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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2023-09-26 01:33 by Mongoose.

Another man from U.N.C.L.E. gone…
Sayonara my 60s.

R.I.P. David McCallum AKA Illya Kuryakin

Quote
RisingStone
Another man from U.N.C.L.E. gone…
Sayonara my 60s.

R.I.P. David McCallum AKA Illya Kuryakin

Indeed. Quite a show.

Older readers will know that one feature of the U.N.C.L.E. HQ was that doors opened as you walked up to them.....

In about 1971 I worked in a big company and we were moving our big, and I mean really big, computers out of central London to a country town. We knew that we'd have computer operators (do they still exist on big mainframes?) wheeling trolley loads of magnetic tape, and then state of the art 40Mb (not a typo) "hard disc" drives. They'd be moving them in and out of the computer room.

We actually found a supplier who had things that opened the doors in U.N.C.L.E style.

I remember asking them where they got the idea. And they very candidly said that they (too) watched the series and thought that the door thing was great, so they set about "inventing" how to do it.

Because they actually worked using a sort of dongle thing that operators carried around, an added feature was that the exit door had an inverted facility. It would LOCK if anyone tried to get through with a dongle. Thus making sure that they never left the building, but more importantly that they were left behind to recharge for the next time that person was on shift. (You could zone them as well).

--
Captain Corella
60 Years a Fan

ROCKMAN

RIP David. I was too young when that showed aired, but always wanted to watch it. I'll see if it's streaming somewhere.

In other news, I used to work with his son at EMI. Really nice guy

Wasn't looking too good, but I was feeling real well.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2023-09-26 15:27 by CindyC.

I always associate him (and absolutely fabulous Joanna Lumley) with "Sapphire And Steel" - since that English horror science fiction series was really frightening for a kid of my age at the time (late 70's/early 80's). My whole generation recalls that experience.

RIP David.

- Doxa



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2023-09-26 09:48 by Doxa.

RIP

I first saw him star in the TV serie The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
A small man but a BIG person and a great actor.

sad news, I was a big fan of the Man from u.n.c.l.e.

Never watched uncle, but I liked his role as a medical examiner in in NCIS.

RIP

Very sad to hear of the passing of David.

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. series was de riguer viewing for a generation of baby boomer schoolkids and gave rise to a whole collection of replica guns, bubblegum cards and books.

I was so taken by the music from The Man From U.N.C.L.E. that I saved up my pocket money and bought the soundtrack album - my first ever album.

The series was absolutely huge and followed in the wake of the early James Bond films at a time when the world was still in the grip of cold war paranoia. And it made it even more unusual to have a Russian agent fighting alongside an American in a bid to keep world peace.

After the series ended in 1968 things went quiet for David but he returned to UK screens in 1979 in the supernatural/sci-fi series Sapphire And Steele and then rekindled his career properly in NCIS. R.I.P. David.

Good to see some folks on here I haven't seen lately - Mongoose, CindyC, Doxa, Urban Steel, etc.

Dig that









They had both a backstage pass and a licence to kill

Quite cool.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2023-09-26 19:13 by The Joker.

I am with you there, Silver Dagger, I loved The Man From U.N.C.L.E. it was such a cool show. I have the replica gun and bubble gum cards!

In the 60's, McCallum was considered the coolest spy on TV by all the kids at my school because he had long hair!

He hosted the music film "The Big TNT Show" and if he wasn't exactly a Rock Star, he was sort of Rock Star adjacent.

When I was nine I wanted to be David McCallum.

RIP.

Quote
RisingStone
Another man from U.N.C.L.E. gone…
Sayonara my 60s.

R.I.P. David McCallum AKA Illya Kuryakin

Yeah. I think of "The Great Escape" as well. A very pleasant actor to watch. On NCIS David McCallum's character and Mark Harmon's character go back a long way. In one episode Harmon's character was asked what McCallum's character looked like when he was young. Harmon responded "Illya Kuryakin." I wonder how many people did not get the reference.

THE AUSTRALIAN --- 27 September 2023



ROCKMAN

Very sad, David lived a very long life. Sometimes I watch Man from Uncle. A great actor. RIP David and thanks.

It really hits home how fully boomers have retired/been purged from mainstream media when in MSN's article announcing the death of David McCallum I had to read to the 13th paragraph before finding any mention of Illya Kuryakin or U.N.C.L.E.

