FORGET SMART

GET SMART
NBC 1965-1970

MAD #272, July 1987
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Angelo Torres

Comedy spy series cashing in on James Bond, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and the like. It had several incarnations and even a couple movie versions but right now we're just concentrating on the original.

In the 1980s, Nickelodeon started showing reruns of old TV shows, formerly the domain of UHF and independent stations, as their theme, and rebranding themselves as a retro channel. Around this time MAD started parodying reruns.

The show concentrated on Maxwell Smart, Agent 86 (Don Adams), Agent 99 (Barbara Feldon), and The Chief (Edward Platt), and their goings-on at CONTROL against the enemy agents of KAOS. They had lots of comical gadgets such as a telephone made from Max's shoe.

There were lots of catchphrases such as "Would you believe...?" with Max making a grandiose proclamation and then bargaining it down to something more believable.

GET SMARTY
Cracked #281, July 1993
w: Tony Frank (Lou Silverstone)
a: Walter Brogan

Other characters were Ludwig von Siegfried (Bernie Kopell) and Hymie the Robot (Dick Gautier)

"Don't tell me.../I told you not to tell me that" was another catchphrase.

What was the cutoff point when kids stopped knowing who Richard Nixon was?

Also in Cracked, from Sneaky TV Cigarette Commercials by John Severin, in #91, March 1971.

GET DUMB
Sick #51, March 1967
w: Calvin Castine
a: Angelo Torres

Agent 99 didn't have a name.

The men from U.N.C.L.E. were Yuri Kuryakin (David McCallum) and Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn). Their boss was named Waverly.

   -John Drake (Patrick McGoohan) is from the series Danger Man.
   -There was something that was supposed to be in that speech balloon in the second panel but fell off between layout and printing.
   -Kelly Robinson (Robert Culp) and Alexander Scott (Bill Cosby) were characters on I Spy.

There were a few ancillary items for Get Smart, including this record by Barbara Feldon.

Another piece by Jack Davis, an ad from TV Guide.

UPDATE:
From TV Scenes Worth Waiting For in Cracked #74, January 1969, art by Lugoze.

DUMB ADAMS' SCREEN TEST

DON ADAMS' SCREEN TEST
1975-1976, SYNDICATED

DUMB ADAMS' SCREEN TEST
Sick #112, October 1976
w: Jim Simon
a: Jerry Grandenetti

Kind of like Star Search or American Idol. Contestants were picked from the studio audience to re-enact scenes from a famous Hollywood movie with movie stars, and the winner was picked by a director to have a part as an extra in a movie.

The contestant plays opposite Clint Eastwood, though the show would never have actors of that caliber.

This was TV/comics writer Mark Evanier's description of how the show came about:
"He had one other series which almost no one remembers and which is not in any of the obits I've seen. In the early seventies, Adams made the rounds of talk shows and often brought out-takes from Get Smart, mostly of him and Don Rickles. They were hilarious and the reception gave him the idea to do a whole series showing out-takes…or bloopers, as they're sometimes called in a quasi-trademarked way. When he tried to put it together, he discovered that the union contracts made it prohibitive; that he'd have to pay or negotiate with dozens of people for each 30-second clip. In fact, the Screen Actors Guild told him that he technically shouldn't have been airing the Get Smart footage without paying actors, directors, writers, etc. Years later, the union rules were changed in a way that made the Dick Clark "Bloopers" shows do-able but at the time, it killed Adams's plan. Trying to figure out a way around it, he came up with the only possible solution: Create new out-takes just for the show! So in 1975, he hosted Don Adams' Screen Test, a kind of talent competition where the idea was to get aspiring actors, pair them in scenes with established stars and then have a lot of things go wrong. It didn't last long because, I suspect, the out-takes just didn't seem real. Which they weren't."
UPDATE:
from Sick#46, August 1966

Every single one of these shows was or will be covered on this blog. From Sick #46, August 1966. Founding Sick writer Dee Caruso was one of the main writers of Get Smart.

CLODUMBO

COLUMBO
NBC 1968-1978

The copyright holders are really protective, so it's hard to find clips.

TV series about detective (Peter Falk) whose unassuming appearance makes suspects think he's not as smart as he looks. The fact that he appears “stupid” is comedy gold for the parody magazines.

CLODUMBO
MAD #156, January 1973
w: Lou Silverstone
a: Angelo Torres

He talks a lot and in a roundabout way too.

The witness is a caricature of Robert Culp.

Peter Falk was one of a long line of celebrities who wrote in showing themselves reading their appearance in the magazine.

One of his ways of solving a crime was his line “Just one more thing...” after what seemed like the end of his questioning.

Columbo had no words to his theme song, so one was written for him in Singable Theme Songs for TV Shows by Frank Jacobs and Angelo Torres in MAD #168, July 1974.

COLUMBORE
Cracked #110, August 1973
a: John Severin

The other two detectives in the last panel are Clint Eastwood and Jack Webb.

The two cops in the middle panel are Don Knotts and Fred MacMurray.

WHAT ARE THE OLD TV AND MOVIE DETECTIVES DOING TODAY?
Cracked #121, November 1974
a: John Severin

Cracked also did a piece about Columbo's retirement.

COLUMBOOB
Sick #96, December 1973
w: Fred Wolfe (Paul Laikin)
a: Tony Tallarico

The woman entering the office is feminism spokesperson Gloria Steinem.
Steinway is a piano brand.
“Should a gentlemen offer a women a Tiparillo” was a cigarette ad campaign.

There was an ad campaign for Right Guard deodorant where two people shared a medicine cabinet.

Back then feminism was even more misunderstood than now and people who wrote things like this believed women really wanted to stay stereotypical housewives underneath it all.

UPDATE:

COLUMBO
cover for Kaputt, German version of Cracked,