The Golden Age Of Blacks In Television: The Late 1960s The Golden Age Of Blacks In Television: The Late 1960s "Golden Age" is a term to label that period in the history of a nation, movement, artistic medium or the like during which its greatest achievements were realized. It is not an absolute term since it does not intend to describe the best possible epoch. That being the case, there can be no doubt that for African Americans in television, the last half of the 1960s was a Golden Age. Speaking in July 1964, Frank Stanton, president of CBS, called upon broadcasters to launch a "mighty and continuing editorial crusade" in support of civil rights. In an address to the National Broadcast Editorial Conference of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Stanton called for commitment and advocacy. President Lyndon B.

Johnson having recently signed the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1964, Stanton spoke now of the "pivotal point in our history" and of the need for television to utilize its "editorial strength boldly, imaginatively and with insight and wisdom." This was a significant speech for it revealed the sensitivity and involvement many TV executives felt toward the civil rights movement, and toward the fact that the government and the nation supported racial reform. Stanton suggested this when he directed broadcasters to "use their 5,000 voices heard on 156 million radio sets and 61 million television sets, in a mighty continuing editorial crusade to make this new law work." In part, the changing complexion of TV in the late 1960s was a reflection within the industry of the changes wrought by the great social and legal movement that was the push for civil rights. Until this date there had been few sponsored network shows headed by black actors. Serious entertainers such as Billy Daniels in 1952 and Nat King Cole in 1956-1957 had failed to gain or maintain popularity.

The only successful programs, Beulah and Amos ‘n’ Andy, may have amused enough people to keep them viable for several seasons, but they resurrected minstrel-show stereotypes thought by many to have been abandoned following World War II. 1960s Series Featuring Blacks as Stars, Co-Stars, or Continuing Characters Sing-Along with Mitch (1961-1966) The Lawrence Welk Show (1964-1971) Rawhide (1965) The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-1973) The Silent Force (1970-1971) Now, in the second half of the 1960s, there were more than two dozen programs featuring black actors as leading characters, or in prominent, regular supporting roles. As in most of commercial TV, many of the series achieved limited success and were quickly canceled. Several programs, however, were ratings favorites and lasted for years. It is important, too, that relative to their counterparts in earlier decades, the shows in this period were practically free of racial stereotyping. The above list indicates the scope of network programming featuring African-American stars in this Golden Age.

As it affected the history of blacks in American television, the most crucial series in the latter half of the 1960s was I Spy. The program premiered in 1965 and co-starred Bill Cosby and Robert Culp. It was clearly intended to capitalize on the popular interest in espionage dramas created by Sean Connery's success in several James Bond feature films, and by The Man from U.N.C.L.E., a successful TV series of the previous season. I Spy related the exploits of two secret agents operating around the world to protect U.S. national interests. But unlike other spy shows on network TV—Honey West, The Avengers, Secret Agent, as well as The Man from U.N.C.L.E.—this program mixed its international intrigue with a slight touch of American wit. This was because of the presence of Bill Cosby. I Spy was the first network dramatic series to star a minority actor. Not since the demise of Harlem Detective in 1954 had television attempted to feature a black detective hero. And Harlem Detective, of course, was a local show in New York City, not a network production.

When I Spy premiered, NBC officials seemed pleased that only three stations—in Savannah and Albany, Georgia, and Daytona Beach, Florida—refused to carry the show. It was seen, however, on 180 other stations covering 96 percent of the country. The casting of Bill Cosby was a bold decision by producer Sheldon Leonard. While Culp came to the series as a veteran television actor who had starred in a Western program of moderate success, Trackdown, Cosby was a story-telling comedian whose greatest exposure on TV had been on Johnny Carson's Tonight program. Cosby was not only an unknown dramatic quantity, his role could have been played by a white man. Casting Cosby as Alexander Scott, the tennis trainer and traveling companion of Culp's character, fellow agent Kelly Robinson, broke the color line as had no series in TV history. Cosby proved uniquely qualified for the part. His talent for subtle comedy was matched by a dramatic skill which allowed him to range with apparent ease between emotions of patriotism and self-doubt, romance and intrigue. Cosby was successful in the series. During the three seasons I Spy was on the air, he won three Emmy awards as the most outstanding actor in a continuing dramatic role.

And he was popular with audiences. According to a TVQ performer-study by the Home Testing Institute in 1966, Cosby was one of the most popular stars in video—ranking first with children twelve to seventeen years of age, third with those eighteen to thirty-four years of age, and tying for eighth with the total audience. Ironically, the program's ratings did not match Cosby's triumphs. Credit must go to NBC for maintaining the series for three years when its highest seasonal rating was twenty-ninth place, a position attained in its second year. During the other two seasons, it failed to finish among the top thirty-five. As well as being the first network drama with an African-American star, I Spy was a landmark program for blacks in other respects. Alexander Scott was placed solidly beyond the borders of the United States, swept up in the dynamics of world affairs. Often filmed in foreign locations, the weekly drama unfolded in places like Hong Kong, Kyoto, and Mexico City—and in countries like Morocco, Greece, and Italy.

In one program shot in Greece, the picture of Bill Cosby walking amid the ruins of the Parthenon, symbol of the Western democracy first nurtured in ancient Athens, was a powerful testimony to the nature of the entire series. For black and white viewers, it was an educational experience to see an African-American hero operating constructively abroad in the service of the United States. Cosby's character was always equal to his encounters with foreign agents, heads of state, beautiful women, and would-be-murderers. He was unlike Shaft, Superfly, and other exaggerated "superspade" characters developed in the so-called "blaxploita­tion" films of the early 1970s. Alexander Scott was a real, mature human character—able to feel and express emotions historically forbidden to black characters in mainstream entertainment media. In an early episode, Cosby actually kissed a Japanese woman, a revolutionary act that was well beyond the historic perimeters established for blacks in television. More intimate still was Cosby's part in the episode, "Laya," aired September 25, 1967. Here Alexander Scott fell in love with an enemy agent portrayed by Janet MacLachlan.

While mainstream film, radio, and TV traditionally ruled out physical expressions of interracial romance, embracing, kissing and other demonstrations of affection were also proscribed between black men and women. Thus, when Scott ro­manced Laya, touching, caressing, and kissing her, another barrier to black social and artistic expression was shattered. I Spy was also an important program for other black actors. Many African-American performers played dramatic roles in the series. Among them were Eartha Kitt, Barbara McNair, Greg Morris, and Nancy Wilson. These guest stars often appeared in nontraditional parts. Diana Sands, for example, portrayed an Israeli agronomist. Ivan Dixon and Cicely Tyson played African royalty caught up in the propaganda war between East and West. And Leslie Uggams was an active part of a Communist conspiracy in Italy. Directions in TV programming tend to relate to the values popular in American political life. To a great degree the slow but inexorable folding of blacks into television in the early 1960s was a reflection of President Kennedy's activist and reformist mentality. And as Kennedy found support in public opinion, out of their need to placate government and please audiences, network and production executives began to respond with relevant programming.

