| Articles and Quotes |
| Here are some articles and other snippets which refer to "Check It Out".... more are welcome! |
| Articles: |
| "Adams gets smart about old TV show" |
| by Ian Harmer. HOLLYWOOD, April 25, 1986. (AP) |
| Get Smart has been a staple of off-network TV stations continuously since NBC canned it more than 15 years ago, but star Don Adams says he's only just become a fan. |
| Madcap writing by the likes of Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, and the deadpan delivery perfected by Adams and the rest of the cast kept Get Smart on the air for five seasons, or more than 160 episodes. |
| Each one of those segments has been aired so many times that Adams devotees might feel that Check It Out, a new series with him playing a supermarket manager instead of an all-thumbs secret agent, is long overdue. |
| Meanwhile, it's taken Adams himself this long to catch up with his old show. He says he watched the first couple of episodes back in 1965, and hated them. |
| "They were doing something terrible with the laugh track and it drove me crazy," says Adams. "When they refused to change it, I decided the best way to keep my sanity was not to watch the show on the air. |
| "What I didn't know was that the producers and the network listened to me and, without telling me, corrected the problem," he says. "I happened to catch one Get Smart episode on TV a few weeks back, laughed out loud at it, and asked NBC to send me the best of the old shows on videotape so I could keep them for my grandchildren. They sent me all 160-whatever, which was nice." |
| It's too soon to tell if Check It Out, Adams' new syndicated series (which originally aired on the USA Cable Network), will join Get Smart in TV';s Hall of Fame. |
| One thing that makes it stand out is that all 22 episodes of the show were taped in Toronto, about as far from the madness of Hollywood as it's possible to get. |
| "I didn't have a problem with that, except that I've worked in California so long, I'm not used to snow and freezing temperatures," he says. "I guess I spent four minutes a day, tops, out of doors, and as soon as we wrapped, I jumped on a plane to Acapulco! |
| "TV's a business, like anything else, and the fact is a top-quality show can be made cheaper in Canada than in the United States," he explains. If it's a trend, I guess Hollywood should start doing something about it." |
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| "Would you believe Get Smart is 72?" May 6, 1999 TORONTO (CP) |
| Would you believe 10,000 screaming fans gathered at Don Adams's media event this week? |
| Would you believe hundreds? |
| OK, how about four mildly curious reporters? |
| "Where is everybody?" the 72-year-old star of the fondly-remembered 1960s TV comedy Get Smart asked with mock bewilderment at the sparsely attended news conference arranged by his new employer. "This is what I flew 3,000 miles for?" |
| Adams, reprising his role as bumbling Maxwell Smart, Agent 86 on the spy-spoof series, is the new pitchman for AlternaCall, Inc., a fledgling long-distance discount service. Naturally the ads invoke Smart's old telephone-in-the-shoe schtick, as well as the familiar would-you-believe downwardly mobile punch line that became a national catch phrase 30 years ago. |
| There were 139 Get Smart episodes that ran on NBC and CBS from 1965 to 1970 and Adams demonstrated he still had the timing. |
| A reporter suggested Max actually had the world's first cell phone back then, albeit in his footwear. Adams asked that the questioner please speak up, pulling his dead hearing aid out of his ear and waving it dismissively. |
| But as soon as the reporter began to speak louder, he was abruptly cut off. |
| "Why are you shouting at me? What did I ever do to you?" he interjected innocently, to great laughter from the room. |
| He did offer that Toronto and San Francisco are his favourite North American cities, but he wouldn't want to be here in January or February. He spent three years here in the '80s, taping a Canadian sitcom called Check It Out ("Not a great show, but not bad. It was OK.") |
| Later, Adams defends his new TV commercial gig against suggestions that today's audiences might not remember Get Smart. He said the show was two decades ahead of its time then and still has a large cult following. |
| "No one had seen a sitcom like this, ABC thought it was too weird," he explains, noting the pedigree of its writer-creators Buck Henry and Mel Brooks. "It was Mad Magazine, but subtler." |
| Still, he conceded pop culture is a fragile thing. Recently he was in a record store and asked the 20-something clerk for a tape of Perry Como music. The employee, poised over the catalogue computer, asked for the spelling of Como. "I cannot live in a world where no one knows Perry Como!" Adams added with exasperation. |
| He confesses he doesn't watch today's sitcoms and doesn't find the new standup comedians funny either, limiting his TV watching to CNN, A&E, the History channel, and old movies. |
| "I watched Seinfeld and didn't know what the show was about. It was about nothing!" (Is he kidding?) |
| He didn't like Roseanne because, well, he didn't like Roseanne. And as for Jim Carrey, he walked out of The Mask after about 20 minutes of the Canadian-born actor's mugging. |
| "I'm not turned on by a comedian who bends over, spreads his cheeks and speaks out of his rear end." |
