TV ACRES: Spy/Spies & Secret Organizations > Agents > Agent 86/Maxwell Smart (Get Smart)

Agent 86 - Code name for bumbling secret agent Maxwell Smart (Don Adams) on the spy spoof GET SMART/NBC/ABC/1965-70. Max's worked for Control, a super secret spy agency (which everyone knew about) and operated under the guise of a greeting card salesman for the Potomac Greeting Card Company. Max was born in 1930 (delivered by a Dr. Linquist) under the zodiac sign of Scorpio and raised in Washington, DC. He models himself after another klutzy Control agent No. 4 (a.k.a. "Herbert Gaffer"). Max is so devoted to his career that he embroiders his bathrobe and pajamas with his secret agent number 86.

Max's skills included speaking French, Spanish, German, Chinese, Swahili, and a rare East Himalayan dialect and being an expert in explosives. When asked about his martial arts skills he remarked, "I happen to be an expert in karate, Judo and tempura. Would you believe that I can brake eight boards with one karate chop? No? Would you believe three boards? Would you believe a loaf of bread?" On the topic of cowardice, Max said "Just remember this 'A coward is a frightened man who's scared to be brave; but a brave man is only a coward who isn't scared to be frightened'."

Despite Max's abilities, (he failed Torture 101 three years in a row, however) he was in constant trouble with his superior called The Chief (Ed Platt). A typical conversation between them might go like this:

Chief:	Max, I don't know what I'm going to do about you. You bungle assignment after assignment.
Max:	I resent that, Chief.
Chief:	Do you deny it?
Max:	No, but I resent it.

Chief:	Max, you realize you'll be facing every kind of danger imaginable.
Max	And loving it.

According to The Get Smart Handbook by Joey Green (Collier Books, 1993) Don Adam's Agent 86 character was a combination of two earlier inspirations: 1) a pompous but very confused detective who gathered all the suspects in a room to find the murderer (a character Adams created in 1954); and 2) the sophisticated vocal mannerisms of William Powell from the Thin Man movies which Adams exaggerated just a bit to create such classic lines as "Sorry about that Chief," "Would you believe?," "The old (so & so) Trick," and "Missed it by that much." Other agents were Agent 99 (Barbara Feldon), Max's attractive female partner and later wife;. and Agent 13 (Dave Ketchum) famous for hiding in strange objects like mail boxes, trash cans, grandfather clocks and vending machines. While on assignments Agent 86 assumed the aliases of many individuals including The Scar (an explosives expert), The Masked Marvel (a table tennis champion), Major Fritz Kessler (a former SS officer knows as the Beast of Buenos Aires), Running Creek (an American Indian), Yakimoto (a Japanese gardener), and Conchita (a flamenco dancer). Maxwell Smart reappeared in the 1980 motion picture The Nude Bomb (a.k.a. The Return of Maxwell Smart) wherein he worked for the spy agency PITS (Provisional Intelligence Tactical Service).

TRIVIA NOTE: Writer David Melnick gave Maxwell Smart the operative number 86 (a la the 007 signature of James Bond). The term referred to the slang expression "to eighty-six someone" meaning "to refuse credit, to stop serving a drunk any more liquor, to oust an obnoxious patron." Mel Brooks, the series co-creator derived the Smart's first from his relatives (both his father and his own son's were called Max). Don Adams was born Donald James Yarmy in 1927 in New York City to a Hungarian Jewish father and an Irish Catholic mother. See also - "Maxwell Smart"