Would you believe, to revive the catchphrase from TV's long-running spy spoof Get Smart, that Don Adams, now 54, has surfaced a decade later as Macbeth? No? Well, would you believe he's back as a scarcely old, and certainly no wiser, Maxwell Smart in a new movie called The Nude Bomb? Sorry about that, Chief, as Adams would say, but he once again is fumbling with sinister KAOS.

    This time, the baddies have a bomb that will knock the pants and all other garments off anyone in range. Though Barbara Feldon, the  TV show's curvaceous Agent 99, is not in the $10 million movie, three new numbers have joined Don.

    The film may be as funny as its TV predecessor, but it is serious business for Adams. He's hoping his first movie will revive a career that has lost its luster after Get Smart folded in 1970. The show is still rerunning on 39 U.S. stations and in over 50 countries.

    "Producers felt I couldn't do anything else," Adams complained. "Every time I've gotten a script , it's another Maxwell Smart-type character."

    That was all the more galling because Don never particularly liked the series.

    "The first few episodes I saw angered me so much I felt like throwing the TV through a window," he fumed. "I couldn't stand the laugh track."

    Besides winning Don three Emmys in five years, the show accustomed him to a lavish life that included three houses (one in Palm Springs), oil wells, airplanes and weekly tennis parties for 60 on his private court. After Get Smart, Adams cashed in with TV commercials, but he flopped in two other TV series and his $40,000-a-week headliner dates in Las Vegas began to dry up.

    "I almost felt guilty about getting that money, except I was usually giving it back at the blackjack tables," he remembers. "I'd go to the table between shows and drop my entire week's salary," he remembers.

    Adams further blames his financial problems on his admittedly "screwed-up" personal life.

    "I'm no longer independently wealthy," he claims. "I guess it's the result of two many wives (He's on his third), too many kids (six daughters, one son), and too much alimony. I've been paying alimony since I was 14 and child support since I was 15. That's a joke, but not by much."

    Don had four children in his nine-year marriage to singer Dell Adams and two more with Dorothy Bracken, a onetime June Taylor dancer and his wife for 16 years. Three years ago Adams wed Judy Luciano, 29, a sometime actress who appeared with last year in summer stock, after giving birth to their daughter, Beige Dawn.

    "At the time, I don't know whether it's on or off. What time is it?", asked Adams, when asked about his present union.

    "I like getting married, but I don't like being married," he quipped.

    Since his children are spread all over, Adams says he doesn't hear from them too often. But Judy and his still- friendly ex-wives and all his kids gathered in Miami for the marriage of his third daughter in January.

    One of three kids of William Yarmy, a Hungarian Jewish New York restaurateur, and an Irish-Catholic housewife, Don quit school in the eighth grade and left home at 15. He worked in construction and steel mills before lying his way into the Marine Corps and World War II as a 16-year-old. He made it to Guadalcanal but got shipped home after he contracted blackwater fever and nearly died.

    After the war, Adams struggled as a stand-up comic and impressionist before scoring on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts in 1954.Then came guest shots, followed by a regular spot on the TV show of Bill (Jose Jimenez) Dana, who co-wrote and acted in Bomb. Then came Get Smart, created and written by the then-unknown team of Mel Brooks and Buck Henry.

    These days, Don and Judy live in a leased three-bedroom Spanish-style home in Beverly Hills. Still a teetotaler, though he smokes half a pack a day, Adams has added only five pounds to his 154-pound 5'9" frame, despite giving up his once-compulsive devotion to golf and tennis.

    "I just got saturated with those sports," he says.

    Adams also has revised his opinion of Maxwell Smart. There's fresh talk of resurrecting the show or launching an annual series of Smart films. if The Nude Bomb makes noise at the box office.

    "I didn't think so at the time I was making them, but some of episodes are funny, funny shows," Adams said, who has obviously gotten wise to Get Smart's commercial appeal. "Some of them are classics. I actually laugh out loud at them now."

 

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