Not sure what arrangement, if any, made this possible, but the whole first season of Mission Impossible seems to be on the video hosting service Dailymotion now.
The first season of MI was different from the rest of the sixties/seventies series and it's largely failed revival in the eighties. In all of those, the cast was led by Peter Graves as Jim Phelps, who by the eighties episodes was cast as a father figure. The first season, on the other hand, had Steven Hill in the lead as Daniel Briggs. The reasons this didn't last are detailed below.
When he started in movies in the fifties, Hill had been one of the moody man's man actors produced by the Actor's Studio, kind of like Marlon Brando but without Brando's obvious-in-retrospect sexual ambiguity. His early appearances on TV drama followed the same script, Hill appearing as a determined man of action. In later years he'd settle gracefully into old age, paunchier but gentler. His last major acting role - the man being alive but long inactive as of this writing - was as District Attorney Adam Schiff on the first ten seasons of Law & Order. While his time on most episodes was limited, he could be the highlight of most of them just by shrugging and sighing for three minutes.
His year on Mission Impossible sees him at a midpoint between the tough guy actor he'd been in youth and the decent old grump he'd eventually become. It also marked a temporary end to his career as an actor. Hill's name at birth had been "Solomon Krakovsky" and he was of Russian Jewish heritage. Lots of people are Jewish, and there are lots of kinds of Jews. In the mid sixties he was becoming very serious and deeply observant about his Judaism. One result of this was that he was refusing to work on the Sabbath, i.e. Saturday. To the studio, this was valuable shooting time and highly inconvenient for the lead actor to absent himself on that day. There was also some tension between him and Martin Landau, who had a more easygoing relationship to his faith and didn't like being questioned on it. And on top of that, Hill was starting to look a little rumpled and dad-ish, not necessarily the man the network wanted as the face of its sleek modern spy drama.
And yet. One can sympathize with the decision to replace Hill at the end of season one, on account of his being a pain in the tuchus. But the fact remains that as Impossible Missions Force coordinator Dan Briggs, Hill is fascinating to watch.Graves, an all-American cowboyish actor, would play Jim Phelps as a cloak-and-dagger action hero, a more focused Matt Helm who saved the martinis for after work.
Briggs, though, is something else again. He walks through, not seeking attention, approaching each job as just that: a job. There's a chance to jump into another role here and there, and Briggs lights up with enthusiasm at these times. But by nature he holds himself in check. In other words, Hill actually is credible as a bureaucrat. While there's not much background provided for the character, you can imagine him as a postal inspector who found that he could work around guns and surveillance equipment and not mind it.
The show has other assets as well. It's interesting to see the way TV engaged in and avoided the Cold War simultaneously. There's a heady romance to its nighttime airstrip takeoffs and get-to-know-each-other meetings. And Landau and Barbara Bain, already married for years, have great flirtatious chemistry as Rollin Hand and Cinnamon Carter.
Hill as Briggs, though, is the great thing the show couldn't hold onto.
The first season of MI was different from the rest of the sixties/seventies series and it's largely failed revival in the eighties. In all of those, the cast was led by Peter Graves as Jim Phelps, who by the eighties episodes was cast as a father figure. The first season, on the other hand, had Steven Hill in the lead as Daniel Briggs. The reasons this didn't last are detailed below.
When he started in movies in the fifties, Hill had been one of the moody man's man actors produced by the Actor's Studio, kind of like Marlon Brando but without Brando's obvious-in-retrospect sexual ambiguity. His early appearances on TV drama followed the same script, Hill appearing as a determined man of action. In later years he'd settle gracefully into old age, paunchier but gentler. His last major acting role - the man being alive but long inactive as of this writing - was as District Attorney Adam Schiff on the first ten seasons of Law & Order. While his time on most episodes was limited, he could be the highlight of most of them just by shrugging and sighing for three minutes.
