SWC75
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In the 60’s, just as British music ‘invaded’ America and British films and performers invaded the movies, so British TV series started to show up on American television.
The first was a show that was always called “Danger Man” in Britain but was re-named “Secret Agent” in America. (In other countries it was ”Destination: Danger” or simply “John Drake”.) It starred Patrick McGoohan as John Drake, a down-to-earth somewhat realistic secret agent. The series began just prior to the James Bond craze, although Ian Fleming was brought in in the early days to consult on it. His ideas were mostly dismissed as McGoohan objected to excessive gunplay and womanizing. He saw Drake as a “Lone Wolf” character who had his own set of principles and could be rebellious at times. In the original half hour series, 1960-61, Drake worked for NATO. In the hour long reboot of the series, he worked for the British Secret Service, (called M9 in the show). This show was broadcast from 1965-68. Both version were shown in the US but the 1960-61 series didn’t undergo the title and musical change the latter one did.
Edwin “Ted” Astley wrote the themes for both versions of “Danger Man”. For the 1960-61 series, it was simply called “Danger Man Theme”:
Opening:
Closing: Danger Man Closing
For the 1965-68 series he composed a new theme called “High Wire”:
Tv Theme Danger Man (Full Version)
CBS wasn’t satisfied with Astley rather wry theme and wanted a full-blown rock and rock sound. So they went to “Lou Adler, who managed then hot rocker Johnny Rivers, for the new theme. Adler asked two of his staff writers, Phil Sloan and Steve Barri…to compose the song. According to Barri, the never even saw the program: “We were just trying to write something that fit what we were told the show was like They said it was like a TV version of James Bond…Basically, we were thinking we were writing a James Bond theme…A further influence was the guitar sound of the original ‘James Bond Theme’. We wanted to come up with a guitar hook for the beginning, since the Bond theme has a guitar hook”” (from “TV’s Greatest Hits”) Here is the original “James Bond Theme”:
James Bond 007 Theme Tune (original)
And here is what Sloan and Bari came up with for “Secret Agent”:
Secret Agent - Intro/Outro . Opening & Closing, with Patrick McGoohan
Here is a longer version, with multiple choruses and a guitar solo:
JOHNNY RIVERS - Secret Agent Man 1966
It contains two errors: McGoohan didn’t do any “swinging on the Riviera or “kissing persuasive lips” and they didn’t take away his name and give him a number until his next series.
The next series was called “The Prisoner” and became a cult classic. McGoohan plays a secret agent who angrily quits the job for unrevealed reasons, hoping to live a life of freedom doing whatever he wants but instead finds himself kidnapped and sent to a bizarre prison, (which he may be imagining). Fans assumed the unnamed hero was John Drake but everyone connected with the series, especially McGoohan, denied it. Ron Grainer wrote the theme:
The Prisoner Opening Theme
Grainer also wrote the theme for “Man in a Suitcase”, which was the favorite show of a good friend who passed away some years ago so in his honor:
Opening theme from Man In A Suitcase
Astley also wrote the music for another popular show, The Saint, based on Leslie Charteris ‘ famous character, who had been the subject of novels dating back to 1928 and played by George Sanders in several movies from the 1940’s and Vincent Price on the radio. He also wrote brief musical theme for the Saint which was used in those shows and then later adopted by Astley for the TV show starring Roger Moore, which became a big international hit:
The Saint (1966) Opening Theme - The Queen's Ransom
Astley wrote other themes for shows filmed in Britain that were intended for the international market. One of his best was for “The Baron”, starring Steve Forrest:
The Baron Theme
But the biggest hit of all Britain was “The Avengers”, (no relation to Marvel Comics), a show that was on and off for two decades and kept reinventing itself and its music to go along with it. This show started out as something called “Police Surgeon”, which was about a doctor, played by Ian Hendry, who consulted on police cases, (sort of a British “Quincy”. That show failed after one season but the handsome Hendry got plenty of fan mail so they created a new show for him as a doctor whose nurse/fiancé gets killed by crooks. An agent of a mysterious government agency named John Steed, (Patrick MacNee) shows up saying he’s after the game gang and perhaps they could collaborate on bringing them to justice. Together they “avenge” the death of Dr. David Keel’s fiancé, (the answer to the trivia question: who were the Avengers avenging?) and agree to work on other cases.
