"The Loser," an episode of the NBC series "I Spy," first airing on October 20, 1965. It was written by series co-star Robert Culp; directed by Mark Rydell; Sheldon Leonard, executive producer, also location unit director; produced by David Friedkin and Martin Fine; Ronald Jacobs, associate producer and production assistant; Ed Hillie, production manager; music and theme by Earle Hagen; Fleet Southcott, director of photography; Fouad Said, Hong Kong production and location director of photography; Bud Molin, film editor; art direction by Kenneth A. Reid; set decoration by Ken Swartz; Stuart Stevenson, prop master; casting by Ruth Burch; script continuity by Michael Preece; Dick Maier, sound editor; Ken Johnson, music editor; Walter Popp, music co-ordinator; titles by Format Films; special effects by Joe Lombardi; Donna McDonough, hair stylist; makeup by Stanley Smith; costumes by Flo Crewell and Harald Johnson; Cam McCullough, sound engineer; recorded by Glen Glenn Sound Company; with appreciation to NBC's Far Eastern News Staff for their cooperation; filmed at DesiLu Studios; A Triple F Production.
The Cast [regulars]: Robert Culp as professional tennis player and agent Kelly Robinson; Bill Cosby as polyglot, translator and fellow agent Alexander Scott, posing as Robinson's personal trainer; [guests, featured or in recurring roles]: Eartha Kitt as Angel; Albert Paulsen as Ramon; Fuji as Mano; Joseph Kim as "General Chu": Mako as Jimmy; Linda Wong as Lilly; Nancy Wong as Barbara; John Levinston as the English policeman; Larry Diran as a heavy; Vince Eder as a guard; Rajnun K. Tsukamoto as Old Man; Hans William Lee as an aide.
"The Loser" opens with professional tennis player and government agent Kelly Robinson (Robert Culp), against the background of the Crown Colony Tennis Club in Hong Kong, on the telephone with his best friend and fellow agent, also a polyglot and translator, Alexander Scott (Bill Cosby), who has been posing as Robinson's personal trainer. "Where'd you disappear to, Scotty?," he asks in his typically lighthearted style, "We've got a tip on another shipment of heroin--two million dollars worth!" But the normally free-wheeling Scott is unusually somber: "I can't go to work right now--I ran into a little trouble," as he has become the captive of members of an international drug cartel.
The scene then switches to a Hong Kong nightclub in which the sultry singer Angel (Eartha Kitt), having imbibed yet another glass of liquor, and puffing anew on her ever-ready cigarette, is performing a very contemporary rendition of Cole Porter's Easy to Love, being clearly a hit with her audience. At the same time, Scott, now a prisoner of the cartel, has been trussed-up and tied face down to the bed in her makeshift dressing room.
Meanwhile, Robinson has solicited of Hong Kong mercenary Jimmy (Mako) in creating a package as decoy, "I just want it to float. This is the most important thing you've ever built for us. If it isn't perfect, there isn't going to be anymore us. It has to be innocent looking; to pass on the street and nobody knows it's there."
Angel is now on break, and clearly in need of another "fix." She comes to her dressing room and views the immobilized Scott nonchalantly, seemingly oblivious to his suffering. "I seem to be having trouble with the laces here. Angel--that's your name; yeah, you're in the movies aren't you?" She merely comments, plaintively, "Almost," and departs for the stage, this time to perform a melancholy, almost detached rendition of a Sarah Vaughn staple, Black Coffee. Soon afterwards, Ramon and his thugs have returned, and proceed to pummel the restrained Scott, hoping to obtain some information on the intercepted shipment of heroin, but of course to no avail. Then, left alone with Angel once more, this time Scott entices her to release him, proffering to her a hallucinogenic pill in his pouch.
Ramon, speaking with his compatriots in the drug trade, including the laconic boss "General Chu" (Joseph Kim), peremptorily states "It goes well," even as he is informed that he is about to be removed from their coterie. "But the American is here," he argues, "There's nothing to be disturbed about. I have everything under control. How can I set my General's mind at ease?" The boss acidly commands that the matter with Scott be disposed of, by any means.
Scott, having escaped with Angel in tow, tries to seek to amuse a guard assigned to an exit: "You remember me from last year--name's "Loser, Honorable Loser," (itself a further reference to the title, and its multiple meanings) in ladies' undergarments, from Philadelphia." But he is apprehended by Ramon's thugs once more, but not before being offered a huge pipe of hallucinogens from the one called Old Man (Rajnun K. Tsukamoto). Meanwhile, Robinson has been apprehended as well, discovered to have concealed himself into a large tin can presumably carrying heroin (evidently one of the ruse packages of the mercenary Jimmy). Now the agents are both trussed-up lying beside each other. Robinson quips, referencing Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy comic predicaments, "Well, here's another fine mess you've gotten me into." Scott laments, "Sorry about that, Ollie." Then, recalling that it was Robinson who had been ordered to come to his aid, retorts, "You can't do anything right, can you?" Still, Scott ingeniously pries loose Robinson's harnesses by way of his teeth.