I had to read "Ducky" Mallard god knows how many times first. Never knew who TF Ducky Mallard was, never having watched NCIS.

But what an impact The Man From U.N.C.L.E. had on me growing up. I was too young to see the first James Bond movies - Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, and Thunderball - when they came out. But for very many of us in the age bracket, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. truly became our alternative spy world.

Had my toy gun set and triangular badge. Plastic molded figures... anybody remember them?... maybe 5 inches tall, like oversized army men (the Illya figure toted "the gun"). Trading cards. Dell comic books. The paperback book series, which ran to 23(?) books. When in 5th or 6th grade we were assigned to write fiction, mine was a barely disguised UNCLE adventure. Solo, Kuryakin, Waverly, and even April Dancer were burned into my brain. Amazing the degree that can happen when something hits you right at just the right age.

I had no idea Illya... I mean David McCallum... was 90. A major tv idol of my youth, gone. Ouch.

****
I'm down in Virginia
with your Cousin Lou



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2023-10-01 06:16 by TheBluesHadaBaby.

All the girls at school (me included) were in love with Illya. Thanks Mr. McCallum for a long and enjoyable career.

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Green Lady
All the girls at school (me included) were in love with Illya. ...

I was 9 to 13 when it aired, and I know this was a massive factor in the huge popularity the show achieved. Lots of girls in my classes those four years, I was keenly aware, watched the action/ adventure show... for Illya. And it was that very large additional female viewership that I'm sure was what put it way over the top, from being merely a popular show, into becoming a cultural phenomenon.

While Robert Vaughn's Napoleon Solo surely was no chopped liver to the ladies, make no mistake, the younger females, at least, were tuning in for David McCallum. He became equivalent to a rock star. Teen mags ran full page ads for big wall posters of him, in his black secret agent turtleneck, arms crossed, gaze calm and unassuming from under the mop of blonde hair,

Here's the difference... and tv and music have figured it out well since then. Robert Vaughn's Solo projected an always-on, up front, sly and sometimes even smirky sexual assertiveness towards female characters, and through them vicariously to female viewers. The appeal of David McCallum's Kuryakin was the opposite. He wasn't a shark, a predator; instead he was the good-looking but nice, unaggressive, thoughtful and considerate male who didn't assume all females should want him. Which made school-age girls gravitate to Illya, the safe, sexually unthreatening heartthrob, over the always-on-the-make, presumptuous and vain one.

I have to think MGM initially didn't realize what they had in David McCallum's Illya when creating the show, didn't foresee that he would become the bigger sex symbol and bigger draw for female viewers than its more James Bond-based, presumptive show lead. If they had, surely they would have titled it what it de facto turned out to be: The Men From U.N.C.L.E.

If there were "life size" Robert Vaughn wall posters, too, I don't recall them. I do know the poster they sold a lot of for bedroom walls was the David McCallum "Illya" one. (Also I seriously doubt there's ever been a Ducky Mallard one.)

The show was very good, for the era, and would have been a hit even had someone else played Illya Kuryakin. It was David McCallum in the role, however, where MGM unexpectedly struck gold, and it was his appeal to viewers that boosted it to that rare cultural phenomenon level of success.

RIP David "Illya Kuryakin" McCallum.

Quote
Rockman

He looks like a young Putin.

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Koen
He looks like a young Putin.

Mmmm... more like a younger Vlad Putin might look a bit like 1960s David McCallum if you switched out Putin's cold snake eyes for McCallum's soulful baby blues.

But that's not all that off the mark when you consider MGM (James Bond movie people took part in the creation of the tv show) was casting a young Brit who they hoped could pass as a Russian spy... just a good-guy spy. McCallum's looks as well as his low key, fairly unexpressive -- he smiled, but never smiled big, and watchful interpretation of his character did both fit what we thought of as Russian.

I forget who they cast as Illya in the 2010s Man from U.N.C.L.E. movie, but the guy wasn't anywhere as convincing as David McCallum had been... he didn't feel like Illya at all. Henry Cavill as Napoleon Solo worked much better IMO. (But Alicia Vikander pretty much stole that movie from both of them.)

In the late 1960s, btw, the market for spy genre drama was so big, they spliced together some two-episode U.N.C.L.E. story arcs and released them in theaters as movies. These got wider release in Europe than the U.S. Someplace I've got a cool Italian movie poster for one of them.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2023-09-29 16:37 by TheBluesHadaBaby.