Hendry left the show after one year trying to become a movies star, (he didn’t), and Steed was given two new partners, a signer named Venus Smith, (Julie Stevens), who knew what was going on in the underworld and provided Peter Gunn-like musical interludes and an idealistic woman scientist, Cathy Gale, (Honor Blackman) who was a font of scientific information but who had also, in her world travels, learned a thing or two about the martial arts. The producers weren’t sure how people would react to this self-possessed, aggressive woman. They were shocked when she became the most popular character, especially among men.
The plots of these early shows were very nourish. The stars wore trench coats. The villains were petty criminals or realistic spies. The show itself was black and white and on video tape, which means it was studio bound with long theatrical scenes. To supply the downbeat music, the appropriately named jazzman Johnny Dankworth was hired, with this result:
The Avengers: Season One ~ Opening & Closing Titles HD
Eventually the show was boiled down to Just John Steed and Cathy Gale. It was huge hit in Britain but was impossible to import to America because British videotape has a different number of lines than American video tape. Then Honor Blackman left to become a movie star, (and did, for one film, anyway: “Goldfinger”).
American producer Aaron Spelling had seen an episode of the show when visiting London and offered Blackman a chance to star in an American TV show he would create about a female private eye. She turned him down. Spelling refused to give up on the idea and looked for an American actress that reminded him of Blackman. He decided on Anne Francis, who became “Honey West”:
Honey West Open 1965 Anne Francis ABC
That score came from Joseph Mullendore, a veteran TV music man who had bene a part of Herschel Burke Gilbert’s orchestra, (he wrote the themes for many shows, including “The Rifleman” and “Burke’s Law”). Naturally there was an LP, (“on of the best big band soundtracks of the era, per “TV’s Biggest Hits”), with a very different version of the theme:
Honey West Theme Song 1965
I think I know what episode Spelling saw: there’s an episode of “the Avengers called “Death of a Great Dane” (11/17/62) about a reclusive, Howard Hughes-like billionaire who has died. The people around him conspire to pretend he is still alive so they can run his business empire to their own purposes. There’s an episode of Spelling’s series Burke’s Law, “Who Killed the Richest Man in the World?” (11/11/64) in which the reclusive title character is shot by a sniper and then impersonated by his butler, (Ricardo Montelban). In a Honey West episode called “King of the Mountain”, Honey West goes undercover as a nurse to investigation the health of a reclusive billionaire who hasn’t been seen in public for a decade. Guess what she finds? Of course The Avengers could hardly complain as they re-did Death of a Great Dane themselves, as “The f50,000 Breakfast” on 10/14/67.
This latter episode was part of the re-boot of the show in the wake of Blackman’s departure. They tried a blonde actress named Elizabeth Sheppard to replace her but it didn’t work out. Then they went to the Royal Shakespeare Company for a young actress named Diana Rigg who wanted to make more money. They gave her character an interesting name. The producer demanded that the character have “man-appeal”. So they decided to name her “Emma Peel”. They also decided to follow the James Bond lead and create imaginative, purposely unrealistic plots about masterminds trying to take over the country or the world. Elements of comedy spoofing British stereotypes were incorporated and John Steed and Emma peel presided over it with a cool aplomb reminiscent of “The Thin Man”.
The old Dankworth theme was hardly appropriate for such a show so Laurie Johnson, “an old hand at film and TV music”. He created a driving, uplifting, jazzy score that made you want to watch and enjoy the show:
The Avengers Series Season 5 Opening Titles and Closing Credits
The show was also done on film, which allowed it to be filmed out of doors and edited like a film and showed around the world, where it became a huge international hit. Rigg left after two years to do movies but mostly to return to the stage, where her accomplishments got her name Dame Diana Rigg. She was replaced by a Canadian actress, Linda Thorson. But tastes were changing and the spy craze was over the show as canceled after a year of Thorson. By that time it had morphed into a comedy, more comparable to Get Smart than James Bond or The Man From Uncle.
