Line #30 Trivia/TheWildWildWest


1	* AwardCategoryFraud: Creator/AgnesMoorehead took home an MediaNotes/EmmyAward as Outstanding Supporting Actress In A Drama Series for "The Night of the Vicious Valentine," although she was a guest star. Then again, the Emmys didn't have a category for guest performers until the mid-1980s.
2	* {{Blooper}}: Creator/RobertConrad fell from a chandelier and was nearly killed while filming "The Night of the Fugitives;" stuntman Red West was rather badly injured after going headfirst into a not-so-breakaway piano during "The Night of the Running Death;" Ross Martin stumbled over a prop gun and broke his leg in a fight sequence from "The Night of the Avaricious Actuary." At least some of the film from the first two accidents was retained in the final cut of their respective episodes.
3	* TheCharacterDiedWithHim:
4	** In ''The Wild Wild West Revisited'', Miguelito Loveless Jr. tells our heroes that his father passed away (due to ulcers brought on by his 0 for 10 record in dealing with West and Gordon). Creator/MichaelDunn (Loveless Sr.) left us in 1973.
5	** When Creator/RossMartin passed away, there were plans in the works for a third reunion movie or even, according to some sources, a revival of the series. Network executives proposed continuing without Martin by either writing out or killing off Artemus Gordon, but Creator/RobertConrad refused to do the show without his old co-star. In a sense, the series itself died with him.
6	* CompletelyDifferentTitle: In France, the series is known as ''Les mystères de l'Ouest'' ("Mysteries of the West").
7	* CreativeDifferences:
8	** Creator/{{CBS}} did ''not'' want the show's creator Michael Garrison to be overseeing the show because of how much the pilot had cost, which led to Garrison having a legal battle with the Eye throughout season one while the show went through ''seven'' producers - some of whom never even got to do one episode - before Garrison got control back. Eventually, Garrison did get in a producer to his liking (besides Fred Freiberger, under whose reign Loveless was created - in fact, the first episode to be shown after the pilot was a Freiberger-produced one) in the form of Bruce Lansbury... but CBS still got a Garrison-less show in the end, though not in the manner anyone would have preferred.
9	** Ross Martin was very much playing a {{Sidekick}} in the first season - he had relatively little screentime, rarely got the girl and his primary role in the final confrontation with the villain-of-the-week was either to watch or lie on the sidelines unconscious. Martin was reportedly unhappy with this as he'd been promised something a bit more substantial when he accepted the role after turning it down multiple times. He was quoted as saying, "Each new producer tried to put his stamp on the show and I had a terrible struggle. I fought them line by line in every script. They knew they couldn't change the James West role very much, but it was open season on Artemus Gordon because they had never seen anything like him before." Once the producer situation stabilized, so did Artie's characterization and Martin gradually moved up to true co-lead status with Robert Conrad.
10	* {{Defictionalization}}: The creators of the series were apparently probed by the UsefulNotes/{{CIA}}, both because some of the gadgets in the show struck so close to actual gadgets used in espionage and because the boys at Langley ''really'' liked some of the other gadgets that ''weren't'' being used in RealLife at the time.
11	* DiedDuringProduction: The show's creator and producer/executive producer, Michael Garrison, died in an accident at his home during filming of the second season episode "The Night of the Ready-Made Corpse." Bruce Lansbury (younger brother of [[Creator/AngelaLansbury Angela]]), who was already on board as producer with Garrison above him, took over the reins from then on (although the series remained "A Michael Garrison Production[[note]]in association with the Creator/{{CBS}} Television Network[[/note]]" to the end).
12	* ExecutiveMeddling:
13	** The show was canceled due to content, not because of declining ratings. (At the end of TheSixties, Creator/{{CBS}} executives got nervous about fictional violence after all the RealLife violence of that decade.)
14	** Ross Martin was sadly never allowed to ''fully'' unleash his MasterOfDisguise skills, thanks to worries about "confused" viewers.
