Sam Rolfe (with guest star Jill Ireland), making a cameo appearance in the first-season UNCLE episode The Giuoco Piano Affair. Rolfe would take over and do the heavy lifting on devising the series.
Feb. 18 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Sam Rolfe, who made his mark as a writer and producer.
He was nominated (with Harold Jack Bloom) for an Oscar for writing the 1953 western movie The Naked Spur.
A few years later, he co-created the western television series Have Gun-Will Travel, an enormously popular show that ran for six years on CBS.
Rolfe and his co-creator Herb Meadow, originally envisioned their hero as a present-day bounty hunter. However, westerns were at or near the peak of their popularity on television. CBS asked if they could convert the concept into a western. The writers, knowing they could make a sale, complied.
Rolfe worked as associate producer toward the end of the first season, produced the second and into the third before departing the series. He'd return to pen an origin story for the start of the sixth season for the mysterious Paladin (Richard Boone).
In the 1960s, he'd be called up to write the pilot for The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Executive producer Norman Felton and author Ian Fleming had created the character Napoleon Solo. Rolfe would do the heavy lifting, devising the U.N.C.L.E. organization and creating other characters such as Illya Kuryakin.
Rolfe produced U.N.C.L.E.'s first season. He had a reputation for being tough on writers, according to scribe Dean Hargrove in an interview for a 2008 home video release.
Rolfe proved restless, leaving the show after the first season. While many good episodes followed, U.N.C.L.E. could be erratic at times in later seasons as other producers tried their hand at running the show.
The writer-producer pursued various projects over the years. He created short-lived series such as The Delphi Bureau and The Manhunter, a Quinn Martin show about a 1930s bounty hunter (Ken Howard). He also adapted Donald Hamilton's Matt Helm character for a TV show that only lasted a half-season as well as the book On Wings of Eagles that was made into a 1986 mini-series.
Rolfe kept being drawn back to U.N.C.L.E. He wrote a 1970s script for a proposed TV movie revival. It never went into production. Toward the end of his life, he was working on a proposed cable TV U.N.C.L.E. series. However, his death of a heart attack in 1993, ended that effort.
Below is a video of an appearance Rolfe made in 1992 at an event called Spy Con. He discusses his career. The audio and picture aren't the best.
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