The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
Producer Norman Felton had been developing a television spy series named Solo with Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond. Fleming named the proposed series' lead character "Napoleon Solo" but hadn't told Felton the character name had already been used in the script of the upcoming Goldfinger film. Cubby Broccoli, producer of the Bond films, forbade Fleming to continue working on Felton's project. Felton then approached Rolfe, who was at that time working on The Eleventh Hour.
Felton asked Rolfe to create a framework for the series. Rolfe's 80 page prospectus for the show included the show name The Man from U.N.C.L.E., the pilot episode "The Vulcan Affair", created the backstory for the U.N.C.L.E. organization including the acronym and 30 story ideas. Rolfe's work so impressed Fleming that he tried to buy some of them to use in his Bond books. Rolfe produced the first season of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and did much of the writing.
Robert Vaughn, who played Napoleon Solo in the series, called Rolfe "the real man from U.N.C.L.E.".
Rolfe made a cameo appearance in the first season, seventh U.N.C.L.E. episode, The Giuoco Piano Affair which aired on November 10, 1964, where he appeared as "Texan" in the party-scene at Gervaise Ravel's (portrayed by Anne Francis) apartment.
Rolfe's attention to detail included specifying special props necessary to create the show's illusion of world spycraft, including the famous "Man From U.N.C.L.E. gun". Rolfe said "I wanted one gun capable of shooting single shots or rapid-fire automatic shots, with sound or silently. I also wanted sleep inducing darts, explosive bullets and just bullets, and a gun that could convert to a long-range rifle. I wanted everything in the U.N.C.L.E. gun, and the one thing I had forgot, I had put in the Thrush gun - an infra-red light, so the Thrush people could shoot at night". The guns themselves actually received 500 fan letters a week, many simply addressed to "The Gun".
Rolfe left the show at the end of its first season. After his departure the show changed direction and exchanged its subtle, tongue-in-cheek humour for more overt gags, culminating in the high-camp third season. Rolfe did not approve of the change in direction and felt the show lost its way after the first season. In an interview given shortly before his death he commented:
I've always felt U.N.C.L.E. was a show that needed a particular kind of a mind to direct it. You needed somebody that could do drama and then also lay humor into it but could sense when the humor had to be stopped and when you had to make the drama take over. And you could talk forever about it, but unless you walk in with that instinct, you're not going to get it. And I think that some of the people that followed me didn't have an instinct for it. So they got silly with it... They never sat down, they didn't really grasp the drama - that you had to have the dramatic spine.