His year on Mission Impossible sees him at a midpoint between the tough guy actor he'd been in youth and the decent old grump he'd eventually become. It also marked a temporary end to his career as an actor. Hill's name at birth had been "Solomon Krakovsky" and he was of Russian Jewish heritage. Lots of people are Jewish, and there are lots of kinds of Jews. In the mid sixties he was becoming very serious and deeply observant about his Judaism. One result of this was that he was refusing to work on the Sabbath, i.e. Saturday. To the studio, this was valuable shooting time and highly inconvenient for the lead actor to absent himself on that day. There was also some tension between him and Martin Landau, who had a more easygoing relationship to his faith and didn't like being questioned on it. And on top of that, Hill was starting to look a little rumpled and dad-ish, not necessarily the man the network wanted as the face of its sleek modern spy drama.
And yet. One can sympathize with the decision to replace Hill at the end of season one, on account of his being a pain in the tuchus. But the fact remains that as Impossible Missions Force coordinator Dan Briggs, Hill is fascinating to watch.Graves, an all-American cowboyish actor, would play Jim Phelps as a cloak-and-dagger action hero, a more focused Matt Helm who saved the martinis for after work.
Briggs, though, is something else again. He walks through, not seeking attention, approaching each job as just that: a job. There's a chance to jump into another role here and there, and Briggs lights up with enthusiasm at these times. But by nature he holds himself in check. In other words, Hill actually is credible as a bureaucrat. While there's not much background provided for the character, you can imagine him as a postal inspector who found that he could work around guns and surveillance equipment and not mind it.
The show has other assets as well. It's interesting to see the way TV engaged in and avoided the Cold War simultaneously. There's a heady romance to its nighttime airstrip takeoffs and get-to-know-each-other meetings. And Landau and Barbara Bain, already married for years, have great flirtatious chemistry as Rollin Hand and Cinnamon Carter.
Hill as Briggs, though, is the great thing the show couldn't hold onto.
3 comments:
'steven hill, we hardly knew ye..'
though i actually watched a number of those first-year episodes during their initial run, my hill memories are a bit dim (tho i do remember landau/bain), as i'm almost certain that that's the last time i've watched any of them, as well. wasn't aware of the 'issues' involved in his departure, but, by the summer of '67, i was somewhat involved in a departure of my own :) . very surprised to find out that he's ended up having something of a second career - i had no idea...
tho we haven't tried the daily motion route, we've lately been having a noir festival on youtube, where you can find a good number of both public domain & non-public domain oldies, many often in very watchable condition. these not-so-famous noir movies ('the prowler', 'raw deal', 'detour') can be really miserable. as in, everyone's sleazy, & no one's likable. 2 of the better we've seen were 'gilda', featuring the incredible rita hayworth (wow!), & fritz lang's 'woman in the window', starring edward g. robinson (as a nice guy)...
personal disclosure: after having secured an agent, & submitting to him 2 'man from u.n.c.l.e.' scripts (fall/winter '66), he suggested i write one for 'mission impossible'. which i tried to do, but never succeeded...
ps: a slight bit of synchronicity: as a break from noir, we watched an episode of mst3k, which just happened to be 'it conquered the world' (later remade as 'zontar, the thing from venus'), a movie directed by roger corman, memorialized by frank zappa ('cheepnis'), & starring - peter graves! (& lee van cleef & beverly garland)...
I'm pretty sure no one knew - except for people whose job it was to know - back when it was going on. So while you may have had your own scene going on, and more power to you, that wasn't why you didn't find out.
The films noir you mention I haven't seen yet, although they seem to be readily available. Detour is one I've actually heard about, and been curious to see, so I will get to it one of these days. In late summer/early fall I got a boxed set from the library of Columbia Pictures film noir. There was a Fritz Lang movie among them, Human Desire, although I didn't really like it. It seemed muddled as to whether Glenn Ford was supposed to be sympathetic or not. (Everyone has an off day.) Nightfall, on the other hand, was quite gripping. Although it's weird in film noir terms since the lead characters are actually good people.
From what I remember of watching Man from UNCLE with you and Susan, the show didn't really handle the transition to color very well. It's possible your scripts were better for the moody style they'd started with than the pow biff bam stuff they did later.
Yeah, I think I've seen that MST3K. The schlocky early Corman movies were kind of a sweet spot for the Best Brains crew. Now Joel's doing his best to bring the show back. Wonder how it will work out.
Post a Comment