It didn’t have Tom Cruise dangling from an airplane — it didn’t even have Peter Graves thumbing through IMF dossiers in his apartment — but the Mission: Impossible TV pilot still managed to light the fuse on one of Hollywood’s biggest action franchises.
The brainchild of Rawhide alum Bruce Geller, the 1966–73 CBS series blended two of the era’s favorite movie genres — spy thrillers and heist dramas — into a precisely executed hour of espionage, complete with self-destructing tape recorders, necktie cameras and rubber masks that somehow made Martin Landau look like whichever fictional Eastern European despot needed toppling that week.
Each Impossible Mission Force member brought a specific expertise and just enough cool to leave a mark: Landau’s chameleonic Rollin Hand (replaced by Leonard Nimoy in season four), Greg Morris as gadget genius Barney Collier, Peter Lupus as strongman Willy Armitage and Barbara Bain as Cinnamon Carter, an ex-fashion model whose stylish poise made spying look like a photo shoot.
The team’s first leader, Daniel Briggs, was played by Steven Hill, who left after season one when Friday night reshoots conflicted with his Orthodox Jewish observance. Graves, as Jim Phelps, took over. But the show’s breakout star might have been its theme song, that jazzy, bongo-driven earworm by Lalo Schifrin. Because really, what’s a mission without that music?
This story appeared in the May 21 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
