11 Facts About the 1960s Mission: Impossible TV Series

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11 Facts About the 1960s Mission: Impossible TV Series

Your mission, should you choose to accept it: Read these facts.

Published 6 months ago in Wow

With a new entry into Tom Cruise’s wildly successful Mission: Impossible movie series hitting theaters this past weekend, there’s no better time to take a look at the TV series that started it all.

Mission: Impossible was a spy show from 1966 that attracted a wide range of guest stars and series regulars. Operatives from the IMF would be sent on dangerous missions by a self-destructing reel-to-reel tape that would have them quelling geopolitical conflicts, dealing with crime lords, and all other types of sensitive espionage.

It spawned a revival series in 1988 and of course a series of movies that are nowadays probably the most recognized bearer of the name Mission: Impossible. But it didn’t start with Tom Cruise. Take a look at these fun facts about the realMission: Impossible.

1
In the original TV show’s theme song, the hand lighting the fuse that burns across the screen belongs to the creator of the show, Bruce Geller.

2
Steven Hill played Dan Briggs, the leader of the IMF, in Mission: Impossible’s first season. As an Orthodox Jew, he had to be home by sundown every Friday and wasn’t available until Saturday night after that. This was built into his contract, but caused conflict with filming schedules, and Hill ended up being replaced by Peter Graves’ character Jim Phelps in Season 2.

3
Lalo Schifrin, the composer of the iconic theme song, claimed it took literal minutes to write it. In 2016 he said “I sat at my desk and wrote that theme in exactly one-and-a-half minutes. It was not inspiration; it was a need to do it. It was a little mission — impossible! The whole thing — including the chorus, the bongos, everything you hear — took me maybe three minutes.”

4
The classic “dun dun, da da” pattern in the theme song actually spells out “M.I.” in Morse code– dash dash, dot dot.

5
Barbara Bain won three consecutive Emmy Awards in 1967, 1968, and 1979 for playing IMF agent Cinnamon Carter in the show.

6
Mission: Impossible was the first recorded use of the verb ‘self-destruct’. ‘Self-destruction’ dates to the 1580s, and ‘self-destructive’ to the 1650s, but apparently the verb form wasn’t used until the 1966 TV show first aired.

7
Peter Graves was unhappy about the treatment of his character in the 1996 Mission: Impossible movie. Jon Voight played a character that also went by the name of Jim Phelps and, spoiler alert, was less than a nice guy. Graves expressed his disappointment that his classic character was disrespected in this way.

8
Peter Graves wasn’t the only one unhappy about the 1996 movie. Greg Morris, one of the only cast members to remain on the show for its entire run, was so upset by the plot that he walked out of the premiere.

9
During the iconic scenes at the beginning of every episode when the reel-to-reel tape recorder is playing the mission instructions, the tape is actually in ‘rewind’ mode rather than ‘play’ mode. This was done because the tape looked like it was moving too slowly in normal play mode.

10
Many of the warehouses and industrial buildings seen in the show were office buildings, warehouses and soundstages on the Paramount Studios lot. The main gate at Paramount Studios was often used as a prison gate.

11
The show had its own language. This fake language was named ‘Gellerese’ by crew members and was intended to look German/Polish, but be easily intelligible by English speakers. For example, ‘gas’ became ‘gäz’, ‘emergency’ became ‘emerženc̄iskija’, and ‘mind the step’ was ‘mina din steppen’.