During the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson the cause of civil rights gained further governmental support. Succeeding the assassinated East Coast liberal Kennedy, Johnson was the first American president from a Confederate state (Texas) since An­drew Johnson a century earlier. Yet, LBJ was even more supportive of civil rights than his predecessor. Johnson envisioned a "Great Society," a reordering of social values to ensure minority rights and economic opportunity through the massive intervention of the federal government. New bureaus were created, and new programs were enacted in Johnson's "War on Poverty." New measures to protect black voting rights in the South were passed by a Congress that the president seemed to control. As an heir to the legacy of American Progressivism, Johnson was forging his Great Society with the same fervor and vision with which Franklin D. Roosevelt had shaped the New Deal. This was a time of intense reevaluation of racial attitudes.

From the outpouring of white support for civil rights legislation to the self-realization experienced by many African Americans, the late 1960s was a time of "black is beautiful." There were aca­demic expressions of the new era, from black studies curricula and the rewriting of history to include strategic African-American personalities, to the training and employment of great numbers of black instructors. Culturally, the reevaluation was noticeable in such matters as the new sense of brother- and sisterhood among blacks, increased participation by blacks in inter­collegiate and professional sports, the creation of a "black hand­shake," and the disuse of the terms "Negro" and "colored" and the substitution of "black" and "Afro-American" and, eventually, “African American.” It was in this atmosphere that the Golden Age was achieved by blacks in television. Not all productions featuring African Americans were successful in TV. Unlike I Spy, for instance, The Sammy Davis, Jr. Show was a disaster. As innovative as was Bill Cosby's dramatic series, Davis’ series was the first musical variety program hosted by a black entertainer since The Nat King Cole Show was canceled a decade earlier.

Certainly, headliners such as Lena Horne and Harry Belafonte had hosted specials since then, but in January 1966, Davis fronted his own program on the NBC network. And although it lasted only four months before being dropped, it established a model for programming later filled with varying degrees of success by Flip Wilson, Redd Foxx, Pearl Bailey, George Kirby, Bill Cosby, Leslie Uggams, Ben Vereen, The Jackson Five, and Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis, Jr. In critical terms, Davis' program was a failure. From the beginning Davis was hampered by contractual problems emanating from a previous arrangement with ABC. The rival network allowed him to host the premier show, but then compelled him to miss the next four telecasts. The show also lacked a national sponsor and was scheduled on Friday nights opposite such hit series as Gomer Pyle, USMC (the second most popular show of the season); Hogan's Heroes (ranked number nine that year); and The Addams Family. Although the program later improved its presentation, reviews of its premier telecast on January 7 were less than complimentary.

Variety panned the program for its "shoddy production values—ranging from dull, cheap sets to sloppy editing and dubbing—or unimaginative scripting, feeble scoring and a weak song catalogue." And Cleveland Amory in TV Guide later criticized the program for its undistinguished production values, adding that "though there were many things wrong with this show, there are many more things right with it—and it is getting better every week."' In its short run The Sammy Davis, Jr. Show opened the door for many black entertainers to gain national exposure. Some, like Diana Ross and the Supremes, Nancy Wilson, Leslie Uggams, and Diahann Carroll, were already well known because of TV and phonograph records. Others, such as the Nicholas Brothers and the Will Mastin Trio, were vintage performers seldom seen on television. And Davis introduced new talents—Lola Falana, Johnny Brown, George Kirby—whose careers would later flourish. Ultimately, The Sammy Davis, Jr. Show failed because of the inadequate ratings it received. In the ratings and share-of­audience figures—the guideposts by which television achievement is measured—Davis' program was unimpressive.

While the show did attract millions of viewers, it did not appeal to sufficient millions to remain viable. This is not to suggest, however, that such measurements were accurate indicators. Various minorities and social groups often criticized A. C. Nielsen, Arbitron, Pulse, and the other market research companies which supplied the ratings. Among other charges, it was frequently suggested that these companies did not measure African-American viewers adequately, since an insufficient number of minority households was included in the measurement. While companies were quick to defend their figures and methods, by the end of the 1960s they did take steps to insure a broader representation by blacks and other racial minorities. Whatever the shortcomings of the industry ratings figures, they remained the criteria by which popularity and continuance were decided. And in the case of several programs with black stars, they revealed an unprecedented popular approval. Never in video history had three shows with black central characters en­joyed success simultaneously. But by the end of the decade the ratings showed this to be the case with Julia, The Bill Cosby Show, and The Flip Wilson Show. There is an aspect to most black performance in popular culture which is unique.

Because there is comparatively little minority representation in radio, film, and television, and because each performance by an African American is regarded as a chance to make a statement about black social realities, each appearance takes on added weight. Since few African Americans have as yet enjoyed the recurring exposure granted to the stars of hit TV series, when the black actor does achieve such success he or she is vulnerable to special criticism. If a role seems too accepting of white social dominance, the star as well as the character he or she portrays may be attacked as too acquiescent. If the role is one of a middle-class suburban black, it may be assailed as too bourgeois and unsympathetic to inner-city "brothers" and "sisters." If the role involves no racial politics, it may be censured as not "black" enough. And if it is critical of social injustice, it may be assailed as hostile, radical, or heavy-handed. In effect, whenever a black entertainer appeared in the late 1960s, he or she was expected to represent all African Americans, embodying the panorama of black life from ghetto to suburb. Because of its patent failure to do this, no successful black series was more controversial than Julia.

As played by Diahann Carroll, Julia Baker was the most assimilated black character ever to appear in the U.S. mass media. Beyond the stereotyped mammies and maids of early TV, Julia was everything that Beulah, Sapphire Stevens, Madame Queen, and Oriole were not. She was middle-class and beautiful. She spoke English perfectly. She was a liberated woman, a self-supporting professional nurse living in a racially integrated apartment building. As a war widow, moreover, she was responsibly raising a wholesome "little man" son in a homey environment. Julia made no pretense of dealing with contemporary social issues. Indeed, it studiously avoided them. A weekly visit with the Bakers involved the same simple problems encountered for decades on such shows as I Love Lucy, Family Affair, and The Donna Reed Show. Although Julia eventually coiffed her hair in an Afro and had black boyfriends played by Paul Winfield and Fred Williamson, the series refused to be topical.

If there were racial references, they were one-line gags such as the question by her employer, a white doctor: "Have you always been a Negro, or are you just trying to be fashionable?" More typical of the series was the following telephone dialogue between Julia and her seven-year-old son, Corey, played by Marc Copage: Corey: It's me, Mom. Julia: And just who are you, sir? Corey: Your son. Corey: He's the only son you've got, aren't I? Julia: Can you prove you're Corey Baker? Corey: Just a minute, I'll go check in the mirror. [musical interlude] It's me all right. Julia: Are you sure this is the very same Corey Baker who's going to get on a plane tonight with his mother and fly all the way to Kansas for a vacation? Corey: Yeh, and I just wanted to know if Earl J. Wagedorn can come with us. Julia: Oh, Corey. Julia could not have emerged at a less fortuitous time.

With racial frustrations at a peak and with urban police often in a veri­table state of war with inner-city rioters, the comfortable image of black success on Julia was in stark juxtaposition to the images seen on local and national newscasts. There was no H. Rap Brown, or SNCC, or Poor People's March in the world of nurse Baker. Instead, in the words of Carroll, Julia Baker was a "white Negro," the overly good, overly integrated fantasy projection of white writers acting, they felt, in a manner sensitive to decades of TV prejudice. Carroll best summarized this situation when in 1968 she told an interviewer: With black people right now, we are all terribly bigger than life and more wonderful than life and smarter and better—because we are still proving. For a hundred years we have been prevented from seeing ourselves and we're all overconcerned and overreacting. The needs of the white writer go to the su­perhuman being. At the moment we're presenting the white Negro.

