Oh Jimmy!!
Thank you SO MUCH for the link to Sheldon Leonard's Interview segment on the "Archive of American Television" site. I had no idea they had anything up for Sheldon (as he is not listed in their long menu of interviewees). And hopefully they will add his entire interview to their site one day very soon! These "oral history" interviews from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences with the titans of the entertainment world (ones both in front of
and behind the cameras) are absolutely fascinating! And as Jimmy mentioned, they are totally mesmerizing - and when you finally look up at a clock, you realize that you have been spell-bound for hours, not just minutes.
The "find" that Jimmy ran across, was one segment of Sheldon's interview, posted in honor of his 100th Birthday last February. He discusses "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and many things, and the topic of "I SPY" starts about 13 and 1/2 minutes in .... as Jimmy mentioned, the interview is conducted by Sam Denoff, the talented writer/producer friend of Sheldon's, so the interview flows very well and feels like you are sitting there as part of their conversation.
Here's the link again:
http://tvinterviewsarchive.blogspot.com/search/label/%22I%20Spy%22
And another reason I am happy that Jimmy brought up this topic is that I had written to the Academy and Google Video (Ha!! Try contacting Google ... !!) because Part 6 of Earle Hagen's wonderful interview for the Archive has never been posted. A lovely lady from the Academy wrote back and sent me a transcript of Part 6, which includes a discussion of "I SPY" .... as does Parts 7 and 8 which are included on video. (I'll include the links for them below.)
So here is the section of Part 6 of
EARLE HAGEN's Interview where he discusses "I SPY" ... (Earle was interviewed in 1997 by Jon Burlingame, the well-known music historian and author).
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EARLE HAGEN being interviewed for the Archive of American Television
Q: Uh, let’s talk about I Spy, uh, which I think is a lot of people’s favorites of a lot of the things that you’ve done. Um, do you recall when Sheldon first mentioned that he might do a spy show to you? What the circumstances were about--
EH: Well, the, um, the circumstances, what started it was, uh, he said, I’m going to send you a letter. I said, Why? We talk every day. He said, I want to send you a letter. So he sent me a letter which said, Dear Mr. Hagen, uh, Mrs. Leonard and I are planning a scouting trip around the world. And as the musical director of the show-to-be called I Spy, we would like to have you and Mrs. Hagen accompany us, if you have the time. We, we just happened to have the time. Had this been--
Q: Had this been in 1965?
EH: 1963.
Q: ’63?
EH: Yeah. And we made a trip around the world. Uh, I don’t think you could duplicate that trip today because wherever we went, we were met by a car a driver and an interpreter who stayed with us for the length of time in the country. We started in Japan and we stayed, I think, three days in Tokyo and that was all. And we spent two weeks in Japan, but we went through the countryside, down into the southern island of Beppu, uh, we came back in through Tokyo and went up to, uh, Nikko. We really covered the territory. And we eventually wound up shooting eleven shows in Japan. From there we went to Hong Kong and we spent ten days in Hong Kong. The pilot was shot near Hong Kong. And, uh, I think we did another ten or eleven shows between Hong Kong and one, I think, in Taiwan. We went from there to Bangkok, to India, to, uh, all over India. To Israel, Greece, we made the Aegean trip.
We were fifty-two days on this trip. First class air fare, first class transportation, and car, driver, interpreter. And then we went to Rome, Paris, New York and home.
Q: How much of this was pure pleasure and how much of this was really musical research on your part?
EH: It was kind of both. Uh, wherever I went, I started picking up ethnic music.
Q: Picking up, how? Would you record it?
EH: We’d record it. No, no. Uh, I, I recorded it later when I went out with the company. But pre-preparation, I bought everything I could in the, in the native country. And had some pretty funny adventures doing that. Uh, when they company traveled, too, I had-- Uh, Dave Friedkin was, uh, uh, Mort Fine and Dave Friedkin were the writer/producers on the show. The line writer/producers. And Dave Friedkin was a graduate of Julliard. He was a violinist. And he was a musician, a good one. And we had, we had no problem in a meeting of the minds, you know? And I said, Dave, wherever you go, or if you’re not there, I want the company to pick me up the local ethnic records. I don’t know that I’m going to use them or not. But I’m sure going to use the influence. And that probably would be considered passé today, but I Spy was the first adventure/action show that was on television. That actually traveled. It was the first show that used a radio mike. Uh, and it wasn’t very well, uh, perfected yet, because we were picking up rock and roll stations and radar sweep and boats going through the harbor and everything. Uh, it was a very innovative show in every respect. ‘Cause the logistics of it were horrendous because we-- forget-- One, one summer, I went with the company to, uh, or I met the company in Marrakech. And, uh, we shot in Marrakech and then we came back to, uh, Casablanca and then we all got on a plane and we were going to fly to Greece. And we found out we couldn’t land there because the government, uh, there had been a military coup.
