart had to go through each time to access CONTROL Headquarters before reaching the phone booth.

It was a sequence that just had to return for the 2008 movie starring Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway. I know that it didn't really get that much love at the box office or with critics, but for an old "Smart" fan like me, it was still a hoot.

Now, what was winning the Japan Record Awards in 1965?

Grand Prize: Hibari Misora -- Yawara (柔）

Best New Artist: Mahina Stars -- Aishite, Aishite, Aishichattanoyo (愛して愛して愛しちゃったのよ）

Best Composition: Chieko Baisho -- Sayonara wa Dance no Ato ni （さよならはダンスの後に）

One final thing about "Get Smart" is that in tribute to the recent passing of James Caan, I did find his scene from one episode where he played the evil Rupert of Rathskeller. For those who have remembered him for "The Godfather" and "Rollerball", this is quite the revelation.