Sun 12 Jul 2015
A Movie Review by Jonathan Lewis: THE SPY IN THE GREEN HAT (1967).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Suspense & espionage films , TV mysteries[13] Comments
THE SPY IN THE GREEN HAT. MGM, 1967. Robert Vaughn , David McCallum, Jack Palance, Janet Leigh, Eduardo Ciannelli, Allen Jenkins, Jack La Rue, Leo G. Carroll, Joan Blondell, LetÃcia Román. First aired on NBC, 10:00 p.m., Friday, November 25 and Friday, December 2, 1966 as episodes of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.: “The Concrete Overcoat Affair” (Parts 1 and 2). Director: Joseph Sargent.
Situated somewhere between action film and satire is the fifth The Man from U.N.C.L.E. feature film, The Spy in the Green Hat. Part spy film, part anarchic spoof, the movie, like the other films in the series, is the theatrical release of previously aired television shows with some added, often risqué, material added on.
Directed by Joseph Sargent, this entry is a campy romp featuring Jack Palance and Janet Leigh as THRUSH villains. Veteran actors Eduardo Ciannelli, Allen Jenkins, and Jack La Rue portray Chicago gangsters who team up with U.N.C.L.E. agents, Napoleon Solo (Vaughn) and Ilya Kuryakin (David McCallum) to thwart THRUSH’s alliance with a former Nazi scientist. Adding to the excitement is the presence of Italian actress, LetÃcia Román who portrays an innocent Italian girl who inadvertently gets caught up in a whirlwind of international intrigue.
As far as The Man from U.N.C.L.E. episodes go, these are fairly average. If it weren’t for Palance and Leigh, they wouldn’t be particularly notable. That said, the movie has enough action, silliness, and homage to make it a light, entertaining, albeit hardly memorable, 1960s spy film, even if the title has almost nothing to do with the movie. Well, except for the fact that a minor character at the very end happens to wear a — wait for it — green hat.
July 13th, 2015 at 3:47 am
Toward the end, the series was more an excuse to watch your favorite old actors than anything else.
July 13th, 2015 at 3:44 pm
That is a big attraction, isn’t it? In this case, having Janet Leigh and Jack Palance in a couple of episodes of broadcast TV must have been quite a draw.
July 13th, 2015 at 8:03 pm
Because I’m a character-actor man from ‘way back …
I ought to mention that the gangster force also included Elisha Cook, Vince Barnett, and (in what I believe was his final on-screen appearance) Slapsie Maxie Rosenbloom.
Extra Added Attraction!:
The THRUSH boss villain was Will Kuluva – whom completists will know played “Mr. Allison”, the original boss of U.N.C.L.E. in the pilot film.
(How he lost that gig is another story for another time …)
July 13th, 2015 at 10:29 pm
All names I didn’t add to the credits, Mike, but maybe I should have.
As for the Will Kuluva story, there’s no time like the present. When’s an opportunity like this going to up up again, on this blog?
Whenever you’re willing, of course!
July 13th, 2015 at 11:07 pm
I watched this for Leigh as a bad girl and got Leigh as a bad girl so I was happy.
Nothing great but worth watching for the cast and the almost casual way it is tossed off.
July 14th, 2015 at 9:33 am
Well, since you asked …
When the series was still being called Solo, NBC picked it up and started giving “notes”, as was their wont.
It was assumed at this point that Robert Vaughn was going to be The Show, with Name Guest Stars, and a bunch of seat-fillers at Headquarters, starting with Will Kuluva as the boss, ‘Mr. Allison’.
So the NBC suit was talking to Norman Felton, the executive producer, and said something along the lines of “Can we lose the guy with the K?”
As we now know, Mr. Suit was actually referring to the blond Russian guy ‘Kurioski’ or whatever, whose part in the pilot was no more than a bit.
So when Felton asked Mr. Suit if he was talking about ‘Kuluva’, he was told “Yeah, yeah, lose that K guy.”
Norman Felton paid off Will Kuluva, and a week or so later he met with Mr. Suit and gave him the news that he’d signed Leo G. Carroll as his replacement.
And Mr. Suit was taken aback; “Isn’t he a bit old to be Solo’s sidekick?”
… and so Mr. Suit found out that ‘Kurioski’, the guy he wanted dumped, was still around …
… and when David McCallum turned out to be the breakout star of U.N.C.L.E., I don’t doubt that Mr. Suit went around taking credit for “discovering” him.
And that’s Hollywood TV!
July 14th, 2015 at 1:11 pm
Yes, thanks, Mike. It turns out, once reminded, that I have seen the pilot episode. It was paired up somehow with another episode and edited into an earlier feature films like this one. The film’s title was TO TRAP A SPY, but apparently I never wrote up any comments about it. At the time I was surprised that David McCallum had such a small part. I always enjoy learning about what was going on behind the scenes, even over 50 years after the fact!
July 14th, 2015 at 12:26 pm
Thanks. Very informative
July 14th, 2015 at 3:11 pm
A friend of mine told me that when he saw TO TRAP A SPY in the theater (after the series had been on for awhile) his first thought was “Where’s Mr. Waverley?”
July 14th, 2015 at 5:10 pm
If you want more details (and I assume all of you want more details) consult Jon Hetland’s THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. BOOK for the complete story, along with all of the other people who were being considered for the part of Napoleon Solo, including Robert Culp.
July 14th, 2015 at 6:39 pm
Thanks, Randy. It’s not a book I knew existed but somehow I am not surprised that it does. The series was very popular at the time, and it must still have a lot of fans today. I bought the complete series on DVD when it came out, but I haven’t tried to watch any of them yet — for fear of disappointment, to some degree, I have to admit.
July 14th, 2015 at 9:22 pm
I watched the entire series on VHS made from an airing in syndication and enjoyed much of it, but I wasn’t intrigued enough to buy the dvd set. Once around the block was enough. As I recall, toward the end of the series it got pretty silly because that’s what the producers thought people wanted. It returned to the stylishness of the first season for while, but it was too late to save the show. It airs on METV on Sunday nights in this area.
July 14th, 2015 at 11:20 pm
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the series was how much of it actually came from that one night brain storming session with Ian Fleming who contributed much more than just the name of the lead character.
It does make you curious what might have been if either COMMANDER JAMAICA or JAMES BOND SECRET AGENT had ever got off the ground floor.