But it wasn’t forgotten. There was a stage version of the show and eventually a theatrical movie. And there was the New Avengers, still another reboot of the show but tuned to the more violent shows of the 1970’s. Johnson created a new theme for this show, using only the opening bars of his earlier theme and then replacing it with an unpleasant, militaristic theme full of snare drums and “moog” music:
The Laurie Johnson Orchestra The new avengers theme
I obviously prefer the earlier Johnson theme. I love this version of it, adapted for the early Thorson episodes:
The Avengers TITULOS Tara King Linda Thorson 1)
The first was a show that was always called “Danger Man” in Britain but was re-named “Secret Agent” in America. (In other countries it was ”Destination: Danger” or simply “John Drake”.) It starred Patrick McGoohan as John Drake, a down-to-earth somewhat realistic secret agent. The series began just prior to the James Bond craze, although Ian Fleming was brought in in the early days to consult on it. His ideas were mostly dismissed as McGoohan objected to excessive gunplay and womanizing. He saw Drake as a “Lone Wolf” character who had his own set of principles and could be rebellious at times. In the original half hour series, 1960-61, Drake worked for NATO. In the hour long reboot of the series, he worked for the British Secret Service, (called M9 in the show). This show was broadcast from 1965-68. Both version were shown in the US but the 1960-61 series didn’t undergo the title and musical change the latter one did.
Edwin “Ted” Astley wrote the themes for both versions of “Danger Man”. For the 1960-61 series, it was simply called “Danger Man Theme”:
Opening:
Closing: Danger Man Closing
For the 1965-68 series he composed a new theme called “High Wire”:
Tv Theme Danger Man (Full Version)
CBS wasn’t satisfied with Astley rather wry theme and wanted a full-blown rock and rock sound. So they went to “Lou Adler, who managed then hot rocker Johnny Rivers, for the new theme. Adler asked two of his staff writers, Phil Sloan and Steve Barri…to compose the song. According to Barri, the never even saw the program: “We were just trying to write something that fit what we were told the show was like They said it was like a TV version of James Bond…Basically, we were thinking we were writing a James Bond theme…A further influence was the guitar sound of the original ‘James Bond Theme’. We wanted to come up with a guitar hook for the beginning, since the Bond theme has a guitar hook”” (from “TV’s Greatest Hits”) Here is the original “James Bond Theme”:
James Bond 007 Theme Tune (original)
And here is what Sloan and Bari came up with for “Secret Agent”:
Secret Agent - Intro/Outro . Opening & Closing, with Patrick McGoohan
Here is a longer version, with multiple choruses and a guitar solo:
JOHNNY RIVERS - Secret Agent Man 1966
It contains two errors: McGoohan didn’t do any “swinging on the Riviera or “kissing persuasive lips” and they didn’t take away his name and give him a number until his next series.
The next series was called “The Prisoner” and became a cult classic. McGoohan plays a secret agent who angrily quits the job for unrevealed reasons, hoping to live a life of freedom doing whatever he wants but instead finds himself kidnapped and sent to a bizarre prison, (which he may be imagining). Fans assumed the unnamed hero was John Drake but everyone connected with the series, especially McGoohan, denied it. Ron Grainer wrote the theme:
The Prisoner Opening Theme
Grainer also wrote the theme for “Man in a Suitcase”, which was the favorite show of a good friend who passed away some years ago so in his honor:
Opening theme from Man In A Suitcase
Astley also wrote the music for another popular show, The Saint, based on Leslie Charteris ‘ famous character, who had been the subject of novels dating back to 1928 and played by George Sanders in several movies from the 1940’s and Vincent Price on the radio. He also wrote brief musical theme for the Saint which was used in those shows and then later adopted by Astley for the TV show starring Roger Moore, which became a big international hit:
The Saint (1966) Opening Theme - The Queen's Ransom
Astley wrote other themes for shows filmed in Britain that were intended for the international market. One of his best was for “The Baron”, starring Steve Forrest:
The Baron Theme
But the biggest hit of all Britain was “The Avengers”, (no relation to Marvel Comics), a show that was on and off for two decades and kept reinventing itself and its music to go along with it. This show started out as something called “Police Surgeon”, which was about a doctor, played by Ian Hendry, who consulted on police cases, (sort of a British “Quincy”. That show failed after one season but the handsome Hendry got plenty of fan mail so they created a new show for him as a doctor whose nurse/fiancé gets killed by crooks. An agent of a mysterious government agency named John Steed, (Patrick MacNee) shows up saying he’s after the game gang and perhaps they could collaborate on bringing them to justice. Together they “avenge” the death of Dr. David Keel’s fiancé, (the answer to the trivia question: who were the Avengers avenging?) and agree to work on other cases.
