Round Table - Sorry I'm Late...

[glennagirl.livejournal.com]

The Girls from Nazarone Affair is one of my favorites.  It has the style and atmosphere that made Season 1 so irresistible, and it has shots like this:


Arguably one of the most appealing photographs within the series is this table side discussion between our heroes.  Illya, with drink in hand contemplates what his partner is telling him regarding the ominous activities of Dr. Egret and her blonde assassins. Each of them will meet with some type of danger, and as I watched the episode this past week, I wondered if the writers turned Kuryakin into the physically agile, human monkey that he sometimes is? Or did David McCallum's natural athleticism inspire scenes like him being thrown to the bottom of a well and climbing straight up and out of it?
Would they have ever put him on a stationary bicycle to peddle his way to exhaustion, as they did Napoleon?  And again, once Solo and the innocent are tied to rafts and left to die it is Illya who dives (with very good form, by the way), into the pool and saves them both.
Someone may know definitively how it all came about, but I'm still wondering if it was a natural evolution or just what seemed right to those in charge of scripting such things.
Anyone?

Comments

[lindafishes8.livejournal.com]

Re:Or did David McCallum's natural athleticism inspire scenes like him being thrown to the bottom of a well and climbing straight up and out of it?

I think you've hit the nail on the head here. I watched the well scene over and over. It seems as though it was filmed in an actual well! David fell to the bottom and how he didn't get hurt, I have no idea. The scene in Foxes and Hounds where he jumps off a concrete staircase and landed on concrete like a cat was done without a stunt double. That scene had to be written because of his athleticism.

David mentioned when he was older how he was constantly choreographing scenes on MFU. He also said he and Fred were working on a scene they devised together but never filmed because the series was cancelled.

[otherhawk.livejournal.com]

You know, between that and the number of times that they threw Robert Vaughn in the water, you have to wonder whether the writers had taken life insurance policies out on the two of them....