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Get Smart - Stars

Get Smart - Stars: Encyclopedia II - Get Smart - Stars

The series starred Don Adams as bumbling secret agent Maxwell Smart, Agent 86. Barbara Feldon's character (Agent 99) had no name; even after Smart married her, he (and everyone else) would always address her as "99". (In one episode she said that her name was "Susan Hilton" but she later claimed that it was an alias [1].) Smart and 99 worked for CONTROL, a secret U.S. Government spy agency. Together, the pair investigated and opposed various threats to the world while Smart's bumbling caused complications. However, at each story's cli ...

Get Smart: Encyclopedia II - Get Smart - Stars

Get Smart - Stars

The series starred Don Adams as bumbling secret agent Maxwell Smart, Agent 86. Barbara Feldon's character (Agent 99) had no name; even after Smart married her, he (and everyone else) would always address her as "99". (In one episode she said that her name was "Susan Hilton" but she later claimed that it was an alias [1].) Smart and 99 worked for CONTROL, a secret U.S. Government spy agency. Together, the pair investigated and opposed various threats to the world while Smart's bumbling caused complications. However, at each story's climax, Smart and 99 never fail to save the day. (In "The Nude Bomb", Max worked for the PITS — Provisional Intelligence Tactical Service, and by this time, his shoe phone was Touch Tone.)

The nemesis of CONTROL was KAOS, and KAOS' Vice President of Public Relations and Terror, Siegfried (Bernie Kopell), showed up often as Maxwell Smart's worst enemy.

Other characters included the Chief of CONTROL, whose first name was once revealed as Thaddeus but who was always addressed as Chief (Edward Platt); when the Chief was an agent, they used letters and he was Agent Q; Hymie the Robot (Dick Gautier), a powerful android who tended to take orders too literally; Agent 13 (Dave Ketchum), who was forever being stationed inside weird places such as mailboxes, washing machines, lockers, and other objects; Agent 44 (Victor French), who regularly suffered the same fate as Agent 13; Agent Larrabee (Robert Karvelas), the Chief's assistant; and Shtarker (King Moody), Siegfried's chief henchman.

The number 86 for Smart was presumably chosen because it was bartenders' slang for not serving an inebriated customer, having been derived from clerks' slang for "We're all out of the item ordered." One explanation of the origin of that usage is that 86 was rhyming slang for "nix". [2] (In theatrical and movie-making slang, to "86" something -- a prop or a light, for instance -- is to remove or "strike" it. Whether this, or the similar bartending use of the term, has any relevance to the number chosen for Maxwell Smart, is speculation.)