And he has very little Negroness.' From the time it premiered in the Fall of 1968 until it was canceled in mid-1971, Julia was the focal point of criticism. Blacks ascribed a range of negatives to the series. Because the central character was female and husbandless, some felt it con­tinued the matriarchal stereotype—the emasculating anti-male pattern of traditional prejudice. Others felt it was unrepresentative of social reality and, therefore, subversive to the aims and methods of the civil rights movement. To others the program was a sellout intended, now that Richard M. Nixon was President of the United States, to assuage white consciences and make the curtailment of social programs and the repression of riotous ghetto dwellers palatable to white society. Many whites also felt uncomfortable with Julia. Because it was produced by whites, the series seemed patronizing to blacks—a saccharine projection of the "good life" to be achieved by those blacks who did not riot, who acted properly, and worked within the system. Producer-creator Hal Kanter might protest that "this is not a civil rights show.

What we're driving at is escapist entertainment, not a sociological document." But the fact remained that given the added social implications present in all black performance, Julia could not be just another situation comedy. Despite all these conflicting pressures, Julia was well received by viewers. It was the first black-starred series since Amos n' Andy seventeen years earlier to score well in the Nielsen rat­ings. It was the seventh most popular show in its premier season. In its second season it was ranked twenty-eighth. During its best year, Julia weekly reached an average of more than 14 million homes. Sharing much of the same formula as Julia was The Bill Cosby Show, which ran for two years, 1969-1971. It, too, featured a unmarried black character as its lead, as Cosby portrayed Chet Kincaid, a high school track coach and a bachelor. Similar to Julia Baker, Kincaid was middle-class, professional, and educated. Like Julia, moreover, The Bill Cosby Show placed its central character in an integrated environment. Nonetheless, Cosby’s series was obviously different.

From the opening credits which featured Quincy Jones' earthy rhythms as background to Cosby's own soulful groans and jive lyrics, viewers were assured that although the show projected life in racial harmony, this program was extracted from the black experience, and possessed an esoteric quality African Americans alone could understand. On the surface Chet Kincaid handled the problems faced by other heroes of situation comedy: helping a friend to quit smoking, trying to settle an argument between an aunt and uncle, helping an intoxicated magician rearrange his life, dealing with personal jealousy over a coy girlfriend, trying to recruit a promising athlete to join the track team. Kincaid shook hands in a traditional way, never spoke in slang terms, and seemed equally at ease with wealthy whites and poor blacks. But there was a black ambiance to The Bill Cosby Show that was missing in Julia. Rather than a "white Negro," Kincaid was black and self-confident. He might be pictured with a Ray Charles record album, or with a photograph of Martin Luther King, Jr. on the wall of his apartment. He courted attractive black women and worked with underprivileged children. White characters on the program were frequently stereotyped, as were his teaching colleagues—the sloppy and absent-minded Mr.

Cutter and the intractable Mrs. Drucker, a shrewish woman hostile to male assertiveness. From the jazz musical score which occurred throughout the show, to the Afro coiffure and casual dress which typified Kincaid's appearance, the series was a statement about black life, an endorsement of the middle-class, educated black man who has not deserted the inner-city but moves gracefully be­tween both worlds. Through his character, Cosby served to defang the contemporary familiar image of riotous blacks. He also suggested to minority viewers still in poverty that they were not forgotten by those who had obtained an education and credentials to operate in the wider, primarily white society. The Bill Cosby Show was not a "black" show in the sense of attempting to project the harsh realities of African-American life. During its first season, while Cosby did much to bring minority workers into the craft and labor unions servicing the program, only one episode was written by a black writer. Further, because it was necessary to appeal to as broad an audience as possible, the program could not hope to show a discomfiting image to its viewers.

So, with a cast integrated with blacks, whites, Asians, and Latinos, Cosby told an interviewer that the series sought to tell "an American story." According to Cosby, who was also executive producer of the series: "I'm aware that the show will have a negative meaning for people who are really militant about any story with a black person in it—black viewers included. But you can still pick a guy's pocket while he's laughing, and that's what I hope to do." Despite the pattern of success established by I Spy, Julia, and The Bill Cosby Show, not all series featuring black stars were widely accepted. Barefoot in the Park was a black situation comedy which lasted only thirteen weeks in the fall of 1969. It starred Scoey Mitchlll and Tracy Reed as a young middle-class couple living in a New York City apartment and struggling through the first years of marriage. The series had adequate supporting characters played by Thelma Carpenter and Nipsey Russell, and it was based on Neil Simon's hit Broadway play and motion picture. Nevertheless, Barefoot in the Park was a TV failure. Even before it premiered, trade papers reported dissension on the set between actors, directors, and producers.

Further, the comedy in the series was uninspired, and the image of an attractive young couple kissing and joking their way through married life was already an overused format. Equally ill-fated was The Leslie Uggams Show, a musical vari­ety program that failed in the fall of 1969. The show featured Uggams as a singer, dancer, and host to guest stars. She also appeared weekly in a running skit called "Sugar Hill," in which she and Lincoln Kilpatrick played a middle-class black couple putting up with each other—as well as with her mother, brother, and sister. Intended by CBS as a replacement for the controversial and canceled Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, the variety show lasted only three months. Its demise was due in part to Uggams' limited experience. As a singer on Sing-Along with Mitch for several years she was a creditable performer, but she was neither a compelling comedy actress nor a variety show host. Further, resentment generated by the cancellation of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour practically guaranteed failure for whatever program replaced it.

As well as those programs featuring African-American stars as central characters, by the late 1960s there were several important series with blacks in co-starring or supporting roles. Clearly responding to the political, social, and economic dynamics of the time, the networks and production companies in unprecedented fashion brought black talents into highly visible roles in television. These roles covered a broad range of characterizations, some familiar, some inventive. One of the major developments of the period was a return to the African locale as a setting for continuing series. Not since the days of Ramar of the Jungle and Sheena, Queen of the Jungle—both children's shows from the early 1950s—had a program set its white champions in the jungles and savannahs of Africa. Daktari concerned the activities of a white veterinarian working in East Africa to protect indigenous animal life. During the three-year history of the series, Hari Rhodes played a zoologist and assistant to the central character. Cowboy in Africa dealt with a white American rodeo star hired to bring modern ranching techniques to a large ranch in Kenya. The only black recurring character in this program was a ten-year-old native boy portrayed by Gerald Edwards.

These programs shared a familiar theme: the superiority of technological Western civilization over the backwardness of African society. Since the imperialistic nations took up the "white man's burden" in the nineteenth century, the image of civilized white people encountering black "heathens" who were "half-devil and half-child" was familiar in literature—and later in film and radio. In TV in the late 1960s, it reached its greatest realization in Tarzan. Tarzan was an anachronism. In the midst of the African-American movement toward fuller civil rights, here was a picture of a Caucasian hero single-handedly bringing peace and justice to the "dark continent." At a time when former African colonies were independent and influential nations, the picture of actor Ron Ely in a loin cloth walking as the white champion among dark-skinned natives was racially disparaging and patronizing. Certainly, the program gave employment to talented but rarely utilized black actors, including William Marshall, Roy Glenn, Woody Strode, Brock Peters, Raymond St. Jacques, and Yaphet Kotto. But there was something unsettling about distinguished African-American actors speaking in broken English or wearing Hollywood conceptions of native African clothing.

