The Get Smart Handbook

by Joey Green

A guide to the comedy series about the misadventures of Maxwell Smart. Written in the format of a spy manual for control agents, this includes scripts and photographs from the show, as well as information on control and kaos agents, control passwords, order forms for spy supplies and more.

Genres: Tv, Reference, Nonfiction

270 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Joey Green, a former contributing editor to National Lampoon and a former advertising copywriter at J. Walter Thompson, is the author of more than sixty (yes, sixty) books, including Not So Normal Norbert with James Patterson, Last-Minute Travel Secrets, Last-Minute Survival Secrets, Contrary to Popular Belief, Clean It! Fix It! Eat It!, the best-selling Joey Green's Magic Brands series, The Mad Scientist Handbook series, The Zen of Oz, and You Know You've Reached Middle Age If...—to name just a few.

Joey has appeared on dozens of national television shows, including The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Good Morning America, and The View. He has been profiled in the New York Times, People magazine, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and USA Today, and he has been interviewed on hundreds of radio shows.

A native of Miami, Florida, and a graduate of Cornell University—where he was the political cartoonist on the Cornell Daily Sun and founded the campus humor magazine, the Cornell Lunatic (still publishing to this very day)—Joey lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews

[Julio The Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely the funniest television show of the Sixties, and for some of us, for all time. What's the secret of GET SMART'S enduring allure? Let's ask the master, creator Mel Brooks: "In a medium filled with lovable boob dads there is nothing lovable about Maxwell Smart---he loses whole countries to the communists". GET SMART started out as just another James Bond rip-off and managed to imitate and satirize the spy biz at the same time, and along with it American politics, television commercials, President Johnson, race, sex, greed and network phonies, along with other foils. Brooks' nothing is too outrageous style of humor, along with satirist Buck Henry, who got only "along with" creator credit with Mel, kept things zany from the start. The outstanding least cast had no reason to be this good. Don Adams (Maxwell Smart), born Don Yarmi, failed stand up comic; Barbara Feldon (99), former bit model; Ed Platt (The Chief); walk-on movie actor (REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE). Let's not forget Bernie Koppell, a comedic genius who played head villain Siegfried. Yet, somehow, it all came together like magic. The GET SMART HANDBOOK brings it all back home, plus venturing into the real world of U.S. espionage. Joey Green wrote a letter to ex-CIA spy E.Howard Hunt, reproduced here, asking his feelings towards the show. "I don't find comedy about agents funny," he snapped, "I don't forget the death of my comrades". Some people have no sense of humor.

[Ariadna73 · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a funny book, with a lot of nice facts about the series. However, I didn't find it more valuable than watching the shows, and some of the facts in the book are in plain contradiction with other sources, such as newspapers and the dreaded wikipedia. For example, Ed Platt's death; a fact that has two very different explanations, depending on which source you read. This book is not bad at all, but I didn't see a ton of love in it either.

[Lilstevie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Get Smart Handbook is choc-a-block full of laughs and trivia of ll your favourite Get Smart episodes. Join Max and 99 as you laugh your way through 253 pages of fun! I have owned this book for many a year.