Word: missions
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Maddox, a 2,200-ton destroyer, left Yokosuka, Japan, July 23 on what seemed to be a routine mission to observe North Vietnamese naval activity in the Gulf of Tonkin. Stopping at Taiwan, she took aboard a "black box," about the size of a moving van, crammed with electronic gear, and about a dozen new men to tend its innards. What was it for? Defense Secretary Robert McNamara insisted at first that the equipment "consisted in essence" of normal radio receivers that gave the ship "added capacity" to detect indications of possible attack. In testimony released at week...
...tight, pulsating 49 minutes, then come up with 27 more just like it. Same basic plot on which the fate of mankind hangs. Same fascinating attention to visual gimmickry. We think we've got a world-capable series here. As always, should you or any of your Impossible Mission Force be gunned down by the critics, Desilu's president Lucille Ball will disavow any knowledge of your actions. This outer-office memorandum will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck, Bruce...
That more or less describes the origin of Mission: Impossible-in the style and pattern of the show's own standard opening scene. The program is TV's hottest suspense series, and its fans find in it the same inspired implausibility that characterized The Man from U.N.C.L.E. in its prime. Bruce Geller, 37-year-old film, TV and off-Broadway writer who conceived the whole enterprise, concedes that his original script was basically a paste-up of Topkapi and several other favorite movies. When Hollywood wouldn't buy it, he turned to Desilu. When Desilu proposed...
...Geller & Co. instead believe in fast plots, dazzling footwork, bizarre technical contrivances. It is always the "how" of a story that keeps viewers pinned to their TV sets, since nearly everything else on the program is deliberately made familiar. At the opening, Peter Graves, 41, as Impossible Mission Leader Jim Phelps, enters a phone booth, warehouse or parked car, finds a hidden tape recorder, and turns it on. "Good morning, Mr. Phelps..." it begins, and then outlines the task: recover something crucial that has been stolen or prevent the supervillains from achieving some dastardly scheme...
...airline's only jet, a leased Boeing 727, nosed into a tea plantation near Taipei, killing 21 of the 63 persons aboard (among the survivors: CAT's Chief Pilot Stuart E. Dew, 46, who served as General George Marshall's personal pilot during his China mission in 1946). Though the suspension was said to be temporary, everyone's best guess was that it probably meant CAT's death...