Buy "So Long Patrick Henry" and all the other episodes from
I Spy Season 1
|
Airport Official
Air Traffic controller
Taxi D5river
Tarmac Agressor
Radio Operator
Pilot
Photographer
Nurse
|
Dialogue excerpts continued
Elroy has now spent a couple hours with Kelly & Scotty, and is waiting for them to make a move, to offer him money to return to the U.S.
Elroy:
“Well, somebody say somethin'. The sun's comin' up. C'mon, let's have it! Let's have the pitch.”
Scotty intones derisively “The pitch.”
Kelly:
“No, we don't want to tempt you. You made a right decision, Elroy. Stick to it. If you came home, how could you make a quarter of a million tax free, playing pro ball?”
Elroy:
“Maybe I'll be a movie star. All right, that's enough needles What's the proposition?”
Scotty:
“You wouldn't like it. Go on to Switzerland. Collect your money. Ten, twenty years from now, you'll be sittin' in some villa on the side of the hill watchin' the sunset, drinkin' the martinis. Got the whole thing licked. And back home, a lot of poor dummies, not as smart as you are, will be eatin' their hearts out, tryin' to make the law o' the land stick. Holdin' the world together with one hand, and tryin' to clean their own house with the other. Yeah, somethin' no country's ever done before, ever in the history of the world. Go ahead, Elroy! Go on to Switzerland! You don't need that kind of grief. "
After Kelly comments, Scotty adds
"The whole world's tryin' to keep bloody fools like you from selling themselves back into slavery. But you did it anyway.”
I SPY REVISITED
After 40 years this episode still resounds with every line and scene that made it the first and best of the series.
SPECIAL FEATURE
  Republished here is a critique of the series premier of "I Spy," which originally appeared on s. j. DIBAI's HOUSE OF I SPY website, commemorating the 35th anniversary of the first airing of SO LONG PATRICK HENRY
Visit THE HOUSE OF I SPY
IT'S I SPY'S THIRTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY!!!!
September 15, 1965 was the night that started it all.
The pilot for I SPY was called "Affair In T'Sien-Cha," but though “Affair” sold NBC on the series, the network seemed reluctant to show it, finally airing it in late December as the series' fourteenth episode. One thing that may have made NBC not want to air it was Cosby. NBC complained to Sheldon Leonard that Cosby's acting was "amateurish," and suggested that Leonard replace him. Leonard threatened to take his show elsewhere, so NBC allowed Leonard to keep the Cos on board. Whatever the reason, the series pilot was not chosen as the series premiere. The episode that was chosen, however, was quite a piece of work........
Ivan Dixon
"So Long Patrick Henry" -- do series premieres get any better? Maybe. Still, "Patrick" was one of the best episodes of the entire series if you ask me, and a great way to kick things off. The script was written by Robert Culp. It differs greatly from Culp's other I SPY scripts in that it is not dark, slow-moving, and intensely moody, but it is just as complex a character study as any Culp script. (The rest of this paragraph is a plot summary--you'll be bored with this if you've seen "Patrick" as many times as I have.) The assignment is simple enough--Elroy Brown, an obnoxious American athlete, defected to China and now seems unhappy. The US doesn't really want him back, but must make the offer anyway, sending Scott and Kelly to do the job. Oh, but it's a lot more complex than that......first of all, Scotty already knows Elroy. They met in Japan a year earlier, and after Scotty spent an hour talking to Elroy about America, Elroy just yawned and said, "So long, Patrick Henry." Needless to say, Scotty was less than pleased. Oh, but wait, there's more. The reason Elroy defected to China was to make the largest amount of money possible. He sold himself to the highest bidder, and now a group (of Chinese government lackeys, most likely) led by one Mr. Tsung (a higher-ranking government lackey?) basically owns him. Oh, and did I mention that Elroy is black? Not a coincidence, I'm sure, especially since the script refers explicitly to slavery at times. Okay, so this is complex enough, right? No. Tsung and his guys are in Hong Kong to negotiate for the Afro-Asian Olympic Games. Innocent enough......except that China really wants to use these games as a means of expanding its political power to Africa. Whew. You'd think that would be enough. It's not. When Tsung notices how much time Elroy is spending away from him and with our boys, he takes action. Instead of allowing Elroy to make a speech at a conference that will determine the existence of the Afro-Asian games, Tsung drugs Elroy and his fiancée, Princess Amara (a real African princess), injects them both with typhus (!), attempts to have Princess Amara taken out of Hong Kong, and leaves Elroy in such a delirious state that Mr. Brown is incapable of making the speech himself and exposing that Tsung is a fraud. Brilliant! But Kelly and Scotty are always one step ahead.....Kelly manages to save Amara, breaking his arm in the process, while Scotty injects Elroy with a pain killer, gets him to the conference, where the scam is exposed and Tsung, in a desperate attempt to flee the scene, gets caught. Excellent.
|