L'espion au chapeau vert

As a kid I absolutely loved "The Man From Uncle." Well, the first couple of seasons anyway. Like any of these type of shows, the plots tend to get more and more preposterous. But I recently caught this TMFU movie on TCM and enjoyed it. Vaughn and McCallum were great as the partners who worked for "UNCLE" never playing it too seriously. I'm not sure if this was a seperate movie or two episodes combined with a bit of original footage. Good cast-Jack Palance seems to have a blast overacting as the THRUSH villian, Drago as does the incredibly hot Janet Leigh as his villianous assistant, Miss Diketon. Great name, eh! Another very hot actress, Leticia Roman plays a prominent role as a Sicilian maiden who Vaughn, AKA Napolean Solo, is going to have to marry in a literal shotgun wedding. Had all the elements I remember enjoying in a TMFU episode, action, explosions, comedy and sexy women. Plot was really unimportant, although they could have cut out at least .10-.15. BTW, I have no idea who The Spy in the Green Hat was. I guess they needed something for a title.

'The Man From U.N.C.L.E.' had started out as James Bond in your living room with weekly adventures showing how Napoleon and Illya saved the world each week and thwarted THRUSH with the aid of some innocent party. It worked well for the first season then it started getting humorous which worked initially, but it took the edge of the show, and then it completely lost it attempting to be a spoof. (If producers had looked at the James Bond series they would have noticed that they were about to release 'You Only Live Twice' and at no point had the Bond films sank into the camp humour we got from MGM / Arena.) 'The Spy In The Green Hat' was the fifth feature made from the TV show and although it wasn't the worst of the series, it was far from the best. Alongside Robert Vaughn and David McCallum were Jack Palance, Janet Leigh and old timers Joan Blondell and Allen Jenkins. The story is nonsense about THRUSH controlling the weather and there are scenes of Italian stereotypes waving their arms a lot, making pasta and swearing revenge. It doesn't work on any level.

Here's what I wrote about it in my book "What We Watched In The 1960s (In The Cinema)".

Interviewed in the 1980s, David McCallum felt that part of the decline of 'The Man From UNCLE' was to start spending the budget on guest stars rather than on good story lines and location filming, and "The Spy In The Green Hat", which was made up of the two-part episode 'The Concrete Overcoat Affair", had Jack Palance and Janet Leigh, and had a story about a scientist diverting the Gulf Stream, but it also had a story thread where Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn) is pursued by a bunch of elderly Italian gangsters who feel he has dishonoured one of their girls. It was daft, unfunny and tedious and had fans wondering if it could get worse. The one interesting piece of casting was Will Kuluva as a THRUSH man. He had played the original head of UNCLE in "To Trap A Spy" but was replaced by Leo G Carroll after a misunderstanding at MGM. (Sponsors had said fire 'Kuryakin' and the producer thought they meant Kuluva.) "When The Boys Meet The Girls" with it was MGM's fourth and last attempt to make Connie Francis a movie star in a tepid remake of the 1943 film "Girl Crazy". She was joined by Harve Presnell, Sam The Sham and The Pharaohs, and Hermans Hermits, who sang 'Listen People'.

Adapted with permission from the author from 'What We Watched In The 1960s (In The Cinema)'.

Jim Doyle is the author of 'What We Watched In The 1960s (In The Cinema)', 'What We Watched In The 1970s (In The Cinema)" and 'What We Watched In The 1980s (In The Cinema And On Video)'

All told five full-length feature films were made by the MGM studio from spliced together episodes of The Man From Uncle. "The Spy In The Green Hat" is, in my opinion, the best of them. This is no small part due to Jack Palance who plays a terrific villain Louis Strago & Janet Leigh who plays Strago's secretary Miss Diketon. Janet Leigh was 39 years old when she played this role & looks really hot. Miss Diketon takes pleasure in killing people at her boss Strago's behest & Janet Leigh found herself a really juicy "bad girl" role here that she makes the most of. Despite her surname having lesbian overtones she is secretly in love with her boss Strago but his feelings for her are not reciprocated. In their very first scene together she is shown breathing heavily whilst massaging his back for which Strago rebukes her. Later he tries to get her transferred out of his department & she turns against him. The other female interest sees Leticia Roman playing Pia Monteri the daughter of an Italian Mafia mobster whom Napoleon Solo is almost forced into marrying. Later in the movie there is a very entertaining fight between her & Miss Diketon. All in all, this is not a movie to be taken too seriously, & it was never intended to be, but is very entertaining.

Watched this on TCM movies 50 years after enjoying the man from U. N. C. L. E as a child in the 1960s. It's packed with really good actors keeping their faces straight in what I appreciate now is a comedy or spoof. In the 60s we had some brilliant TV like this, Batman and Robin, Get Smart, My favourite Martian etc etc And like the James Bond films of the time their was no PC when it came to ladies being drawn to attractive men like Napoleon Solo. We have lost something now that PC or woke dominates what we watch these days. Thank goodness there are films like this that accurately reflect the era in which they were made. Love the fashion especially Janet Leigh's wardrobe.

Anything to get the word "spy" into the title! Actually I think this was the only "U.N.C.L.E." "movie" I'd not seen so it was a welcome watch for me.

A fine colourful romp it was too, taking in the two main locations for 20th Century criminal activity in the western world, Sicily and Chicago and a fun plot involving an ex-Nazi inventor, a group of veteran Mafiosi and best of all, Hollywood stars Jack Palance and Janet Leigh who really enter into the spirit of things as top T.H.R.U.S.H. operatives.

Solo and Kuryakin are as debonair and efficient (respectively) as ever, while Mr Waverley as ever is a soft-centred grouch. Starting off in sunny Sicily, the dynamic duo get separated when attempting to intercept the Nazi professor, Solo, typically ending up in a pretty Sicilian girl's bedroom and Kuryakin chained up and on the end of shock treatment administered by Leigh in a Rosa Klebb type role. The action shifts to the States taking in a shoot-out at a Chicago night-club, before the usual beat-the-clock climax at bad guy Palance's weapons depot.

As ever, it's lightweight, knockabout stuff, although there are hints of some more risqué direction than usual not only in some unusual camera-shots from above and below, but in the campy, kinky depiction of Leigh's knife-toting Miss Diketon (what's in a name?) and Palance's campy, excitable boss Strago, while some scenes, like Solo's peeping-Tom initial meet-up with Letitia Roman in her bedroom, Leigh seemingly getting aroused when either massaging Palance or administering death by flying daggers and most outré of all, a table-top fight between the two women seem more out there than previously, perhaps riffing of recent, racy spoofs like "Our Man Flint" and Dean Martin's Matt Helm misadventures.

With some good jokes thrown in too if at other times a bit too much Italian stereotyping, this was a highly entertaining caper and probably the best of the five movies adapted from the original TV series.