Actress Profile: Barbara Feldon

Saturday, December 11, 2021

Actress Profile: Barbara Feldon

One of my favorite, and in my opinion most underrated, actresses of all-time is Barbara Feldon. Fans of classic television sitcoms will remember her most famous role as Agent 99 cast alongside actor Don Adams in the spy spoof Get Smart (1965 - 1970).

Perhaps her best performance was on the big screen in the mostly forgotten, but amazing funny, romantic-comedy Fitzwilly (1967) in which her character, a young secretary named Juliet Nowell, falls in love with a good hearted con-man named Claude Fitzwilliam played the legendary actor/comedian Dick Van Dyke.

Biography

Barbara Hall was born on March 12, 1933 in Bethel Park, a suburb of Pittsburgh. She was near-sighted as a young woman, and attributed her notable alluring stare to poor vision. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in drama from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Melon University) in 1955. After a 1957 move to New York City to pursue her acting career, she won the grand prize on the game show The $64,000 Question, on a question about William Shakespeare. She immediately used the money to open an art gallery with a friend, photographer and artist's representative Lucien Feldon. Barbara and Lucien got married shortly after, in 1958.

Feldon first became known for her starring role in a commercial for "Top Brass," a hair product for men. The commercial featured her lying on a stuffed tiger and purring that she only liked "tigers: men who use Top Brass." This commercial caught the eye of Leonard Stern, who was setting up a spy spoof show called Get Smart. Stern called it a "very sensual performance," and was quickly convinced that Feldon ought to play the leading female role for the show.

Get Smart was conceived as a satire on the spy genre, taking cues from what producer Daniel Melnick called "the two biggest things in the entertainment world today"—James Bond and The Pink Panther's Inspector Clouseau. It began its run on NBC in 1965. Don Adams starred as the bumbling secret agent Maxwell Smart. Feldon played Agent 99, Smart's partner who bailed him out of sticky situations and eventually fell in love with him. When Adams first met Feldon, he was put off by Feldon's height advantage over him. Feldon agreed to slouch or go barefoot so as not to diminish the title role. On Agent 99's noticeable posture in the series, Feldon told the Archive of American Television that "Don would have liked a shorter leading lady, and I wanted to please my co-star." - READ MORE