#donadams

Barbara Feldon Live on Game Changers With Vicki Abelson

The best? Certainly none better. I’m not sure anyone has ever exceeded my very high expectations greater than Barbara Feldon did this day. As much as I admired and adored Get Smart’s Agent 99 for her sophistication, intelligence, knowingness, sly, perfectly delivered humor, demure yet smoldering sexiness, and downright gorgeousness… Barbara is all that, and a truckload of Cheetos. It was so overwhelmingly powerful and thrilling to deep dive with this wise, self-effacing, self-aware, thoughtful, beyond-imagining age-defying beauty, I was filled to the brim with emotion, electricity, excitement, and enlightenment. I got answers to questions I’ve been seeking for years, and I just used more adjectives than I did in my entire novel. That’s what Barbara’s done to me. 

In the middle of her unputdownable just-dropped memoir, Getting Smarter, I had intended to speedread it but found I couldn’t skip a word, and I can’t wait to finish these liner notes so I can return to it and find out how this woman who played a spy, thought she was married to one, a sexy Frenchman named Lucien (or was he), long before she donned his real-life trench coat on TV. Their more dramatic than fiction love story will make a spectacular streaming series someday soonish, I have little doubt.

Of course, we talked Don Adams, Mel Brooks, Buck Henry, and the genius that was Get Smart... how she got it, what led her there––that sexy commercial she purred through, Colleen Dewhurst, George C Scott, The Man From Uncle, what the actual experience was for her, the real rapport between her and Don, and how it shifted 20 years later, Dean Martin––swoon, Laugh-in, and writing––how as a tool it saves and evolves her and how it’s become her life’s work. How love has shaped her life and her work. 

An hour and a half of Barbara was simply not enough. I was so fired up, after the show, I called to say a quick thank you and we ended up chatting for another half hour. She’s such a warm and generous soul. It was an absolute love fan fest with someone I feel like I’ve known forever and hope I will. 

Enough! Back to the cone of silence for me to finish reading Getting Smarter. If you wanna get smarter, hit this bit.ly/3FKjljg and jump into Barbara’s beautifully written, as exciting as a spy novel, memoir. 

As much as I loved and looked up to Agent 99 as a girl, I adore Barbara Feldon even more. Please don’t miss this one. Wow, what a woman!  

Barbara Feldon Live on Game Changers With Vicki Abelson

Wed, March 22, 5 pm PT, 8 pm ET

Streamed Live on The Facebook

Replay here: