TV Quote of the Day (‘Get Smart,” on ‘Tequila Mockingbird’)

Maxwell Smart (played by Don Adams): [looking at a photograph] “So this is the little devil that cost Conrad Palmeter his life.”

Agent 99 (played by Barbara Feldon): “The millionaire art director? Did he own the Tequila Mockingbird?”

Smart: “Several times. When he was 30, he bought it from a Hindu sailer in the city of Tequila, Mexico. Then 10 years later it was stolen by a Chinese accountant. At the age of 52 Permetta was able to buy it back at an auction in Beirut. Then 10 years later it mysteriously disappeared again. He spent the next 50 years searching for it.”

99: “You said the Mockingbird cost him his life, Max. How did he die?”

Smart: “Old age.”—Get Smart, “Tequila Mockingbird,” Season 4, Episode 17, air date January 18, 1969, teleplay by Chris Hayward and Arne Sultan, directed by Don Adams

The best kind of parody, with not one but two iconic books-into-films satirized: The Maltese Falcon and To Kill a Mockingbird.  I almost fell over when I heard the episode title!