(Login tatialoringnw) from IP address 98.233.225.147
September 15th, 1965 ....
43 years ago, I SPY hit the airwaves !!
( 43 years ago !!! ??? )
And we're still here, keeping the flame alive for this show that we love
- that has captured our admiration and imagination way beyond the norm ....
Bravo I SPY - and to Kelly and Scotty, Culp and Cosby, Sheldon Leonard, David Friedkin, Mort Fine, Fouad Said, and the wonderful Earle Hagen - and to all the people who helped make this show such a "classic" for us to enjoy over all this time .....
Buddies, friendship, trust, exotic locations, spies, travel, adventure, humor, romance, ad-libs, good guys vs. bad guys, intrigue, suspense, deception, great guest stars, coolness personified - cool clothes, cool sunglasses, cool everything, magnificent music, and Chuang-Tzu in that red robe of his - what more could anyone ask for?? ( ... O.K., O.K. this is "Tatia's Tribute" after all !! )
This is the first time you have ever disappointed me!
Your photo collage of the show only illustrated ONE half-dressed Kelly. What kind of celebration can I have with only ONE half-dressed photo of Kelly? Surely, based on the series that is not a valid representation of the actual half-dressed Kellys we were privileged to ogle, that is, see in three years. I would have thought you would have stayed true to the show on this momentous occasion and put in more half-dressed Kellys. I just can't open up my bottle of champagne for just one shot of a half-dressed spy. It's like false advertising.
Yeah, yeah, the buddy thing and the intrigue thing and the good guy/bad guy thing was good, yeah, but NOT as good as half-dressed Kelly! I mean, we need our priorities straight here, for the celebration to really cover what ALL fans loved about the show.
What kind of celebration can I have with only ONE half-dressed photo of Kelly? .... I would have thought you would have stayed true to the show on this momentous occasion and put in more half-dressed Kellys. I just can't open up my bottle of champagne for just one shot of a half-dressed spy.
Well, Mona ... if I can help you celebrate I SPY's Anniversary in
a more enjoyable way, I'll certainly try my best.
As it so happens, I was planning at some time to do a "shirtless" QUIZ for the FORUM ... With this in mind, I made a file and whenever I happened across a "shirtless" photo of Kelly or Scotty in our discussions of different episodes, I'd pop it into the file. Ummm ... errrr ..... well that "little" file seems to have grown and grown.
I always thought Capt. Kirk was the leader of taking off his shirt, and certainly Jim West did his part, too. But, boy, oh, boy - Kelly, it turns out, seems to have taken off his shirt in just about every episode. And Scotty was not that far behind, either.
So all I can deduce from this wardrobe statement is that they must have kept the studios very warm, or they did lots of shooting outside in hot weather, or the guys were personally doing their part in helping to save the wardrobe department's budget ... "good samaritans" that they are!!
And this little explanation so far, is just so you don't think that Tatia and her delicate sensibilities had any prurient pleasure connected to her collecting here. It was all definitely a scholarly pursuit.
ENJOY Mona ... and .... for everyone else who might care for this sort of thing!!
But first - a few caveats you must follow to the letter before scrolling downward ....
1. Fasten Your Seat Belt
2. Get out the smelling salts ....
3. And have your portable defibrillator at the ready
No, better yet, check out the heavy-duty ones at your closest hospital ....
O.K. The ALTERNATE
I SPY ANNIVERSARY COLLAGE
O.K. so you can go enjoy your Champagne now, Mona ....
As luck would have it, I too was about to respond to Mona’s plea . . . with many of the same shots. Here are a few others instead, just to round out the celebration.
...that Mona is in a serious trance due to viewing some photographs which were listed on this Forum. As a home health care worker hired to care for her during this difficult time, I am reporting that I have cleaned up the empty champagne bottles littering the floor of her study and put her to bed with her still clutching a pair of white sailor type shoes. She is quite ill and cannot seem to stop mumbling the non-word "Wonderfulness" and the name "Kelly", although searching her computer address book I could not find anyone of that name she actually knows.
I hope that in the next couple of days Mona will have recovered enough to return to work. Please do not put up any more photos which may reinitiate her condition. Thank you.
But as long as she’s out cold, it can’t possibly hurt to post a few non-I Spy pics too.
Regards—
This message has been edited by BulwerLytton from IP address 76.191.192.53 on Sep 17, 2008 7:52 PM This message has been edited by BulwerLytton from IP address 76.191.192.53 on Sep 17, 2008 7:20 PM
Tatia, I’m glad you keep track of anniversaries and birthdays and stuff like that for us, because otherwise they could easily slip by unacknowledged. I completely forgot about the I Spy anniversary, and now run the risk of being asked to stop wearing my Persol sunglasses indoors, as punishment.
