Became Stacey Steele, almost literally.
Later they would say that the role destroyed Elisabeth Kent. Her career dwindled miserably afterward. Some critics suggested that Miss Kent had been blackballed by the industry after her unexpected departure from the series resulted in The Agency’s plummeting in the ratings and merciful cancellation after a partial season with a forgettable DD-cup Malibu blonde stuffed into the role of female lead. The consensus, however, pointed out that after her role in The Agency it was Stacey Steele who was in demand, and not Elisabeth Kent. Once the fad for secret agent films passed, there were no more roles for Stacy Steele. Nor for Elisabeth Kent. A situation-comedy series flopped after three episodes. Two films with her in straight dramatic roles were noteworthy bombs, and a third was never released. Even if Elisabeth Kent succeeded in convincing some producer or director that she was not Stacey Steele, her public remained adamant.
Her only film appearance within the past decade had been as the villainess in a Hong Kong chop-fooey opus, Tiger Fists Against the Dragon. Perhaps it lost some little in translation.
Inevitably, The Agency attracted a dedicated fan following, and Stacy Steele became a cult figure. The same was true to a lesser extent for Garrett Channing, although that actor’s death not long after the series’ cancellation spared him both the benefits and the hazards of such a status. The note he left upon his desk: “Goodbye, World — I can no longer accept your tedium” was considered an enviable exit line.
The Agency premiered in the mid-1960s, just catching the crest of the Carnaby Street mod-look craze. Harrison Dane, suave superspy and mature man of the world though he was, was decidedly hip to today’s swinging beat, and the promos boldly characterized him as a “mod James Bond.” No business suits and narrow ties for Harrison Dane: “We want to take the stuffiness out of secret agenting,” to quote one producer. As the sophisticated counterpart to the irrepressible Miss Steele, Dane saved the day once a week attired in various outfits consisting of bell-bottom trousers, paisley shirts, Nehru jackets, and lots of beads and badges. If one critic described Harrison Dane as “a middle-aged Beatle,” the public applauded this “anti-establishment super-spy.”
No such criticism touched the image of Stacey Steele. Stacey Steele was the American viewing public’s ideal of the Swinging London Bird-her long-legged physique perfectly suited to vinyl mini-dresses and thigh-high boots. Each episode became a showcase for her daring fashions — briefest of miniskirts, hip-hugging leather bell-bottoms, see-through (as much as the censors would permit) blouses, cut-out dresses, patent boots, psychedelic jewelry, groovy hats, all that was marvy, fab and gear. There was talk of opening a franchise of Stacey Steele Boutiques, and Miss Steele became a featured model in various popular magazines seeking to portray the latest fashions for the Liberated Lady of the Sixties. By this time Elisabeth Kent’s carefully modulated BBC accent would never betray her Long Island birthright to the unstudied ear.
Stacey Steele was instant pin-up material, and stills of the miniskirted secret agent covered many a dorm wall beside blowups of Bogie and black-light posters. Later detractors argued that The Agency would never have lasted its first season without Stacey Steeles legs, and that the series was little more than an American version of one of the imported British spy shows. Fans rebutted such charges with the assertion that it had all started with James Bond anyway, and The Agency proved that the Americans could do it best. Pin-up photos of Stacey Steele continue to sell well twenty years after.
While The Agency may have been plainly derivative of a popular British series, American viewers made it their favorite show against formidable prime-time competition from the other two networks. For three glorious seasons The Agency ruled Saturday nights. Then, Elisabeth Kent’s sudden departure from the series: catastrophe, mediocrity, cancellation. But not oblivion. The series passed into syndication and thus into the twilight zone of odd-hour reruns on local channels and independent networks. Old fans remembered, new fans were born. The Agency developed a cult following, and Stacey Steele became its goddess.
In that sense, among its priesthood was Alex Webley. He had begun his worship two decades ago in the TV lounge of a college dorm, amidst the incense of spilled beer and tobacco smoke and an inspired choir of whistles and guffaws. The first night he watched The Agency Webley had been blowing some tangerine with an old high school buddy who had brought a little down from Antioch. Webley didn’t think he’d gotten off, but when the miniskirted Miss Steele used dazzling karate chops to dispatch two baddies, he knew he was having a religious experience. After that, he watched The Agency every Saturday night, without fail. It would have put a crimp in his dating if Webley had been one who dated. His greatest moment in college was the night when he stood off two drunken jocks, either of whom could have folded Webley in half, who wanted to switch channels from The Agency to watch a basketball game. They might have stuffed Webley into a wastebasket had not other Agency fans added their voices to his protest. Thus did Alex Webley learn the power of fans united.
It was a power he experienced again with news of Elisabeth Kent’s departure from the series, and later when The Agency was cancelled. Webley was one of the thousands of fans who wrote to the network demanding that Stacey Steele be brought back to the show (never mind how). With the show’s cancellation, Webley helped circulate a petition that The Agency be continued, with or without Stacey Steele. The producers were impressed by such show of support, but the network pointed out that 10,000 signatures from the lunatic fringe do not cause a flicker on the Nielsen ratings. Without Stacey Steele, The Agency was out of business, and that was that. Besides, the fad for overdone spy shows was over and done.
Alex Webley kept a file of clippings and stills, promotional items, comic books and paperbacks, anything at all pertaining to The Agency and to the great love of his life, Elisabeth Kent. From the beginning there were fanzines — crudely printed amateur publications devoted to The Agency—and one or two unofficial fan clubs. Webley joined and subscribed to them all. Undergraduate enthusiasms developed into a lifelong hobby. Corresponding with other diehard fans and collecting Agency memorabilia became his preoccupying outside interest in the course of taking a doctorate in neurobiology. He was spared from Viet Nam by high blood pressure, and from any long-term romantic involvement by a highly introverted nature. Following his doctorate, Webley landed a research position at one of the pharmaceutical laboratories, where he performed his duties efficiently and maintained an attitude of polite aloofness toward his coworkers. Someone there dubbed him “the Invisible Man,” but there was no malice to the mot juste.
At his condo, the door to the spare bedroom bore a brass-on-walnut plaque that read HQ. Webley had made it himself. Inside were filing cabinets, bookshelves, and his desk. The walls were papered with posters and stills, most of them photos of Stacey Steele. A glass-fronted cabinet held videocassettes of all The Agency episodes, painstakingly acquired through trades with other fans. The day he completed the set, Webley drank most of a bottle of Glenfiddich — Dane and Miss Steele’s favorite potation-and afterward became quite ill.