15	** The show ended up being lucky to survive its first season. After the show was picked up by the network, and placed on the fall schedule, one of the biggest television corporate bloodlettings happened, taking out nearly all of the network executives who helped develop the show. The new regime, wanting to put the past regime behind them, changed the new schedule as best as they could in the short time available to them, dropping a number of shows that were developed for the new season. ''Series/TheWildWildWest'' survived this purge, but barely, as the new executives didn't get the show, and were concerned about the show's cost, which was expensive for a show of that era. Had the show not become a hit from the get-go, it's likely it would have been canned faster than you can say Artemus Gordon.
16	* FakeNationality:
17	** All over the place, particularly Filipina actress Pilar Seurat as a very un-Chinese-looking Chinese princess in "The Night The Dragon Screamed," Paul Wallace doing an [[FakeBrit English accent]] that isn't even good enough to be called excruciating in "The Night of the Eccentrics" and Creator/RicardoMontalban as a Confederate Army colonel in "The Night of the Lord of Limbo." (And this being Creator/RicardoMontalban, [[NotEvenBotheringWithTheAccent he doesn't even bother with an accent]].)
18	** There's an in-universe example with Creator/SammyDavisJr's character in "The Night of the Returning Dead," who ostensibly speaks with a Barbados accent on his first appearance - except that, well... see Creator/RicardoMontalban above.
19	* NoStuntDouble: Creator/RobertConrad really (and often literally) threw himself into the fight scenes, so much so that he was prone to splitting his pants (something not always fixed in the editing room - see "[[Recap/TheWildWildWestS4E19TheNightOfThePistoleros The Night of the Pistoleros]]"). Ross Martin actually called his own role "a showoff's showcase."
20	* TheOtherDarrin:
21	** An odd case in "The Night of the Avaricious Actuary." Creator/RossMartin was injured while filming a fight sequence and a substitute was therefore used to play Artie in the immediately preceding dialogue scene. The new actor's face and voice are very prominently displayed in said scene (in fact, he's the image for the act-ending [[IdiosyncraticWipes freeze-frame/dissolve to drawing]]), making it obvious that he is ''not'' Ross Martin. Understandable confusion results for some in the viewing audience. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdbRn9cl0dk See 3:26 to 3:31 (in the lower right hand corner) of this compilation of the drawings for seasons three and four.]]
22	** A more straightforward example is [[UsefulNotes/UlyssesSGrant President Grant]]. In the pilot episode, he was played by Creator/JamesGregory; in every other appearance he was portrayed by Roy Engel.
23	* PlayingAgainstType:
24	** Creator/DonRickles as evil magician Asmodeus in "The Night of the Druid's Blood." No blustering or brash hurling of insults here.
25	** Creator/LeslieNielsen as Gen. Ball in "The Night of the Double-Edge Knife." [[spoiler: One of the few times where he turns out to be the BigBad.]]
26	* RealLifeRelative: Robert Conrad's father appears in a non-speaking role as a guard in "The Night of the Murderous Spring."
27	* RecycledScript: Both "The Night of the Skulls" and "The Night of the Cadre" feature a villain who helps notorious murderers escape from prison so he can train them as a crack team of assassins to kill President Grant (grudges against Grant [[RecycledPremise served as the motive in several episodes]], starting with "The Night of the Steel Assassin"). In both episodes, West cracks the case by posing as a killer and getting recruited for the team.
28	* ScullyBox: Creator/RobertConrad (5'8") wore three-inch heels as Jim West. The Creator/{{CBS}} casting office had orders not to hire any women over 5'6" for the show.
29	* ThrowItIn: Ross Martin had a tendency to ad lib. If it was funny, it was sometimes kept in the final version.
30	* WorkingTitle:
31	** "TheWildWest". The second "Wild" was added by second producer Collier Young.