Hendry left the show after one year trying to become a movies star, (he didn’t), and Steed was given two new partners, a signer named Venus Smith, (Julie Stevens), who knew what was going on in the underworld and provided Peter Gunn-like musical interludes and an idealistic woman scientist, Cathy Gale, (Honor Blackman) who was a font of scientific information but who had also, in her world travels, learned a thing or two about the martial arts. The producers weren’t sure how people would react to this self-possessed, aggressive woman. They were shocked when she became the most popular character, especially among men.
The plots of these early shows were very nourish. The stars wore trench coats. The villains were petty criminals or realistic spies. The show itself was black and white and on video tape, which means it was studio bound with long theatrical scenes. To supply the downbeat music, the appropriately named jazzman Johnny Dankworth was hired, with this result:
The Avengers: Season One ~ Opening & Closing Titles HD
Eventually the show was boiled down to Just John Steed and Cathy Gale. It was huge hit in Britain but was impossible to import to America because British videotape has a different number of lines than American video tape. Then Honor Blackman left to become a movie star, (and did, for one film, anyway: “Goldfinger”).
American producer Aaron Spelling had seen an episode of the show when visiting London and offered Blackman a chance to star in an American TV show he would create about a female private eye. She turned him down. Spelling refused to give up on the idea and looked for an American actress that reminded him of Blackman. He decided on Anne Francis, who became “Honey West”:
Honey West Open 1965 Anne Francis ABC
That score came from Joseph Mullendore, a veteran TV music man who had bene a part of Herschel Burke Gilbert’s orchestra, (he wrote the themes for many shows, including “The Rifleman” and “Burke’s Law”). Naturally there was an LP, (“on of the best big band soundtracks of the era, per “TV’s Biggest Hits”), with a very different version of the theme:
Honey West Theme Song 1965
I think I know what episode Spelling saw: there’s an episode of “the Avengers called “Death of a Great Dane” (11/17/62) about a reclusive, Howard Hughes-like billionaire who has died. The people around him conspire to pretend he is still alive so they can run his business empire to their own purposes. There’s an episode of Spelling’s series Burke’s Law, “Who Killed the Richest Man in the World?” (11/11/64) in which the reclusive title character is shot by a sniper and then impersonated by his butler, (Ricardo Montelban). In a Honey West episode called “King of the Mountain”, Honey West goes undercover as a nurse to investigation the health of a reclusive billionaire who hasn’t been seen in public for a decade. Guess what she finds? Of course The Avengers could hardly complain as they re-did Death of a Great Dane themselves, as “The f50,000 Breakfast” on 10/14/67.
This latter episode was part of the re-boot of the show in the wake of Blackman’s departure. They tried a blonde actress named Elizabeth Sheppard to replace her but it didn’t work out. Then they went to the Royal Shakespeare Company for a young actress named Diana Rigg who wanted to make more money. They gave her character an interesting name. The producer demanded that the character have “man-appeal”. So they decided to name her “Emma Peel”. They also decided to follow the James Bond lead and create imaginative, purposely unrealistic plots about masterminds trying to take over the country or the world. Elements of comedy spoofing British stereotypes were incorporated and John Steed and Emma peel presided over it with a cool aplomb reminiscent of “The Thin Man”.
The old Dankworth theme was hardly appropriate for such a show so Laurie Johnson, “an old hand at film and TV music”. He created a driving, uplifting, jazzy score that made you want to watch and enjoy the show:
The Avengers Series Season 5 Opening Titles and Closing Credits
The show was also done on film, which allowed it to be filmed out of doors and edited like a film and showed around the world, where it became a huge international hit. Rigg left after two years to do movies but mostly to return to the stage, where her accomplishments got her name Dame Diana Rigg. She was replaced by a Canadian actress, Linda Thorson. But tastes were changing and the spy craze was over the show as canceled after a year of Thorson. By that time it had morphed into a comedy, more comparable to Get Smart than James Bond or The Man From Uncle.
But it wasn’t forgotten. There was a stage version of the show and eventually a theatrical movie. And there was the New Avengers, still another reboot of the show but tuned to the more violent shows of the 1970’s. Johnson created a new theme for this show, using only the opening bars of his earlier theme and then replacing it with an unpleasant, militaristic theme full of snare drums and “moog” music:
The Laurie Johnson Orchestra The new avengers theme
I obviously prefer the earlier Johnson theme. I love this version of it, adapted for the early Thorson episodes:
The Avengers TITULOS Tara King Linda Thorson 1)