Nowhere was this misuse of talent more visible than in "The Convert," a Tarzan episode that aired January 12, 1968. The story concerned three Roman Catholic nuns, played by Diana Ross and the Supremes (Mary Wilson and Cindy Birdsong), who attempted to persuade a stubborn village leader, portrayed by James Earl Jones, to allow construction of a hospital to serve his jungle tribesmen. The plot allowed the popular rock-and-roll group to sing two songs—"The Lord Helps Those Who Help Themselves" and "Michael, Row the Boat Ashore." Predictably, the story ended on a happy note. In the final scenes Jones announced that he had changed his mind and would allow the hospital to be built. Then, Ross and the Supremes joyfully began to teach him and his tribesmen to sing "Michael." Knowing that another African problem had been solved, Tarzan walked off into the jungle with a smile of satisfaction. Ironically, even in its fictional entertainment network TV could present a more accurate image of Africa. "The Third Choice," an episode of The Name of the Game telecast March 7, 1968, exemplified this.

The program depicted Ossie Davis, Janet MacLachlan, and Roscoe Lee Browne as deeply involved in African revolutionary politics, caught between the West and the East in an emerging new nation. From the opening scenes filmed in Lagos, Nigeria, this program was at odds with the simplicity of Tarzan. Viewers saw a modern Africa epitomized in a large coastal city with high-rise buildings, factories pouring out smoke, large ships in the harbor, modern bridges, railroads, and automobiles. The political dimension of the story also projected a more authentic interpretation of African society than that seen in the struggle between the Supremes and James Earl Jones. Stories like this—and others seen intermittently on adventure series such as Mission: Impossible and It Takes a Thief—suggest that U.S. television was capable of escaping outmoded stereotypes when dealing with third world nations and peoples. There may have been examples of network and producer insensitivity, but the fact remains that in this Golden Age blacks were used frequently—often in roles unfamiliar to African-American actors. In the wake of Bill Cosby's success in a dra­matic series, several blacks appeared in police and private-detective series.

Where in the past they might have been portrayed as victims or perpetrators of crime, blacks were now part of the law enforcement process. Whether it was Clarence Williams III as Linc Hayes, the reformed Watts rioter, now an undercover police officer on The Mod Squad, or Gail Fisher as Peggy Fair, the secretary and helper on the private detective series, Mannix, audiences rarely had seen blacks in so flattering a light. And African-American heroes worked for all types of legal agencies. On Mission: Impossible, Greg Morris portrayed Barney Collier, an electronics expert and member of the team of CIA-like agents who roamed the world thwarting evil developments in foreign governments. In N.Y.P.D., Robert Hooks was a police detective operating in New York City. In Hawk the location was also New York City, but here Wayne Grice played Detective Carter, the partner on the night beat of a police lieutenant of Iroquois ancestry, John Hawk (Burt Reynolds). Hari Rhodes abandoned his lab gown and zoologist's role on Daktari, and appeared now as a big-city district attorney on The Protectors, one of three programs composing NBC's The Bold Ones series.

Related to this format also was Don Mitchell's characterization of Mark Sanger, the assistant and bodyguard to Raymond Burr's police consultant heroics on Ironside. By the late 1960s, it was apparent that to be representative and appealing to a wide audience, TV series required black characters. This was most obvious in programs which spotlighted groups of Americans confronting various types of conflict and misunderstandings. Ivan Dixon played Sgt. Kinchloe, one of the soldiers held humorously in Stalag 13 on Hogan's Heroes. The New People—a short-lived series about a group of young American men and women stranded on a deserted island and forced to establish a new social order based on their 1960s values —featured David Moses as one of those struggling to make reality out of theory. The evening soap opera Peyton Place was integrated during the 1968-1969 season, when Percy Rodrigues and Ruby Dee, as Dr. and Mrs. Harry Miles, and Glynn Turman as their son joined the cast. And the ill-fated Matt Lincoln program, starring Vince Edwards as a psychiatrist, featured two blacks, Felton Perry and Chelsea Brown, as his assistants.

Blacks also entered genres traditionally closed to them. Angelo Rutherford's role as the young black friend, Willie, on Gentle Ben took blacks into family-oriented adventure programming. In the science fiction series Star Trek, Nichelle Nichols was the only recurring female and black member of the cast. Her role as the attractive Lt. Uhura, the communications officer of the starship Enterprise, was a sexual as well as racial breakthrough. Similarly, a black character was included in the science fantasy series, Land of the Giants. Struggling to survive in a world where everything except the crew of an American spaceship was twelve times larger than on earth, Don Marshall played the copilot of the aircraft which had crash-landed on a foreign planet in the year 1983. During the flowering of the Western in the late 1950s and early 1960s, blacks seldom appeared on the scores of series on television. In less than a decade, however, matters began to change. During the fall of 1965, Raymond St. Jacques appeared as Simon Blake, a drover on the faltering Rawhide series. St. Jacques appeared for only four months before the seven-year-old program was canceled.

Between 1967 and 1970, however, Frank Silvera portrayed Don Sebastian Montoya, a distinguished Mexican nobleman and father-in-law of John Cannon, the central character on High Chaparral. In 1969, moreover, Roosevelt Grier, the former football star for the New York Giants and Los Angeles Rams, became a regular on the last season of Daniel Boone. Cast as Gabe Cooper, Grier portrayed a runaway slave who lived with the Tuscarora Indians and was accepted by them as Chief Canawahchaquaoo. Considerably more significant, however, was the co-starring role of Otis Young on The Outcasts. During the 1968-1969 season, Young played Jemal David who, with a white partner, Earl Corey, played by Don Murray, was a bounty hunter in the post-Civil War wild West. Of all TV series featuring African-American actors, The Outcasts was the most intense and explosive. David was no socially adapted Chet Kincaid or patriotic Barney Collier. Bitter about the slavery experience and hostile to racism and the brutalization of blacks, he was sensitive and combative.

While the series was set in the frontier days of the nineteenth century, its attitudes were clearly reflective of racial sensibilities in the late 1960s. David's distrust of whites occasionally included even his partner Corey. In an episode entitled "Gid­eon," aired February 24, 1969, those feelings exploded after Corey met and reminisced with an old ex-slave, Gideon (played by Roscoe Lee Browne), who was once owned by Corey's father. The shuffling and servility shown by Gideon was offensive to David. And Corey's apparent pleasure in meeting the old man triggered a hostile scene between the partners. David: Listen, Corey, I don't need you to stand up for me. I can fight my own fights. Corey: What's the matter with you today? You're touchier than a lizard with sunburn. First you start pickin' on old Gideon, then you start callin' me "Massa Earl," like some endman in a riverboat show. David: It wasn't meant to be funny. I just ain't interested in hearin' about him or any of your other used -to-be darkies.