| Carrey is being touted as the star of a feature-film revival of Get Smart. Adams hasn't been invited to do a cameo, although he was done one for Inspector Gadget, The Movie, this summer's live-action reprise of the old animated TV series for which Adams was the title voice. |
| The veteran comic also pointed the finger directly at Andy Dick (Newsradio's resident nerd) for the failure of Fox TV's 1995 attempt to update Get Smart. Dick was the star with Adams and former co-star Barbara Feldon given peripheral roles. It lasted seven episodes. |
| "I knew it wouldn't work (but) they offered me a lot of money," he explained. "I knew after the pilot that this kid couldn't carry the show." |
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| Toronto STAR,May 5, 1999 BYLINE: Rob Salem |
| Courtesy of getsmart.tvheaven.com. To generations of fans, Don Adams is Maxwell Smart, Agent 86 of CONTROL, the suavely inept sitcom superspy of the '60s hit, Get Smart! Now the 76-year-old actor/comedian has revived the character for a Canadian TV ad campaign - for Buck-A-Call, a cut-rate long-distance provider. This is the first time the Maxwell Smart character has been licensed for any kind of endorsement advertising. (Editor's note: This statement is actually untrue, as Max was used to endorse several products in the 1960's, including TVs and power generators.) ''It's difficult to get the rights,'' Adams explained yesterday morning at a sparsely attended press conference. ''Time Warner owns the rights, and I guess they were able to convince them they weren't going to do anything that would reflect badly on the character.'' It was also a chance for Adams to take a break from writing his memoirs and return to Toronto, the city he called home from 1985 through 1988, while he was here taping CTV's supermarket sitcom, Check It Out. Toronto, he says, is his second-favourite city in the world, right after San Francisco. ''I lived at the Four Seasons Hotel for three years,'' he remembers. ''I walked in last night, and I still know everybody there--the doorman, the bellhops, the desk clerks . . . These people were like my family for three years. So when I call down for room service, it's like, 'Oh, Mr. Adams, you're back!' '' (Actually, Adams dined in the hotel restaurant Monday night, accompanied by CFTO co-anchor Kate Wheeler and her husband--Wheeler and the thrice-married Adams apparently dated when he was here in the '80s.) Don Adams' Canadian connection also extends--in this case, literally--to animation, as the voice of the Canadian-made cartoon hero, Inspector Gadget. During the Get Smart! years, Adams voiced another cartoon hero, Tennessee Tuxedo, penguin protagonist of the Underdog cartoons. Again with the voice - that distinctive delivery that has served Adams so well, propelling him from the TV variety circuit (Perry Como, Andy Williams) to stardom on his own series. Get Smart! debuted on NBC in 1965, where it remained for four years, moving to CBS in 1970 for one rarely seen final season. Typically, Maxwell Smart simply refused to die, resurrected first for a 1980 feature--The Nude Bomb, which was--and then the 1989 TV-movie reunion Get Smart, Again!, and finally in 1995 as a short-lived (seven episodes) spin-off series on the fledgling Fox Network, co-starring Andy Dick (NewsRadio) as Zach Smart, Max's even more inept superspy son. Adams credits the original series' enduring appeal to the genius of co- creators Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, and their ''team of brilliant, crazy writers.'' But it really wouldn't have been the same show at all without Adams' uniquely abrasive, nightclub-honed persona. The role was originally intended for character actor Tom Poston (Newhart, Grace Under Fire). But when ABC took a pass on the pilot, the series was picked up by NBC. ''And I was already under contract with NBC,'' Adams explains. ''The character came out of my stand-up,'' he says. ''I mean, I was a stand-up comedian for 20 years before I did Get Smart. I used to do character pieces--a baseball umpire, a football coach, a defence attorney, all in that same voice. And then, when I did The Bill Dana Show, I used it for Detective Glick.'' All of this, he hastens to add, under duress. Truth is, it's a voice that Adams himself finds ''incredibly annoying.'' ''It was Bill who was primarily responsible for me using that voice,'' Adams reveals. ''Right from the beginning, he said, 'You should do all your routines in that voice.' "And I said, 'But I can't stand that voice.' And he said, 'But it's funny. It makes people laugh.' And I'm, like, 'But I hate it...' '' Ed Sullivan had told him much the same thing the first time Adams appeared on his show. ''Of course, they were both right,'' Adams allows. ''For whatever reason, the delivery or whatever it is, that voice makes any situation funnier.'' |
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| Quotes/Snippets: |
| "... and I would especially like to thank those of you at home who actually watch the show... nobody here does... but you do... and thank you for your faith, and thank you for your loyalty, and thank you for your support!!" (Dinah Christie, thanking her non-television-industry fans tongue-in-cheek during her acceptance speech at the Gemini Awards).* |
| * May not be 100% accurate, but if not, it's very close! |
