It was the series that brought a bit of Bond into the American living room. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was the hip spy show long before Jennifer Garner put on a wig or Chuck got embedded. Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn) and his mop-topped Russian compadre, Illya Kuryakin (David McCallum), beat up villains, heated up vixens and captured a nation of crazed teenage fans in the swinging '60s. But the series would go out on a fizzle rather than a bang as its fourth season ended early due to lackluster scripts and changing times (it was replaced in the lineup by Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In). There was one TV reunion movie that gained high ratings, but no sequel. Today both actors enjoy ongoing success: Vaughn in his AMC series Hustle and McCallum with NCIS.
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For veteran actor David McCallum, it's been a long, strange trip from The Man from U.N.C.L.E. to playing a car named C.A.R.T.E.R., on Disney Channel's The Replacements (Saturdays at 8 pm/ET). Not to mention his gig on CBS' NCIS (as medical examiner "Ducky" Mallard, Tuesdays at 8 pm), which has been beefed up as of late. It would seem that TV's Invisible Man is appearing in more places as the years go on, no? On the occasion of NBC's Heroes introducing its own transparent gent, TVGuide.com spoke with McCallum about his own "disappearing act," The Replacements and more.
TVGuide.com: I wanted
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Heroes' big invisible twist? I'm just not seeing it. Call me literal, anal or simply intolerant of bad science, but I have a "super"-sized problem with the NBC show's brand-new addition. Introduced last night, Claude (as in Rains, get it?) was spied by Peter liberating unsuspecting diners of their wallets and whatnot. Being an invisible man, as we later would learn, Claude's crimes went unseen.As did — inexplicably — the clothes on his back. That's some aggressive DNA, huh?Heroes' "list" is of people blessed (cursed?) with a genetic anomaly, one that manifests itself in assorted abilities that, by stretches great and small, could be born from "super" DNA. But someone explain to me how something inside me can change the transparency of my jeans, of my Lacoste sweater?Having screened last night's episode some weeks ago, I had to share my frustration with somebody who might care. So I tracked down TV's original Invisible Man, David McCallum, now known as NCIS' Dr. Donald "Duc...
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Question: I always loved The Man from U.N.C.L.E. as a kid, especially David McCallum's Illya Kuryakin. I've just recently become a big fan of NCIS and am trying to remember: What were the numbers that Napoleon Solo and Ilya went by?
Answer: Ah, an easy and short one. Man from U.N.C.L.E.'s Solo (Robert Vaughn) almost always sported an 11 on his badge, while Kuryakin's bore the number 2.
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Question: Who was that gorgeous Russian actor in The Man from U.N.C.L.E.? Not Napoleon, the other man. Thanks, hon.
Answer: You're quite welcome, hon. And let me point out that while Russian U.N.C.L.E. agent Ilya Kuryakin, was played by Scottish actor David McCallum, the actor would most likely accept "gorgeous" over some of the other adjectives love-struck women came up with at the time.
Take, for example, the word "cute," a favorite of fan magazines during the tongue-in-cheek spy series' 1964-68 run on NBC. "That's an American word I hate," McCallum, who played opposite Robert Vaughn's American agent, Napoleon Solo, told TV Guide in 1966. "A litter of mongrel puppies is cute."
Of course, the actor didn't have much say over how his female fans — and there were a lot of them — treated him and neith
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