Original subtitles

My then agent, whose name escapes me at the moment, called up and said, Erwin

Allen is doing a series called Lost in Space at 20th Century Fox, and he wants

to see you.

Well, I had never heard of Erwin Allen, actually.

Of course, I had heard of 20th Century Fox. I began my Hollywood career at the

television career at 20th Century Fox in The Third Man, which was my first

series.

So I went to see him. I know it was 4 p .m. of an afternoon.

And I was ushered into the presence, and there he was, behind a huge desk,

surrounded by a group of his retainers,

also known as yes -men in the industry.

And it was very strange.

It was the wildest way to get a job that I'd ever experienced.

He said, Do you want to be in the series?

And I said, well, I don't know. I haven't read a script.

And Irwin said, somebody give him a script.

Somebody did.

I had a script.

Very weird.

And then he said, you know, we did a pilot and you weren't in it.

I said, and?

He said, now you're in it.

I said, oh.

Very, very peculiar.

It all comes back to me now with a kind of horror.

Then he turned to the casting man, who was also in the office, and he said,

him up and don't pay him too much money.

I quickly changed that, you may be sure.

And he said, go home. There was a question about billing, yes.

He said, I have signed all the other actors, and they're all in the palette,

you were not, and you will have to be in last position.

I said, well, I'm not going to be very comfortable with that.

And he says, you got a better idea?

I said, I don't know offhand.

He said, well, go home and think about it. And call me up.

Let me know.

That's all.

I staggered out of the office.

And I read the script.

And I remember I liked it. I thought there's a big potential in Old Smith.

He was written as a deep -dyed, snarling villain.

And he bored the shit out of me.

because there is no longevity in deep -dyed snarling villainy.

And already I started to plan what I was going to do about that.

I also knew that I wanted to be in the show.

A series means you get paid every week. That's very, very important, and I've

had many series in my life, and that's been very good.

And so I thought about the billing situation, and I called a dear friend of

who was head of casting at NBC, and I said...

In your experience, have you ever given a running member of a television cast

special guest star billing?

He said, of course not. It's never been done.

I said, that's all I need to know.

And I called Irwin and I said, I've solved your billing problem. And he

screamed, wow.

And I said, I will accept last position, special guest star every week. Well, he

screamed and howled and it was just awful. It went on and on and on.

And when it was all finished, he said.

All right.

And that was that.

And then we went to work.

Villainy is easy. I played many villains in my time. And my most successful

villains have been comedic villains.

And I knew that.

And I began to plot and plan how to do that.

And I began to sneak it in.

And Tony Wilson, the story editor, knew what I was up to and talked to Irwin.

And I must say, Irwin not only allowed me to do that, but one day said, do

And I did.

And the rest, as we say, is history.

I loved that character. I created him from nothing. He was not on the page.

On the page was the deep -dyed, snarling villain who was a great bore to me.

And the other man that finally evolved was very close to my heart.

And of all the many myriad characters that I have played in my life, he surely

is the favorite. He is.

I have been called many things in print about the character.

All of it makes me yawn because it's all boring.

I was highly paid to have the best time of my life.

And so much for that.

How much of me is in the... I suppose some of us is in everything we do. I

it was my voice, my body, my look playing Dr.

Zachary Smith. I like to feel that I would never in a billion years have done

what he did in life.

Maybe. You never know.

However, I found him adorable.

I did. Still do.

Really.

So I suppose there's a little of me in him, as there is a little of all of us

everything we do.