Production
The show was inspired by the success of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Talent Associates commissioned Mel Brooks and Buck Henry to write a script about a bungling James Bond-like hero. Brooks and Henry took the show in a different direction. Brooks described the premise for the show they created in an October 1965 Time magazine article:
- "I was sick of looking at all those nice sensible situation comedies. They were such distortions of life. If a maid ever took over my house like Hazel, I'd set her hair on fire. I wanted to do a crazy, unreal comic-strip kind of thing about something besides a family. No one had ever done a show about an idiot before. I decided to be the first."
Brooks and Henry proposed the show to ABC, where network officials called their show "un-American" and demanded a "lovable dog to give the show more heart" and scenes showing Maxwell Smart's mother. Brooks strongly objected to their latter suggestion:
- "They wanted to put a print housecoat on the show. Max was to come home to his mother and explain everything. I hate mothers on shows. Max has no mother. He never had one."
Although the cast and crew—especially Adams—contributed joke and gadget ideas, dialogue was rarely ad-libbed. An exception is the third season episode, "The Little Black Book." Don Rickles encouraged Adams to misbehave, and ad-libbed. The result was so successful that the single episode was turned into a two-part episode.
Read more about this topic: Get Smart
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