How Time Flies: Barbara Feldon is 78 This Week

Barbara Feldon will be 78 later this week.

It doesn’t seem possible that Barbara Feldon, of Get Smart fame, will be 78 on Saturday of this week. She was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on March 12, 1933.

An early claim to fame for Feldon, was when she won the grand prize, on the $64,000 Question in 1957, in the William Shakepeare category.

Feldon made her television in 1964 in East Side/West Side. She appeared in many television series, as a free lance actress,  before garnering the role of Agent 99, in Get Smart which ran from 1965-1970.

It was a major accomplishment for Feldon to co-star with Don Adams, in Get Smart in only her second year, of acting in television.

After the show left the air in 1970, she acted mostly in television series, and television movies, and acted in very few theatrical releases.

25 years after the original Get Smart series aired,  the show was brought back in 1995, but only lasted for seven episodes, before being canceled. By then Don Adams was 72, and Felton was 62 which may be the reason the show didn’t catch on again.

Feldon had only five more acting jobs in the last 16 years, since the early demise of the second Get Smart.

This comment by Feldon shows she looks on her years as Agent 99 with fondness and doesn’t resent a fan mentioning it to her:

“There’s not a day when somebody doesn’t smile and say, ‘Oh, you’re Agent 99.’ I like being in a world that regards me in a friendly way.” Interview with Toby Kahn, 1983.  - Internet Movie Database

Barbara Feldon at the 2008 TV Land Awards program.

Did Atomic Testing Kill Some Cast and Crewmembers of the Conqueror?

The Conqueror was shot in Utah and starred John Wayne and Susan Hayward.

Five of the first six actors listed in the cast of The Conqueror, at the Internet Movie Database were diagnosed with cancer.

The probable cause of the cancer epidemic, which resulted in 91 of the 220 cast and crew members, was that eleven U.S. atom bomb tests had taken place in Yucca Flats, Nevada in 1953.

After the testing, the radioactive fallout drifted to the site close to St. George, Utah where the movie was shot, exposing the cast and crew to the radioactivity, for 13 weeks.

To further strengthen the thought, that the radioactive fallout caused the cancer, half the citizens of St. George had contacted cancer during the next thirty years.

46 of the movie cast and crew that had contacted cancer died from various forms of cancer.

Dr. Robert Pendleton, professor of biology at the University of Utah, stated that 30 people, diagnosed with cancer out of a group of 220, would be closer to the normal number, of cases for that many people.

He also thinks, because of the tie-in of cancer with the movie, that anyone wishing to file suit would have a good case in a courtroom.

John Wayne, Susan Hayward, Agnes Moorehead, John Hoyt and Pedro Armendariz all died with cancer. Armendariz would be diagnosed with cancer four years after movie was completed and shot himself when he found out his case was terminal.

Smokers among the victims, including John Wayne and Agnes Moorehead were heavy smokers which made them even more susceptible to cancer from the radioactivity.

We may never be 100 percent sure, that the radioactive fallout caused the cancer of 91 cast members and crew of The Conqueror, but there is plenty of circumstantial evidence.

This article from The Straight Dope website, gives more information on the links between the filming of the movies and the resulting cases of cancer.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/374/did-john-wayne-die-of-cancer-caused-by-a-radioactive-movie-set