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| Exerpt from article, "Inventing Canada", by Linda A. Fox. Fifty-Plus.Net, April 18, 2000. ... While we seem to excel at serious medical and scientific inventions, Canadians have also come up with items that are plain fun or just downright useful. Well-known Canadian actress, singer and comedienne Dinah Christie has her own plaque in Ottawa's Museum of Science and Technology to prove it. Christie, 55, invented Hot Heels - a fashionable protector for the backs of shoes that prevents scrapes and scuffs when driving or walking. "I came up with the idea while I was working on a TV series with Don Adams, of Get Smart," says Christie. "There was a lot of down time between shoots and I started doodling this little design for a heel protector for ladies high heel shoes. After I went home, I ran up a couple of prototypes, complete with decorations, and ended up selling them in stores across Canada." (Eaton's in Quebec was one of the largest stores to stock Hot Heels. She now makes them only on special order.) It was that little invention that got Christie the plaque in Ottawa's museum, and success and recognition spurred her on to even greater heights. Christie, who lives in Holstein, Ont., now runs her own company called The Badd Sisters. "It's virtually a cottage industry that makes environmentally friendly natural cotton and hemp accessories for those who love the outdoors," says Christie. "We make hats, water bottle holders, and the Ultra-Visor, a device that protects the wearer from UV rays." ... |
| "Check It Out" returns to ATV Three-time Emmy Award winner, Don Adams, stars as Howard Bannister in "Check It Out!," ATV's delightfully, irreverent, fast-paced comedy series set in a large supermarket. It will be returning to ATV this fall on Saturdays, at 8:30p.m. Howard Bannister did not always want to be manager of a supermarket. He went to hotel management school and dreamed of one day runing a chic, exclusive hotel in Europe. While waiting for an opening, Howard took a "temporary" job at Cobb's Supermarket. Sixteen years later he's still waiting... surrounded by fruits and vegetables, detergent and paper towels, and a staff of irrepressible, though well-intentioned characters who thwart him at every opportunity. But Howard still has his dreams! As manager, Howard is a cynical but kind-hearted perfectionist who tries to run a tight ship despite a tidal wave of employee inefficiency. Portraying the staff members who range from the amusingly unorthodox to the hilariously eccentric are: Dinah Christie -- Edna, Bannister's secretary. She's warm, unconventional and totally unafraid of her boss with whom she's romantically involved. Kathleen Laskey -- Marlene, an acid-tongued, punk-rock check-out clerk. Independent and outspoken, she talks back to Bannister, without thought, without fear. Jeff Pustil -- Christian, the pretentious assistant manager. He's young, shallow and conniving without the smarts to match his ambitions. Aaron Schwartz -- Leslie, a quick-witted, sympathetic checkout clerk. In his 30's, he's straight-forward, emotional and effeminate. Simon Reynolds -- Murray, a very likeable, teenage bagboy. He's naive, gullible and anxious to become a man. Gordon Clapp -- Mr. Viker, the daft, store maintenance man. He drives Bannister crazy with his highly original and completely incomprehensible logic. With a cast of strikingly unusual and always unpredictable characters, and an equally colourful assortment of customers who frequent the supermarket, "Check It Out!" delivers unlimited comic opportunities each week. "Check It Out!" star Don Adams is best-known for his hilarious portrayal of Maxwell Smart -- Agent 86 -- in "Get Smart." This long-running, hit television series brought him success, fame and three Emmy Awards. |
| TV-Guide May 9-15, 1987 Baiting the cook Food Kathleen Laskey likes her seafood with an Italian accent by C. Lee Crawford There's nothing fishy about Kathleen Laskey's penchant for anchovies and snails. "My mother is from Naples, and Italians love fish as much as they love pasta," says the actress, who plays kooky cashier Marlene on CTV's "Check It Out!" "I grew up eating a lot of fish. Mom even cooked eel or conch snails at Christmas when other people were making turkey," Laskey says. "And I've picked up a lot of her best recipes. Traditional Italian cooking isn't really spicy, you know. It's basically oil, garlic, tomato and parsley." Whenever she entertains, Laskey enjoys sharing her traditional Italian favorites with her guests: "I do a variety of spaghetti dishes with a prima vera, cream or anchovy sauce" she says, "and I'll usually serve them with a large green salad or a small Snail Salad." (Laskey shows off her Anchovy Spaghetti) Recipes Anchovy Spaghetti 3 cloves garlic, crushed 3 6 tbsp olive oil 90ml 1 cup anchovy fillets, drained 250ml 2 cups water 500ml 1 lb spaghetti, cooked 500g 1/3 cup grated Parmesan 75ml Brown garlic in olive oil over low heat. Add anchovies and stir until fillets disintegrate. Stir in 1 cup (250ml) water, then add second cup a little at a time. Cover and simmer about 30 minutes. Add parsley. Cook spaghetti until al dente, drain and place in a large bowl. Add anchovy sauce and mix well. Sprinkle with Parmesan and serve hot. Serves 4 to 6. Snail Salad 1 lb conch snails 500g 2 stalks celery, chopped 2 1 cooking onion, chopped 1 1/2 cup olive oil 125ml 1/4 cup wine vinegar 50ml 1 tbsp lemon juice 15ml Salt & pepper Boil fresh snails in water for an hour. (If frozen, defrost well.) Remove shells, wash and clean; place in large pot with water and simmer about 2 hours. Drain snails, slice finely and place in large bowl. Add remaining ingredients, mix well, cover and refrigerate for 24 hours. Serves 6 to 8. |
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