It didn’t have Tom Cruise dangling from an airplane — it didn’t even have Peter Graves thumbing by means of IMF dossiers in his condo — however the Mission: Unattainable TV pilot nonetheless managed to mild the fuse on one in every of Hollywood’s largest motion franchises.
The brainchild of Rawhide alum Bruce Geller, the 1966–73 CBS sequence blended two of the period’s favourite film genres — spy thrillers and heist dramas — right into a exactly executed hour of espionage, full with self-destructing tape recorders, necktie cameras and rubber masks that someway made Martin Landau seem like whichever fictional Japanese European despot wanted toppling that week.
Every Unattainable Mission Drive member introduced a particular experience and simply sufficient cool to go away a mark: Landau’s chameleonic Rollin Hand (changed by Leonard Nimoy in season 4), Greg Morris as gadget genius Barney Collier, Peter Lupus as strongman Willy Armitage and Barbara Bain as Cinnamon Carter, an ex-fashion mannequin whose fashionable poise made spying seem like a photograph shoot.
The group’s first chief, Daniel Briggs, was performed by Steven Hill, who left after season one when Friday evening reshoots conflicted together with his Orthodox Jewish observance. Graves, as Jim Phelps, took over. However the present’s breakout star might need been its theme music, that jazzy, bongo-driven earworm by Lalo Schifrin. As a result of actually, what’s a mission with out that music?
This story appeared within the Might 21 situation of The Hollywood Reporter journal. Click here to subscribe.