Corey: And I'm not responsible for what a man calls me. David: Oh, is that a fact? He just dreamed it up all by himself one day, decided that "Massa Earl" sounded better than "Mr. Corey" or "Earl" or any other way a man talks to a man. In many respects The Outcasts was revolutionary. It challenged the traditional formula of the TV Western, treating innovative themes such as the place of black cavalry units—the so-called "Buffalo Soldiers—in the history of the West; the brotherhood between two oppressed racial minorities, blacks and Indians; racial prejudice on the frontier; and life on a chain gang controlled by brutal and bigoted guards. Furthermore, never had TV projected a tough black champion in the Old West. But as such, David was forced to face such soul-searching issues as being falsely accused of having killed a white woman; coping with a hooded night rider intent on pillaging the countryside in revenge for the Confederate loss in the Civil War; and temporar­ily becoming the sheriff of a racially prejudiced town. The series also broadened the expression of black manhood on television. In one episode, David risked his life to save a white child from death.

In another, he fell in love with a black woman, only to discover she was involved in a robbery scheme master­minded by a white man. In still another episode, he was compelled to deal with an old black servant who became angry when David ate at the table with whites and "acted like a white man." The old man later explained that his own son had been murdered for acting like a white man. One of the most revolutionary scenes in the entire series occurred in "Gideon." It showed a black man unwrapping a long hunting knife and calmly plunging it into the chest of a white bounty hunter. Several years later a black writer, James Oliver Killens, recalled the impact of this incident upon one black viewer: One of the best shows I used to like was The Outcasts, and it wasn't too long before they cast it out and off the air. It had a feeling of truth to it somehow or other. I especially liked that time when Roscoe Lee Browne was on that show and killed that White man. That was beautiful.

While film historians have spent much energy pointing out the emergence of the strong, macho black character so crucial to the blaxploitation films of the 1970s, Otis Young as Jemal David was clearly the first modern black hero to lash out at white society when he felt it to be oppressive or unjust. Long before the aggressive feature films like Sweet Sweetback's Baadassss Song (1971) and Shaft (1971), David as a central character in The Outcasts projected an image that was self-sufficient, virile, and threatening. Personally, Otis Young seems to have harbored as much distrust of white society as his character. TV Guide in 1969 reported that his refusal to cooperate with his producers—in one case, refusing to say the line, "Ain't nothin' like darkies for prayin' "—led to considerable tension on the set of The Outcasts. Young defended his editing of the script, noting that "the line is an insult to Negroes." In language reminiscent of Paul Robeson's defiance, Young continued: If this line went through, the next thing they'd have up there is Stepin Fetchit.

If I compromised myself on this script, it would be a little easier next time, and in three or four years I'd wake up one morning and be a wealthy Negro who forgot who he was.... The thing that affected my decision about this line was my responsibility to Negroes in this country. White people think there's nothing like darkies for dancing, there's nothing like darkies for singing, and there's nothing like darkies for praying. Well, that's a lie. The segment of Negroes that is pray­ing instead of doing is dying off. We have a new Negro that hasn't even been to church. One of the things that has hung the Negro up is that he's been too busy praying in the white man's church. This has kept him under the hand of the white Establishment. Any Negro today who is praying instead of do­ing is a damn fool."' The Outcasts failed for several reasons, among them its poor scheduling opposite feature films on NBC and Mayberry, R.F.D. on CBS. Westerns, too, were no longer popular with TV viewers by the late 1960s. The program also failed because of the hostile quality of its black characterization.

Although the product of white script writers, Jemal David was one of the most threatening black characters since director D. W. Griffith in 1915 introduced a black would-be rapist lusting after a white girl in the motion picture, Birth of a Nation. The image of a strong and assertive black male, which film historian Don Bogle has termed "the brutal black buck," had been absent from the mainstream of American popular culture until the appearance of the brooding, quick-tempered bounty hunter created by Otis Young. The Outcasts and Jemal David anticipated by three years the violent and intensely angry black males in feature films in the following decade. The rage apparent in the words and actions of Otis Young’s character suggests a militancy traditionally proscribed from network television. The pattern of excluding black anger had been established early in TV history with the banning of Paul Robeson from the medium. While the participatory perimeters of video had expanded since the days of Nat King Cole, the ideological boundaries remained intact. TV could adopt moderate per­formers like Diahann Carroll, Bill Cosby, and Sammy Davis, Jr.

But there was still little place for those entertainers or characters, real or fictional, who brought strongly political perspectives to their performances. This is not to disparage those African-American talents who found success in television. It is to suggest, however, that American mass culture continued to operate as a conservative, assimilative force, seeking to maintain social stability while gradually merging people of differing backgrounds into the cultural main­stream. The process had worked effectively with the waves of immi­grants who had come to the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While they maintained vestiges of their ethnic cultures—dress, food, dance, music, secondary language skills, and observance of holidays—they eventually were Americanized and became socially indistinguishable from other citizens. American blacks, the offspring of reluctant immigrants who in earlier centuries were brought forcefully to the New World to be slaves, faced a different set of circumstances in the process of assimilation. Hampered by an institutional racism that stripped them of their African culture while disallowing their absorption into the mainstream of American social life, blacks had been kept historically rootless.

To ensure their servility after the laws of slavery were abolished in the mid-nineteenth century, blacks were isolated, culturally circumscribed, and made objects of derision within the dominant white culture. In this way, American popular culture ensured second-class political status for the offspring of exslaves. The significance of the civil rights movement which flowered in the mid-1960s was that for legal, economic, political, and moral reasons, the dominant culture began to reevaluate its proscription against full participation by blacks. As never before in history, African Americans now had a chance to enter the social mainstream, to find educational and professional opportunity, and to achieve personal and familial satisfaction working within the system. Given this situation, it is obvious that an immoderate series such as The Outcasts could not survive on television. It is amazing that ABC even telecast the series. Beyond the limits of popular acceptability, its anger was out of harmony with the cultural process. Much more congruent with American cultural dynamics was the successful ABC series, Room 222.

Better than any other program focusing on blacks in the Golden Age, Room 222 mirrored the ambiance of social change that was a part of the late 1960s, while operating within the boundaries of cultural possibility. In this regard, Room 222, and not The Outcasts, stands as the "best possible" black-starred show to emerge in the late 1960s. Room 222 was a schoolroom dramatic series set in urban Walt Whitman High School. It featured Lloyd Haynes as a compassionate teacher whose lessons in black history were often interrupted by the real-life problems of a racially-integrated student body. Stories dealt with issues affecting contemporary American teenagers: drug addiction, cheating on exams, sexual attitudes, recalcitrant and nonconformist students, insensitive teachers, limitations on student rights, as well as social issues such as women's liberation, consumerism, and the environmental crisis. Fre­quently, the program dealt specifically with racial themes: President Lincoln's racial views, tutoring a ghetto youngster, the varieties of prejudice, and the like. The program, however, did not have to approach racial problems directly to deliver its egalitarian point.

The fact that Haynes, the main actor, was black, and that the prominently-displayed school counselor played by Denise Nicholas was also African American, made Room 222 a series with a reformist message. The sympathetic characters portrayed by Haynes and Nicholas delivered a positive statement about black middle-class success. In charge of young lives, here were responsible adults making all the right moves. The basic integrity and law-abiding nature of the African-American students in class also communicated a hopeful lesson about those struggling to leave the urban ghetto and enter the flow of American life. There was no rage here. The professionals in Room 222 had achieved. They were laboring now so that black youngsters could follow them to the American Dream. The black heroes were allowed vestiges of African-American culture—Afros, colorful clothing, and a sensitivity toward younger "brothers" and "sisters" seeking equal opportunity. But the same central characters were well adjusted to the suit-and-tie regimentation of their careers and identities within the mainstream.