The sadistic Ramon, whose control over Angel has become a sexual high, ignores her entreaties for yet another "fix," and orders her to "go back and sing some more." While moving quickly to finally squelch the drug cartel, Scott commiserates with Robinson on how the Ramon and Angel relationship has affected him: "The cat's name is Ramon. The whole world's his junkie. And there's a girl, Angel. She doesn't mean anything to me; just a lovely loser, and I come from a long line of losers."
Preparing for the returning thugs, the agents feign to be yet securely fastened. Angel has been left alone with them, in the hope that in permitting their escape the cartel can follow them to the missing shipment of heroin. Of course the agents are aware of this tactic, and create the illusion that they are themselves at odds. Scott emphasizes "I know where it is; he doesn't. Now, you untie us so we can get to it!," he orders her. As if slighted, she remarks: "I don't know what you're so mad about." Knowing that they are being closely followed, the agents move quickly on the busy streets of Hong Kong. Their appointed designation is a brothel house and once there they are playfully offered the companionship of Lilly and Barbara (Linda Wong and Nancy Wong), but Robinson jokes "Would you excuse us? We have to go and powder our noses."
But while the shipment has been successfully intercepted, Scott is unable to simply abandon the hapless Angel. With Robinson keeping Ramon and his thugs at gunpoint, Scott rejoices in delivering to her the freedom he assumes she has long yearned for. He is shocked to learn, instead, that she has no desire to leave her current environment. Ramon jeers: "That's what you came back for? She's free. Go ahead, Angel, have fun. Get yourself a new life!" But she pitifully admits that she can never return to what she had before. "Home? Eight people sleeping in a room and garbage out in the hallway. You call that home?" Nodding toward Ramon, she reveals, "Now, he needs me. I know he knocks me around a bit, but I know where I stand." Turning toward Scott she concludes: "Not like you, some Boy Scout. Listen, you dummy, I get three squares and a place to sleep and no more. So long, hot shot. Sorry I caused you so much trouble." Ramon seizes upon her rejection of Scott's offer: "She doesn't want to be saved. You're the poor loser, my friend." But even a punch to Ramon's jaw--just before the authorities arrive--cannot assuage the heartbroken agent.
Afterwards, at a local pub, Robinson simply asks "Are you alright?" Scott responds by giving the bartender his two gambling chips, commenting, as if what had happened were all a game of Monopoly "Put that for two houses and a hotel, and Marvin Gardens. . . ."
"The Loser" is clearly one of the finest of all episodes in a landmark series that shattered racial barriers and poignantly questioned accepted mores and allegiances. Culp's unpretentious script delves upon the several meanings of "loser," but it is very much a winner, and is capped by a searing performance from Eartha Kitt, caught at the very peak of her trademark sultry form.
Below: Eartha Kitt at the very top of her sultry form, as Angel, the self-denigrated "loser" who also provides the title of co-star Robert Culp's teleplay. In the first scene, having imbibed another cocktail and puffed yet again on her ever-ready cigarette, she delivers an exquisitely melancholy rendition of Cole Porter's "Easy to Love," and later of Sonny Burke's "Black Coffee," popularized by Sarah Vaughn. Her nightclub performances clearly a hit with Hong Kong audiences, she is in fact a victim of heroin addiction, relying on her "fix" from drug kingpin Ramon (Albert Paulsen, in a supremely malevolent characterization of a sadist, whose control also becomes his sexual high), who taunts her for her habit relentlessly. Ms. Kitt, born Eartha Mae Keith, with her surname coming from her nickname "Kitty Charles," was the very embodiment of survival over troubled youth, abnegated by her birth mother to be raised in Harlem and come to fend for herself in early teens, with her sultry singing becoming her passport to survival. After a European journey performing with the Katherine Dunham Dance Troupe, she became celebrated for her Parisian nightclub appearances, and regaled by the legendary actor/writer/director/magician Orson Welles who dubbed her "the most exciting girl in the world." A Bohemian to the core, among her closest friends (but in a wholly Platonic relationship, she always maintained) was the also legendary actor James Dean. She remained an effervescent dissident to her last days, once becoming persona non grata in the United States after her stinging rebuke of First Lady Lady Bird Johnson on her husband's extracted toll of America's youth in the Vietnam War at a White House reception in 1968. Before then, her television appearances were legion, with roles superbly exhibiting her qualities as a sublime temptress, from "Salome," for a 1955 segment of the CBS live anthology "Omnibus," to the second incarnation of "Catwoman" (the first being Julie Newmar) for three episodes, airing 1967-68, of ABC's campy transcription of Bob Kane's "Batman." After her return from exile, from the early 1970's onward, she continued to augment any number of characterizations, perhaps remembered most fondly as the voice of the villainess Yzma--whose acquisitiveness is ever foiled--of the Disney animated feature "The Emperor's New Groove," which was a highlight of the 2000 millennium year. She died on Christmas Day of 2008, having considered herself fortunate to be adopted by the wider public, inasmuch as "the biggest family in the world is my fans."
