GET SMART MARATHON
Decades, 12:00 p.m. ET
From noon ET today for the rest of the weekend, DECADES is filling the weekend with episodes of the brilliant TV comedy spoof Get Smart, which eviscerated the secret agent spy craze that had launched just a few years earlier with Sean Connery as James Bond 007. This 1965-70 series stars Don Adams as Maxwell Smart and Barbara Feldon as his ultra-patient, ever-adoring Agent 99, with Edward Platt as Max’s increasingly frustrated Chief (think Herbert Lom, driven to tics and tears by Peter Sellers as Inspector. Clouseau). The three make for a perfect ensemble, aided by Bernie Kopell’s Siegfried, Dick Gautier’s Hymie the Robot, and others. Get Smart was co-created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, at a time when both those very funny men were enjoying rarefied creative comedy peaks. Midway through the five-year run of Get Smart, in 1967, Henry wrote and appeared in The Graduate – while Brooks wrote and directed his first film version of The Producers. But before both those film classics, these two were playing together on television, working behind the scenes to concoct such unforgettable inventions as the Cone of Silence (watch for it) and Max’sn ever-present Shoe Phone, which predated individualized remote telephone communication by at least a generation.