Not simply principals in a TV series, these were role models of what "the good life"—a world of rational thought, attractive people, and financial sufficiency—offered for those who would abandon bitterness and work to overcome within the system. Despite the cancellation of The Outcasts and the success of Room 222 and Julia, and the others, anger was an integral part of black reality in the late 1960s. If the intensity of that anger were to be encountered authentically on television, it would not appear on entertainment shows. It would have to be seen in nonfiction TV, in that realm of news, documentary, and public service programming which—despite boundaries established early in the case of Paul Robeson—still had helped make the civil rights issue a problem of national scope. Top 10 Secret Agent Series From The Sixties - Listverse Top 10 Secret Agent Series From The Sixties Randall September 28, 2008 This list contains a competition – further details at the bottom of the list. Everybody knows Ian Fleming’s master spy, James Bond. The suave and handsome secret agent with a license to kill, Bond became the new face of cinematic spies after the release of Dr.

No, the very first Bond film, in 1962. Before Bond, spies were often portrayed as paunchy, unattractive, cowardly, even elderly—much of which may have been more accurate, in reality—but the Cold War-ridden 1960s was more interested in fantasy and escape than cinema verite. And so, instead of the seedy and miserable nobody of Joseph Conrad’s “Secret Agent,” spies became good-looking ladies’ men with charm and toughness to spare. Ian Fleming probably didn’t realize what a seed he was planting when he created James Bond. Almost immediately after his big screen debut, Bond had a whole generation of imitators following him on TV and film. There were suddenly spies everywhere—some surreal and campy, others sophisticated and witty, some hip and groovy. There was even a wedding of the spy with the western. By 1970, the anti-establishment sentiments of the hippies had fully taken hold in pop culture, and the spy craze was suddenly no more. Only James Bond was left, last as he was first, to carry on. PLEASE NOTE: This list excludes Bond—this is, of course, about the OTHER spy series of the day.

Bond, naturally, is the biggest and best known. The point is, he wasn’t alone. 10 Mission: Impossible One of the iconic bits of Sixties spy shtick was the weekly-repeated, unforgettable speech of the unseen, unknown voice on the tape recorder: Good morning, Mr. Phelps. Your mission, should you decide to accept it… as though Phelps ever would have refused. The dirty secret of spies, of course, is that they aren’t allowed to refuse. If you refuse, John Drake (of “Danger Man,” etc.) could tell us, they kill you—or worse, they send you somewhere. And their “somewheres” are never pleasant; Villages and gulags of all sorts, and it doesn’t matter whose side you’re on—in the end they’re all the same place. To punctuate this truth, there was that ominous caveat spoken near the end of each of Mission: Impossible’s mission tapes: if you or any of your IM Force are caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow all knowledge of your actions. In other words, you’re on your own, pal, and nice knowin’ ya.

And to further emphasize the idea that there would be no witnesses, no paper trail, no trace of a chain of command should Phelps and his team fail: this tape will self-destruct in five seconds. Perhaps Phelps could count on vanishing just as quickly if he decided sometime to say, “no, I’m not takin’ this one.” But of course he never did—Peter Graves was far too reliable, and, yes, wooden, for such dramatic disobedience. So every week he and the faces of his ever-changing group of IMF spies and professionals would take on another corrupt dictator or spirit another willing defector out of the hands of the commies. Cast changes were part and parcel of Mission: Impossible, and the faces changed more than the improbable and occasionally formulaic plots. The original “team leader,” Dan Briggs, (played by Steven Hill) left after the first season and was replaced by the aforementioned Graves. Then, later, master of disguise Rollin Hand and resident hottie Cinnamon Carter (played by Martin Landau and his wife of the time, Barbara Bain) left, to be replaced by Leonard Nimoy, in his first post-Spock role as “The Great Paris”, and Linda Day George, among a slew of others.

Stolid strongman Peter Lupus remained throughout the show’s run, as did Greg Morris. But none of these characters, nor the actors who played them, made the cut of the successful films based on the series (starring the annoying and detestable master scientologist himself, Tom Cruise) though there was a brief TV revival in the Eighties. Interesting tidbit: Mission: Impossible was the “sister show” of the original Star Trek – the two series were filmed back to back and side by side at the same Desilu Studios by the same production team, though their creative teams were totally different. Star Trek, on its slim budget, would often “borrow” props from Mission: Impossible, paint them weird and garish colors, and pass them off as alien sculpture and whatnot for visual ambience. 9 Matt Helm Introduced in a series of novels by Donald Hamilton, the Matt Helm character was originally a somewhat out-of-shape, aging spy, gnarled and grizzled, somewhat in keeping with the spies of old.

When, however, Matt finally reached the silver screen, he had morphed into a parody James Bond, a slick lounge lizard with a bevy of spy babes around him, part comic Bond and partly a reflection of the persona of the man who played him in four films, Dean Martin. Martin’s Matt Helm was one of the chief inspirations for Mike Myers’ Austin Powers… amongst other similarities, the “secret identity” of each character was the same: fashion photographer. 8 Get Smart The idiot as spy, as it were, Don Adams’ Maxwell Smart was the creation of the keen and deadpan wit of Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, late of the writing staff of That Was the Week that Was and future host (ten times over) of Saturday Night Live, and eternal straight man to John Belushi’s rotating Samurai character. Maxwell Smart labored for the ever-suffering Chief against the sinister machinations of KAOS, usually facing peril at the hands of Bernie Kopel (later to be granted a floating medical degree on The Love Boat) and his Silly Eastern European Accent.

Max had at his disposal, of course, all the tools of the trade for fighting the pesky adversaries out for world domination: shoe-phone, cones of silence (their use, naturally, meant that you couldn’t hear what the other guy was saying, but what the hell), robots (Hymie, played by slick Dick Gautier, perennial game show celeb), and best of all, a beautiful female partner—one of the best of her league—the nameless but gorgeous Agent 99, played cutely and smartly by the cute and smart Barbara Feldon, object of this writer’s affections when he was but a tadpole. Yes, spies could be funny. Why not? The trappings of Sixties Spydom were so ludicrous as it was—not just in fiction, but in fact. Why not Maxwell Smart and his “sorry about that Chief,” or, “missed it by that much,” when our own CIA was trying to snuff Castro with poisoned mustache wax, or the British MI6 was being sold down the river by turncoat double agents named Kim? Now that’s funny.

7 Wild Wild West Unless you’re just too young to know this—or don’t ever bother to watch TV Land—or you spent the bulk of your life living under a large block of sandstone—you know that the western was the most successful and most popular genre of TV series in the 50s and 60s, with its only serious contender being the cop drama. Well police shows are still with us, but the western is long gone, and not just from our TV screens but largely from our movie theaters as well. Oh, every so often there’s talk of a resurgence of the western in films, and there’s been quite a few good ones in the last twenty years. But it’s never really come back, and certainly not to television. Perhaps we’re too sophisticated and jaded and gritty urban, these days, for hicks on horses. But once upon a time the western was the big thing. And there were some great ones in the 60s – Bonanza being the best, arguably, along with Gunsmoke and The Big Valley, Bat Masterson, Have Gun Will Travel, The Rifleman… well, you get the idea.

