Lucille Ball Cast Barbara Bain on TV's Original 'Mission: Impossible'

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[Note: Unless otherwise indicated, all quotes and commentary in this article are from an interview conducted by the author with those mentioned.]

The Big Picture

Beloved actress Barbara Bain owes her career to Hollywood icon Lucille Ball. It was Ball who gave Bain the greenlight to play Cinnamon Carter on the original Mission: Impossible television show of the 1960s.

A Closer Look

"The entire thing was glorious because I got to play, which was very glamorous and exciting. Within each script, it was a dream to portray different parts each week. What could be better? I was royally awarded and it was a great launch of a career."

So said actress Barbara Bain in an interview from 2013 about her experience in portraying Cinnamon Carter on the original TV production of Mission: Impossible (CBS, 1966-1973).

Bain enjoyed performing on the super-spy series that later launched a rebooted edition (ABC, 1988-1990), and a feature film franchise starring Tom Cruise.

However, it was on the original show that Bain starred opposite then-husband and later-Oscar-winning actor Martin Landau, Peter Graves, Greg Morris, and Peter Lupas (all of whom have since passed away).

Backstory

Barbara Bain was born on September 13, 1931, in Chicago, Illinois. With initial aspirations to be a teacher, she later graduated from the University of Illinois with a Bachelor's Degree in Sociology. That's also where she became interested in acting.

Additionally, Bain studied dance under Martha Graham and worked as a model after moving to New York, where she took acting lessons with Lee Strasberg at the famed Actor's Studio.

That's too where she met Martin Landau, with whom she was married from 1953 to 1993. After early guest spots on TV shows like The Dick Van Dyke Show (in which she played a jilted former girlfriend to Van Dyke's TV writer Rob Petrie), Bain went on to star with Landau in Mission: Impossible.

In the mid-1970s, Bain reteamed with Landau on screen for the acclaimed syndicated sci-fi series, Space: 1999, and has continued to act through the decades.

And It Was All Because of Ball

As Barbara Bain recalled in 2013, Lucille Ball was "the ultimate decider" in Bain being cast as Cinnamon Carter on the first Mission: Impossible TV series; a selection which ignited Bain's career.

At the time, Ball was the head of Desilu Productions, which was in charge of Mission: Impossible, as well as other popular TV shows of the era (including, among many others, Mannix, and the original Star Trek).

The last Impossible interview that Bain had was with Ball. As Bain recalled, "I walked in, shakily, and all she did was look me up and down and say, 'Looks alright to me,' and that was it. It was kinda neat."

Inspirational Woman

Once cast as Cinnamon Carter on Mission: Impossible, Barbara Bain became, as she observed, "a role model for many women."

Some of whom, she said, "...still stop me on the street or at the supermarket, and all sorts of places, and tell me that I was instrumental in their career choices or for some such thing that they wanted in life, whatever it was."

"It's a very gratifying thing," Bain concluded.