It Takes A Thief – The Complete Series (1968 – 1970/Universal/E1 DVD Box Set)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: B- Episodes: B-
One of
the interesting developments in early TV drama is the idea that maybe you could
do a weekly show about travel and instead of just a documentary show, it could
be about globe-trotting adventures. Of
course like so many feature films, budgets were small at first and shows would
cheat with stock footage and studio space standing in for a given place. Unless the show was in one exotic locale (Hawaiian Eye for instance), that was
the best they could do. U.S. and U.K.
TV shows started making such shows and when spies became popular, this
accelerated.
The
British company ITC (run by Lord Lew Grade) had their two largest live action
hits internationally following this path with Danger Man/Secret Agent with Patrick McGoohan as no-nonsense spy
John Drake and Roger Moore made a big star out of himself by making an
international sensation of The Saint
by playing crafty thief and troubleshooter Simon Templar. More such shows followed on both sides of the
Atlantic, but one of the best U.S.
answers to this trend was It Takes A
Thief.
Originally
launched as a feature that played more in European theaters than the U.S., Universal
and Lew Wasserman landed big screen movie star Robert Wagner to play Alexander
Mundy, an expert crook who would now steal for the U.S. Government in the midst
of The Cold War. Not seen much since
1970s reruns, E1 has licensed the Ronald Kibbee-created series from Universal
Television and It Takes A Thief – The
Complete Series is now on DVD.
A
mid-season replacement, the show launched January 1968 and was a hit for ABC,
but Wagner was very well cast and it became the first of several hit TV shows
for him. For the first two seasons,
Malachi Throne played his boss and the man who gave him his assignments from
the SIA (not unlike Leo G. Carroll’s Alexander Waverly on The Man From U.N.C.L.E. or Patrick Newell’s Mother on the last
seasons of The Avengers) which
usually slows the stories down, but worked better here. The actors had chemistry and only because
Universal did not want to send Throne out to Italy when they did location
shooting for the third and last season did he leave.
He was
followed by other actors playing different characters with basically the same
function (including no less than Joseph Cotton), but it was never the same and
caused enough damage to the show that it folded afterwards. However, Universal increased the star power
including a cameo by Peter Sellers, occurrent role by Susan Saint James, great
episode with Bette Davis as an older thief and in its greatest coup, getting
Fred Astaire to play his father, an expert thief in his own right.
The first
season is the most free-flowing and my favorite, but when the very successful
Glen A. Larson took over, the show became very slowly but surely pushed into
another refined direction that took away the raw energy of the first season and
pushed it into a corner that led to its early cancellation. He tried this same straight-jacketed approach
with his Six Million Dollar Man TV
movie sequels (the ones with the Dusty Springfield theme that tried to make
Steve Austin into James Bond; see the DVD box set elsewhere on this site) but
Universal rejected that new producer Harve Bennett made it a megahit.
The idea
for It Takes A Thief seems to come
from Alfred Hitchcock’s big VistaVision Cary Grant film To Catch A Thief (1954) where Grant is a charming thief, but a
less-sighted influence is The Ipcress
File, the 1965 spy film with Michael Caine as Harry Palmer, a crook forced
to spy for the British that remains one of the most influential, landmark films
of its kind from this series, to Jason
King (series and character originally from the series Department S, both reviewed elsewhere on this site) and the Austin
Powers film where Caine shows up personally.
Wagner
fit the character like a glove much like Steve McQueen in Bullitt and the show had more great guest stars throughout its run
including Simon Oakland early on, Ricardo Montalban as a competing, suave thief
who could just outclass him, Bill Bixby as a dangerously dark competitor, Roddy
McDowall as a thief who was more down and gritty than you might expect and
Wally Cox shows up as does Gavin MacLeod and a great series of female guest
stars including Cathy Lee Crosby, Stephanie Powers, Joey Heatherton, Yvonne
Craig, Suzanne Pleshette, Senta Berger, Suzy Parker, Tina Louise, Barbara
Rhodes, Linda Marsh, Lynda Day George, Madlyn Rhue, Wende Wagner, Martine
Beswick, Denise Nicholas, Dana Wynter, Carol Lynley, Julie Newmar, Jessica
Walter and Karin Dor, plus fine turns by Ida Lupino, Elsa Lanchester and
Hermione Gingold. That is not even all
the stars who show up, but you’ll have to see the rest of the series to find
out.
Late in
the show, it tried to be more counterculture with a show featuring The Fifth
Dimension that has to be seen to be believed and the final episode get
pro-environmental. This happened to The Saint and even the animated Spider-Man that began in 1967, but the
show had its run and folded while it was on top for whatever reasons it
did. It proved Universal could make such
a show well and has not been seen much, so its return on DVD is very welcome. Yes, some of the technology is dated (though
some of the items and not just props from the show are more valuable than you’d
think) but the plots work and Mission: Impossible fans who have not seen the
show will enjoy that aspect of it. The
Cold War and limited budgets date it, but it is a classy show like nothing we
see today and that speaks for itself.
As for
Wagner fans, they’ll wonder where the complete Switch and next Hart To Hart
seasons (starting with three) are, but It
Takes A Thief – The Complete Series offers plenty of fun until then and
makes for a solid set.
The 1.33
X 1 image transfers vary from colorful to somewhat faded, so some of the prints
used are not Technicolor, but likely fading EastmanColor, Fuji or maybe Agfa. All the shows were shot in color and
thoroughly lit to take advantage of new color TVs, but I wished the transfers
were more consistent like recent Universal releases of Six Million Dollar Man, so expect more variation than usual. If it were any worse, I would have had to
lower my rating. The Dolby Digital 2.0
Mono fares better often showing their age, but sounding better more often
overall including the Dave Grusin theme song, though I liked the Season One version better than the
slowed-down replacement in the later seasons.
Extras in
coasters, nice 35mm Senitype frame carded and a nicely illustrated booklet on
the show with an informative essay by Cinema Retro writer Dean Brierly in the
nice box that includes everything, plus the bonus DVD in the Season One
paperboard foldout adds a longer theatrical version of the pilot telefilm Magnificent Thief, brand new interview
with Wagner called King Of Thieves (after
an episode) and recent interview (2010) with Producer Glen A. Larson (made for
Madman Entertainment in Australia) called A
Matter Of Larceny.
If you
like this kind of show, ITC and Lord Grade launched their own variant called The Persuaders with Roger Moore and
Tony Curtis as two rich playboys in trouble with the law and forced to do
spy-like missions. Even more money was
put into that show and it just came out on Blu-ray, which we covered at the
link below. You can compare the two
shows and see how popular this format really as at the time, though It Takes A Thief and The Persuaders (with its location work
in Monte Carlo)
were the peak of these shows.
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/11188/The+Persuaders!+%E2%80%93+The
- Nicholas Sheffo