I feel Mona’s pain, but one shirtless Kelly goes a long way with me, so no complaint on that account. Your Kelly-Scotty collage is wonderful. My mother was remiss in warning me to avert my eyes when Kelly went after those girls. So I took notes. Not that I ever found a way to put the information to use.
Forty-three years sounds like a long time, but in that odd way that the perception of the past telescopes as you get older, the beginning of I Spy doesn’t seem any more shrouded in antiquity now than it did in the seventies.
It must be tough to be a (straight) guy and like "I Spy". I don't think you can quite experience the full flavor of the show as some of us gals can. It's like having this beautiful birthday cake all decorated and lit with candles. You blow the candles out, and carve the cake up, but then are not allowed to taste it.
You really know how to hurt a (straight) guy Mona. In pointing out that I can never “have a taste of the cake”, you have touched upon my secret sorrow, but of course I forgive you. To be honest, I happily grooved on I Spy for decades without a clue that I was, like, missing something. It never occurred to me that the sharply chiseled pectorals of Culp or Cosby would arouse the prurient interest of anyone (female, male, gay, straight, animal, vegetable or mineral). I see now that it was a colossal failure of my imagination. Just one of my many blind spots.
I didn’t perceive Robert Culp as the type to raise the temperature of women, at least relative to some of his acting contemporaries. He seemed too much his own man, too cerebral and unique, appealing to a select group of men and women with taste and discernment (like me, to pick a random example). While I didn’t lie awake at night stressing out over it, I guessed it was his lack of raw sex appeal that kept him out of the upper echelon of his profession, though he has certainly done very well for himself, given his “handicap”.
But then I started poking around this forum and began to hear faint but unmistakable rhythmic heavy breathing coming from all directions. My first reaction was, “what the hell is that?!” Then I began to grasp its meaning, understand, and finally embrace it, even though I will forever be on the outside looking in. And there you have my sorrow.
However, there are compensations. There are always compensations. I can happily call up images of bathing suit clad guest stars like Diana Hyland, Sarah Marshall, Vivienne Ventura, Diana Muldaur and others (I’ll stop before I have to start breathing into a paper bag), and feel better about myself. Tragically, none of them ever appeared “shirtless” but, as we know, life is not fair.
Jimmy
This message has been edited by jimmymitchell from IP address 209.223.125.1 on Sep 17, 2008 7:45 PM
I’ve got to get my eyes checked—I could have sworn you wrote something about “lack of raw sex appeal” in reference to Culp. But that isn’t possible. It must have said “sack of raw sex appeal”—which frankly isn’t very polite, Jimmy, accurate though it may be.
Since B-L already wrote about the shared confusion over your line "lack of raw sex appeal", and noted the typo which no doubt occurred, there is no need for me to add that saying Culp lacks sex appeal is like writing that Everest, "lacks the tallness of a really big mountain...", but there I am doing so, anyway.
However, in a simpatico relationship connection, I will tender comparative sorrow over my utter inability to look at Diana Muldaur and see anything but a fairly attractive woman, I suppose, I guess.
I do find it very amusing that it never dawned on you that a plethora of women have historically found Culp incredibly appealing, given that even as a straight guy you could see he is tall, dark, handsome, well physiqued, broad shouldered, and, need I repeat, handsome. I mean, I don't give Naomi Campbell a thought a year, but I can see she's beautiful and imagine men would have some naughty daydreams about her now and then. Considering that "I Spy" SPECIFICALLY played upon Culp's handsomeness and his attraction to women as a spy, I think it's very funny you didn't concoct a simple deduction such as, "Huh, I guess even the writers and directors thought women would be REALLY attracted to Culp, since a good percentage of the story lines of the show had women attracted to him."
Anyway, thanks for taking all this for the good fun it's meant to be. I really appreciate your writing style, too.
As for you, B-L, and THAT walking the beach photo of Culp with Frances; woman, you are going to do this frail child in, one day.
(Hey, it’s not my fault she happens to appear in a picture with a scantily clad Kelly. Mere coincidence, I assure you.)
I assume Jimmy selected the particular females he named because they sported bathing suits and not because they were necessarily the objects of his desire. There are certainly much more attractive actresses throughout I Spy than Diana Muldaur, for example. Or so it seems to me. Just offhand, I’d say Vera Miles, Pilar Seurat, Eartha Kitt, France Nuyen, Laura Devon . . . and that’s only the first season.
But then we’ve just had ample proof that men and women see these things very differently.
) 
