For pop culture addicts in the autumn of their years, Angela Lansbury will forever be associated with Jessica Fletcher of
Murder, She Wrote fame. After all, the series ran from 1984 through 1996, with an extended epilogue of TV movies lingering through 2003. Film fans may remember her memorable turn as Miss Marple in
The Mirror Crack'd or as the red menacing
madre terrible in
The Manchurian Candidate.
Less remembered is Lansbury's television work from the mid-1960s. I have yet but would love to see her 1963 appearance on the psychological drama series
Eleventh Hour (playing wife to Martin Balsam and mother to troubled teenager Tuesday Weld) or her 1965 appearance alongside future
Columbo star Peter Falk on his short-lived series
The Trials of O'Brien. What I have seen, however, is lady Lansbury's appearance in the lighthearted November 1965 episode of
The Man from U.N.C.L.E.: "The Deadly Toys Affair."
How do we know it's lighthearted? I offer you People's Exhibit A:
And People's Exhibit B:
Elfie: Call me Schnookie-poots.
. . .
Solo: Just call me Nappy.
Silly stuff, to be sure, but a fun change of pace ... until it became standard operating procedure in the series' third season.
Lansbury brings an infectious and enthusiastic lunacy to her role of Elfie Van Donck, eccentric Dutch aunt to a boy genius falling fast into the clutches of Thrush. Van Donck is an erstwhile "glamorous movie star," one seen less on the silver screen and more on the small screen's "late, late show." And although she conducts herself like the star she once was, the truth is her star has dimmed considerably:
Solo: What I'd like to know, Miss Van Donck--
Solo: Elfie? Yes. What I'd like to know, Elfie, why is it you were jumping out of an airplane with a parachute over Amsterdam with aardvarks?
Elfie: For money, darling! Advertisement for nylons.
Darling? Yes, for this role Lansbury laid on lavishly the Gabor with a sprinkling of Tallulah Bankhead and a splash of Norma Desmond (minus the pathos). And of course it's all pulled off with aplomb by Angela, who clearly was having a blast hamming it up.
Angela aficionados be warned: Lansbury makes her first appearance at the 20-minute mark, but she makes the most of those remaining 30 minutes, exchanging flirty witticisms with Solo and even engineering a daring rescue and escape from the school/Thrush compound:
Elfie: "I am not eagle scout, Amsterdam division, for nothing!"
For the Adoring Angela Blogathon, the episode's plot is secondary to an appreciation of Angela's part. Suffice it to say it's a standard issue story about good guys trying to keep the bad guys from luring into their web of treachery a teenaged scientific genius, played by a post-Dennis the Menace Jay North. The episode's nominal leading lady was Diane McBain, but she's relegated to the bench once Lansbury appears and sweeps Solo, the show, and the audience into her adoring entourage.
As the 50-minute mark nears, God is in his heaven and Elfie is at the controls, nabbing from Nappy the episode's closing line:
Elfie: How would you like to accompany me on a small safari to Arabia?
Solo: I'd be delighted.
Elfie: Would you mind bringing your own camel?
Solo: One hump or two?
Elfie: Oh, you kill me!
PS: Though "The Deadly Toys Affair" (not to be confused with the delightful Wonder Woman episode "The Deadly Toys," guest starring Frank "Riddler" Gorshin!) proved to be Lansbury's sole pairing with Solo and Kuryakin, it wasn't Lansbury's last with actors Robert Vaughn and David McCallum. Vaughn ventured onto three episodes of Murder, She Wrote, and McCallum turned up in two.
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