So we wind up in Portugal, in Estoril. And three days later, through a, a liaison agent, we were the first plane to land in Greece. And we were taken into custody. And, uh, we were, we were put up in a hotel over night. We had to get off the mainland the next day. And we just scattered everybody. We were going to shoot in Rhodes And some guys had suitcases with underwear and some guys had shirts and no underwear and everything got spread out. And we finally came together on Rhodes. The, uh, the logistics, the time frame of that show were just absolute unexplored territory, because even films that shot in foreign countries had preparation. This way, we were crossing borders where you couldn’t get the equipment across unless you paid somebody off. And you’d start running into the local custom. It was, uh, it was an exciting adventure from the day go.
Q: How, um, there’s a lot to ask here. Um, I’m going to begin, I think, by asking you-- With that many locations and, and that kind of, um, that kind of, seems like music preparation in a way, of you trying to do research, that kind of thing, didn’t you need more time and more, um, more help, even, to get these shows done and on the air? And did you ever know when you were going to see a show, if the, if the film was coming in from Hong Kong or Bombay?
EH: Well, once again, we had the, we had a company that had some discipline to it. We knew they were only going to deliver three shows a month. That, that was maximum. And we were prepared to finish three shows a month. As far as the preparation goes, when they went into a location, for example Japan, we knew they were going to shoot eleven shows, and we had the scripts. The scripts were all done beforehand. If there was pre-preparation, I had the opportunity to do it before the company left. And if there wasn’t pre-preparation, and there was post-preparation, and that was a job we just had to leave if we hadn’t an opportunity to do anything else. And what I did was, I took a country, like Japan, and I wrote a piece of thematic material to open the show with, that had that flavor. That was westernized, because that’s where our audience was. Uh, typical Japanese music would not satisfy a western ear, I don’t think. So it was westernized. Or at least, I took the liberty of doing that. And that piece of thematic material ran through those eleven Japanese shows. And when we went to another area, Rome, I did the same thing. Wherever we were locked into a country, we did ten shows a year in Mexico. There was a piece of material that opened up for Mexico that we used on a week to week basis. Although we recorded it over again, depending upon what combination we had. But we tried to keep, or I tried to keep a homogeneity going. And when Hugo came aboard to alternate shows with me and Friedhoffer, uh, we cross-used our material.
And here are Earle's video interviews for Parts 7 and 8, where he continues to discuss "I SPY" - including the episode "Tatia," which he said was the turning point in the melding of the relationship of Kelly and Scotty (and Culp and Cosby) - when the relationship really "happened" between them. He also discusses the wonderful music for "Home to Judgment" and "Mainly on the Plains."
Part 7:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8038770034537729574
and
Part 8:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8440114568111597091
and all the segments of Earle's Interview
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=Earle+Hagen
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There is one other "I SPY" related interview up on the Archive that is most interesting. It is with
RUTH ENGELHARDT who is the queen mother and holder of the keys to all things "I SPY" at the William Morris Agency. She is/was a lawyer/agent/executive/VP at the powerful agency, and involved in all the business dealings connected with the show. She is the one who refers to the inception of "I SPY" as "Sheldon's Folly," because of all the unknowns involved in trying to budget and plan for the show, with its unheard of "breaking new territory" concept of filming around the world.
She discusses "I SPY" in Part 5 of her interview and "The Cosby Show" in Part 6. I'm including the small descriptions that are posted on the site for these two sections.
Part 5: (The "I SPY" section starts about 11 minutes in ... )
Agent/Executive Ruth Engelhardt talks about the packaging of "I Spy."
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7902952960347576900
and
Part 6: (The "Cosby Show" section starts about 16 minutes in ... )
Agent/Executive Ruth Engelhardt speaks in great detail about the creation of one of the biggest hits of the 1980s, "The Cosby Show."
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6415998464976659660
Fascinating, fascinating "behind-the-scenes" stories and information .... !!! These are best viewed in several sittings. ENJOY!!!
As always,
Tatia
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