David Ketchum, Get Smart's Agent 13, dies at 97

David Ketchum, the 97-year-old actor and writer best known for portraying Agent 13 on the 1960s spy spoof Get Smart, has died on August 10. His death, confirmed by officials familiar with the case, closes a career that spanned acting, writing and voice work across a half-century of television. He leaves behind his wife of more than six decades, Louise, two daughters, Nicole and Wendy, three grandchildren and a great-grandson.

Born in Quincy, Illinois, Ketchum pursued electrical engineering at UCLA before shifting to performance. He hosted radio programs in California and built an early reputation as a comic performer, appearing on a variety of television programs in the early 1960s. He gained early steady work on Im Dickens, Hes Fenster and, later, Camp Runamuck, where he established the persona of Spiffy, the ringleader of a group of camp counselors. His break came with Get Smart, where he joined during its second season in 1966 as Agent 13, a foil to Don Adams’s Maxwell Smart. The character became a running source of humor, frequently hiding in tiny or unlikely places such as mailboxes, vending machines, lockers and even a washing machine, an effect that became one of the...