32	** "[[Recap/TheWildWildWestS4E1TheNightOfTheBigBlackmail The Night of the Big Blackmail]]" was originally called "The Night of the Deadly Blades." Since the episode does indeed feature deadly blades[[note]]at the end of act 1 Grant tells our heroes that seven Secret Service agents have entered the (implied but never actually stated) German embassy for various reasons but none have come out; in act 3 Jim and Artie are nearly ground to a pulp by [[SpikesOfDoom rolling blades]][[/note]] but does ''not'' involve any blackmail, the change seems an odd one to say the least.
33	** Before the IdiosyncraticEpisodeNaming was sorted out, "The Night of the Inferno" (the pilot) and the first three regular episodes to be produced ("The Night of the Double-Edged Knife," "Night of the Casual Killer" and "The Night of the Fatal Trap") were respectively called "The Cannonball Eightball," "The Greatest Train Robbery," "Tug O'War" and "How Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth."
34	* WhatCouldHaveBeen:
35	** John Kneubuhl, one of the series' regular writers (in its first two seasons),[[note]]indeed he created the character of the not-so-good doctor Loveless[[/note]] wanted to write an episode specifically for Music/{{Liberace}} to guest star in. Michael Garrison loved the idea - as did Liberace himself - but as Kneubuhl told Susan Kesler in her book about the series, "[[ExecutiveMeddling CBS killed the idea right then and there]]" (for reasons due to Garrison's homosexuality).
36	** Artemus Gordon's role in the show was originally intended to be TheEveryman; it was felt that a Franchise/JamesBond-type character in a continuing TV series wouldn't be relatable enough without some kind of AudienceSurrogate. The surrogate could also be used to provide West with his supply of gadgets, killing two birds with one stone. However, as the series developed, so did Artie's character, and this particular trait went by the wayside.
37	** Creator/{{CBS}} had hopes of having a BreakawayPopHit as [[Series/{{Rawhide}} another CBS-produced Western]] had, so Dimitri Tiomkin and lyricist Paul Francis Webster were commissioned, coming up with a theme song called "The Ballad Of Big Jim West". Michael Garrison absolutely refused to use it, feeling it didn't the fit the "espionage in the Wild West" vibe of the series. Creator/LaLaLandRecords included the rejected theme in vocal and instrumental forms on their 4-CD box set of music from the series. Creator/SilvaScreenRecords recorded [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRNjYMICIy4 an instrumental version]] for their collection of Tiomkin music.
38	** CBS planned to do more than just two post-series movies with yearly revivals of the show, but unfortunately, Ross Martin's earlier heart attack was a sign of declining cardiac health and he suffered another one in 1981 after the previous film, this one being fatal, after pushing his luck during a tennis match with the knowledge his heart could give out, which it did. This caused CBS to scupper the idea, and Creator/RobertConrad had noted that while he liked doing the films, he didn't like how many restrictions that CBS placed on everyone and that they didn't reach the level of quality seen in the original show.
39	** In 2010 CBS announced plans for a {{revival}} series, to be helmed by Creator/RonaldDMoore and Naren Shankar (''Series/{{CSI}}''), but it never made it out of DevelopmentHell.
40	* WorkingTitle: The show was originally titled ''The Wild West'', but was renamed when it was decided that ''The Wild Wild West'' sounded better.
41	* YouLookFamiliar: Rampant throughout the series.
42	** Joan Huntington being the GirlOfTheWeek on three separate occasions ("The Night of the Red-Eyed Madmen", "The Night of the Bottomless Pit" and "The Night of the Circus of Death").
43	** Most striking example: when Dimas appears in "The Night of the Simian Terror," neither of our heroes notices how much he looks like Dr. Loveless's assistant Voltaire (Creator/RichardKiel).
44	** Creator/VictorBuono played the show's second recurring villain Count Manzeppi, but also played Wing Fat in the series premiere, and Dr. Henry Messenger in the show's second TV movie.
45	** Creator/NehemiahPersoff played General Andreas Cassinello in the premiere, but also Adam Barclay and Maor Hazard in subsequent episodes.
46	** Creator/HaroldGould played both Victor Freemantle in 1967 and John Taney in 1968.
47	** Toian Matchinga also appeared in three episodes.

Context Trivia / TheWildWildWest