Below: Multilingual agent Alexander Scott (Bill Cosby) finds himself enmeshed as the central focus of a drug cartel in Hong Kong. Invariably he becomes the trussed-up prisoner of Ramon, until, enticed by the prospect of yet another "fix," Angel at least temporarily comes to his aid. But he is captured anew, this time trussed-up alongside his best friend, the professional tennis player and fellow agent Kelly Robinson (Robert Culp), for whom Scott poses as personal trainer. Devoid of racial stereotypes, "I Spy" was a landmark also in depicting an enduring bond between a Caucasian and an African-American. In their most desperate situations, their banter was ever witty and unencumbered. Even in this scene from their bonded states, they were more than metaphorically bonded together. Invoking Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy comedies, Robinson jokes: "Well, here's another fine mess you've gotten me into." To which Scott retorts: "Sorry about that, Ollie," but then, noting that it was Robinson who was sent to his rescue, remarking "You can't seem to do anything right, can you?" Robert Culp also wrote the teleplay, one of his several writing and/or directing efforts for "I Spy." Culp's distinguished television career was launched by way of assuming the voice of a totalitarian narrator in an adaptation of George Orwell's "1984," for CBS's live drama anthology "Westinghouse Presents 'Studio One'" in 1954. That teleplay featured Culp's superb stentorian intonation, which he has subsequently utilized most memorably in Harlan Ellison's classic "Demon with a Glass Hand" a 1964 episode of the seminal ABC science fiction anthology "The Outer Limits," discussed at length in an earlier post on this site. A prolific actor on stage, screen, and television, his video efforts include his impersonation of Texas Ranger Hoby Gilman in the CBS western series "Trackdown," airing from 1957 through 1959, and more recently in a recurring guest role as Deborah Barone's father in CBS' long-running and subsequently well-syndicated series "Everybody Loves Raymond." Bill Cosby, of course, inaugurated his own landmark series, displaying well his personal talents as actor, writer, director and producer, within the framework of "The Cosby Show," in which he portrayed obstetrician Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable, via NBC from 1984 through 1992. That multiple Emmy-winning series, also a ratings triumph throughout its run, capped for Cosby (since granted an honorary doctorate) an extraordinary career as an international spokesperson for child literacy. Cosby's earlier television series, such as "The Bill Cosby Show," airing 1969 through 1971 via NBC, in which Cosby portrayed high school physical education instructor and coach Chet Kincaid, and the 1972 through 1979 CBS animated series "Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids," and its later incarnation "The New Fat Albert Show" airing on CBS through 1982, all utilized Cosby's own social and personal background, gently dispensing the wisdom he had learned from childhood to new generations of young persons in particular. That wisdom was also in evidence through his several years of affiliation with the PBS learning enterprise of the 1970's, "The Electric Company," in which the talents of Oscar-winning fellow actors Morgan Freeman and Rita Moreno were also on display.
Below: Agents Robinson and Scott deliberately make themselves walking targets for members of the drug cartel pursuing them in the busy streets of Hong Kong. Later, they encounter call girls at their appointed meeting-place, a local brothel. But upon thwarting the cartel's efforts, Scott, feeling for the long demoralized Angel, is compelled to free her. In the penultimate scene at bottom, he is stunned to learn that she chooses not to go. "Go home?," she asks, "Eight people sleeping in a room and garbage out in the hallway?" Acknowledging the malevolent Ramon, still triumphant over her ("She's free. Go ahead, Angel, have fun. Get yourself a new life"), she poignantly confesses her acceptance of her fix. Nodding towards Ramon, she comments: "Now, he needs me. I know he knocks me around a bit, but I know where I stand." To the heartbroken Scott she explains: "Listen, dummy. I get three squares and a place to sleep and no more. So long, hot shot. Sorry I caused you so much trouble." For this aching distillation of all the anguish of a self-imagined "loser," turning away from a last chance at dignity, Kitt deservedly received an Emmy nomination in a guest role.
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