But the 60s were also the decade for Pure TV Escapism and Swinging Fun, the decade of Star Trek, Batman, Hullabaloo… of Lost in Space, Land of the Giants, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea… and it was also the decade of the subject of this list… the decade of Swingin’ Spies. So what would be more natural than combining the western with the spy? Thus, the heroes of Wild Wild West—agents of the United States Secret Service waging war on the 19th century frontier against such villains as the diminutive mad genius, Miguelito Loveless. Occasionally surreal (what else could it be?) with its bizarre villains and their bizarre schemes, the show’s strength was its buddy relationship between handsome tough guy Robert Conrad’s Jim West and Ross Martin’s urbane master of disguise Artemus Gordon. Remade as an unmemorable film in the 90s, starring Will Smith and Kevin Kline. 6 Derek Flint Our Man Flint, In Like Flint Derek Flint, suave genius as spy, was the first parody secret agent in film.

James Coburn played him fairly straight (unlike Dean Martin’s campy Matt Helm or Don Adams’ bumbling Maxwell Smart) but still, Flint was thoroughly over the top: the ultra-cool spy who was a master of everything—martial arts, science, electronics, food, languages… and of course a master with the ladies. Flint even had a bevy of multi-national babes who lived with him (so it seemed) and catered to his every needs. Sexist? You bet. Absurd? Oh yeah. But what fun, and who could take any of it seriously? Flint’s superhuman expertise was such that he could identify the boulliabase from a specific French restaurant by taste alone, dance a perfect Swan Lake with a Russian agent, go into rigid, impossible yoga trances at will, and any number of other impossible things. 5 Man / Girl From UNCLE Ian Fleming helped create this series—one of the first spy shows on American television—and lent to the hero the name of one of his characters: Napoleon Solo, one of the mobsters in Fleming’s Goldfinger who dies at the hands of the eponymous character.

Originally called simply Solo, the series incorporated a Russian partner, Illya Kuryakin (played by David McCallum) into the mix, to work alongside the lead character (Solo was played by the semi-redoubtable Robert Vaughn—I always thought of him as less an imposing figure than other secret agents). McCallum became a huge hit with teenage fans. UNCLE, of course, stood for United Network Command for Law Enforcement; acronyms were part and parcel of sixties spy-dom, which can be traced back to the line in Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest”: “FBI, CIA, OSI… we’re all part of the same alphabet soup” and as Bond had had supervillainous SPECTRE to look after, UNCLE had THRUSH — Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity. Naturally all this silliness got out of hand after a while. There was Derek Flint’s ZOWIE, Get Smart’s CONTROL (and villainous KAOS) and after a while one wonders why, instead of Al Qaeda, we didn’t get something more inventive for our first world-wide terrorist organization. MAD ARAB anyone?

At any rate, the show became popular enough to spawn a spin-off in The Girl From UNCLE, which was the ever-engaging Stefanie Powers playing another Ian Fleming-created character, April Dancer. Her partner in the series was Mark Slate, though she shared Solo’s boss, Mr. Waverly (the tarantula-swelling and Gregory-Peck-framing Leo G. Carroll, who delivered the aforementioned famous alphabet soup line in North by Northwest). Sadly not as successful as the parent series, Stefanie Powers was at least nicer to look at, in this writer’s humble opinion. And she swung with the best of the sixties swinging babes, let’s face it. 4 I Spy Another successful Sixties TV show later resurrected as a bad movie, I Spy, I always felt, had a certain edge to it. Oh, not a gritty, reality sort of edge… this was still the Sixties, when reality on television was not wanted, thank you. But there was something. Part of it had to do with Bill Cosby’s role as spy-in-training Alexander Scott—one of the first times in American television that a black man played in a starring role.

He and fellow star Robert Culp (playing tennis pro-turned-tennis-bum Kelly Robinson, a fake ne’er-do-well who was actually a secret agent) had a buddy relationship which captured the affection of viewers, with their rapid-fire, hip banter and suave, smooth personalities. Also, the series was innovative in the way it went location-hunting, filming several episodes in Europe (Greece, Spain, etc.) and the far east. It never descended into camp territory, and like the British Danger Man, emphasized the somewhat harder-edged, tough side of the spy business. 3 Harry Palmer The Ipcress File, Funeral in Berlin, Billion Dollar Brain Len Deighton’s Harry Palmer (played on the screen by Michael Caine in his first starring role) was meant to be a counterpoint to the ultra-sophisticated, upper-class James Bond. Palmer was working class, wore glasses, and lived in seedy surroundings. His sole “upper” quirks were that he was a gourmet cook and preferred to listen to classical music.

Palmer’s insubordinate, vaguely criminal side was played up in the series—in fact, the story was that he had been an army sergeant arrested for some unexplained bit of illegality committed while he was stationed in Germany. Offered the chance to remain in the stockade or work for British Intelligence, Palmer wisely chose the latter—but he never found the compromise to be a comfortable one. Hating stiff-lipped bureaucracy and ever in fear that his stuffy, harsh boss (Colonel Ross) would send him back to prison—or worse—Palmer went through each mission with the omnipresent sense of having to look over his shoulder at all times. The Ipcress File is surely one of the best spy movies ever made (it has only one clunker of a moment: the line “that was the most delicious meal.”) and is particularly fun for not only Sydney Furie’s odd-camera-angle-direction and for John Barry’s influential and later highly-sampled soundtrack (bits of it, or riffs very similar to it, turn up in various trip-hop compositions from Portishead to Mono) but also for the remarkable insight into the tough and by no means glamorous day-to-day life of an agent for the government.

Palmer is as close to a real human being as any secret agent gets—expressing his hope that, with a slight pay rise, he can buy that “new infrared grill,” or having to cope with the impending threat from an American agent (whose partner Palmer has accidentally killed) that he plans to “tail” Palmer until he’s satisfied that Palmer’s “clean, and if you’re not clean… I’m gonna kill you.” Not to mention the cold indifference of his superiors, who remark that, if the Americans do find anything suspicious about Palmer, they’ll take care of him, and save the Brits a lot of trouble. Not the happy life of women, fast cars, fun gadgets and martinis shaken-not-stirred that James Bond leads… for sure. 2 Danger Man/Secret Agent/The Prisoner Lots of people have heard of the iconic and cult-fave series The Prisoner, but fewer people today know that Patrick McGoohan played the character (well, sort of) before, in a successful (and longer-lived) series called Danger Man.

Of course, Americans knew the series by a different name: Secret Agent, and we knew very well its eponymous signature song by Johnny Rivers—a monster hit in 1966. (In the UK the signature tune was instrumental music very similar to that of the later series, The Prisoner). Danger Man had a long if bumpy run, going on the air in the UK originally in 1960 (thus predating the first James Bond film, Dr. No, by two years) and hanging on until 1968. McGoohan was cool and dispassionate agent John Drake, another “true-to-life” type almost as different from James Bond as Harry Palmer was, although Drake was clearly not working class. Drake was, however, a character increasingly displeased with his superiors’ sometimes unethical and cold-blooded tactics, and as the series wore on he was clearly becoming more insubordinate and more unhappy, as nearly every mission he was sent upon involved some kind of moral ambiguity or nasty compromise of principles that he was forced to endure. This, interestingly, set things up for McGoohan’s next series, the allegorical and Kafka-esque The Prisoner.

McGoohan played “number six,” a British secret agent who had resigned because of some unknown disagreement with his superiors. As the opening credits and signature tune rolled and played for each episode, we were treated to a quick pastiche of what happened to the character: he resigns, angrily… he drives off, while, in a cavernous hall full of filing cabinets, his ID card is transported mechanically to a file, marked “RESIGNED.” He returns home and begins to pack… followed by a sinister character in funeral attire. Too late, he realizes his apartment is filling with gas. He faints… and then awakens in a room similar to his own… but not the same. Looking out a window, he sees he’s no longer in London… but in some bizarre spa-like Village. Then follows the now-famous bit of dialogue everyone knows: Where am I?” “You are Number Six.” “I am not a number — I am a free man!” Each episode then involves a new plot by a different Number Two to try to break the will of Number Six. And each episode he wins… sort of.

He escapes only twice: in an episode where he ends up spirited back to the village by a treacherous pilot, and in the final, surreal episode where… well… we’re not sure what really happens. Except that it appears “number six” has really been Number One all along. All in all, the entire series was an allegory for the struggle of modern man to maintain his freedom and independence in a world increasingly massified and totalitarian. Number Six is the ultimate individual who never gives in. But is he John Drake, McGoohan’s previous incarnation from Danger Man? Well legally, no… McGoohan didn’t own the rights to the earlier character he’d played. But surely, in every other sense, he was. Drake was the same kind of obstinate rebel, and he’d seen too many decent people suffer unfair consequences due to his own actions—because he was forced to follow orders. As Danger Man wore on he became more and more bitter—and there’s little doubt that the man who resigns, at the start of each episode of The Prisoner, is the same John Drake who had to do terrible things in the name of his government. Whatever the finale of The Prisoner meant—it was definitely John Drake’s ultimate triumph.

He drove off, alone—and free. 1 The Avengers Saving the best for last, we have The Avengers, the longest-lived of the Sixties spy series (1961 – 1969, with a revival series in the mid 70s). In its heyday, from 1965 – 1969, it was one of the most influential and most popular shows on British and American television, and its imagery become iconic overnight: umbrellas with tape recorders built into them, and bowler hats lined with steel; natty fashions straight of Swinging London—tight leather bodysuits and other figure-hugging outfits; champagne and liquor running freely (there hadn’t been as much imbibing by a couple since The Thin Man series); sports cars, Bentleys, and antique automobiles; cybernauts, electric men, invisible men, diabolical geniuses and deadly nannies… sometimes surreal and science-fictional, and always teeming with clever banter and double entendres.

The constant was John Steed (the ever-graceful and ever-gentlemanly Patrick Macnee): originally a shady character who worked somewhat in the background, he first appeared in the life of Dr. David Keel, a surgeon whose wife had been murdered by a drug ring. Steed appeared to work for some unnamed, unknown official agency, though this was by no means made clear until later in the series. He and Keel spent their time tracking down crooks and other evil-doers to bring about their downfall… hence “the avengers,” bringing vengeance to those who otherwise would not be punished for their crimes. After Keel, John Steed was paired with Cathy Gale, a judo expert and another in the long line of “talented amateurs” that Steed worked with. It was now clear that Steed was a secret agent of some kind, and he was becoming less of the shady anti-hero and more of the trim sophisticate. But the true innovation was Gale. Played by the desirable Honor Blackman—who would leave the series to play “Pussy Galore” in Goldfinger—Cathy Gale was a kind of woman not seen before on television—tough, smart, strong-willed… a Sixties Sarah Connor.

She was Steed’s match in the wit-and-banter department, and the sexual tension between them fueled the show’s popularity. Gale’s exit from the series came just as it was sold to American television… and Steed was on his own again. And then came… Mrs. Peel. We know Nick and Nora (the Thin Man and wife), Mulder and Scully, David and Maddie (Moonlighting)… but for many, there are none better than Steed and Mrs. Peel. In a way she was Cathy Gale with the edges smoothed a bit, but she was more. Honor Blackman had a rough desirability; but Diana Rigg had a more intellectual sexuality. She played Emma Peel (the name chosen because the producers had penned a note saying that Cathy Gale’s replacement had to have “M. Appeal”—“man appeal”) as a devastatingly intelligent, quick-witted expert-of-all-trades who also just happened to know martial arts and was a deadly shot. Indeed, Mrs.

Peel killed more people than Steed had ever done (in fact, he offed very few in the series run) and where his photograph was marked by Russian agents with a notation that said “Very Dangerous,” hers simply read on the back, “Most Dangerous of All – AVOID.” The series went downhill somewhat after Rigg left, and Steed’s younger partner Tara King came on. After all, following up on that kind of chemistry was frankly impossible. The shows were highlighted with inventive and amazing plots, smart dialogue, fun and interesting characters, wild and weird villains, and set in an imaginary Britain where it was always summer and always sunny, and was ever Swinging Carnaby Street. But what made it the most enjoyable were Steed and Mrs. Peel—like being able to hang with the smartest, quickest and most fun couple imaginable—AND get to watch them best the villainous criminal, megalomaniac or foreign agent of the week.

From maniacal geniuses out for revenge, to repugnant blackmailers who mark their targets with cards that read “You Have Just Been Murdered,” to homicidal androids and escaped lunatics, killer “robot houses” and madmen powered by “broadcast energy,” Steed and Mrs. Peel handled them all with nonchalant panache and confident detachment. Mrs. Peel… we’re needed. Bonus The Saint Simon Templar (hero of a series of books by Leslie Charteris) or “the Saint” was an ambiguous rake of a character, brought to life by such distinguished actors as George Sanders, Ian Ogilvy, and Vincent Price (along with a latter day Saint portrayed by Val Kilmer). His best-remembered incarnation, however, was played by a pre-James Bond Roger Moore. (And in fact it’s Moore’s stint as the Saint that helped land him the role of Bond when Sean Connery walked away from it).

The Saint was never actually established as a spy or secret agent per se; rather he is something of a criminal (but of the Robin Hood variety… occasionally anyway) and sometimes an amateur detective… but often he worked as a sort of free-lance agent of various police/government agencies, qualifying him as a member of the exclusive club of swingin’ sixties spies. After all, the Saint (particularly when played by Moore) had the whole image down pat. Suave, sophisticated, rakish, intelligent… a hit with the chicks and able to hold his own against the villains. His skills and talents were beyond the average man, and even his anti-hero status is in keeping with the overall idea of the best sixties spies—a sort of cheeky, smart rebel who does what has to be done. Bonus 2 Competition If this list reaches 300 comments, one commenter will be selected at random to win the super-cool Wild Planet Agent Action Briefcase (pictured above) valued at $19.99 – to help them get started in a career in spying! The winner must be a registered user . As usual, comments must be related to the list and not designed just to increase the count or your chances of winning.

Every comment is counted – so you can comment more than once. You have to be in to win! Amazon describes the prize thus: The removable motion alarm stops thieves and intruders Case shoots darts (4 included) to “stun” enemy spies Removable flashlight spots hidden spies Special spy scope lets you spy from far away Case has a secret compartment and gear storage for more spy gear Contributor: Randall

Question: Which popular TV series of the 1960s and 1970s developed from an earlier programme called Police Surgeon?
Answer: THE AVENGERS