Honey West

(This post is part of the Aaron Spellingverse blogathon hosted by Reelweegiemidget)

The way Aaron Spelling told it, he commissioned an artist to come up with a few concepts for an idea Spelling had about a TV show featuring a femme fatale private investigator. When ABC showed interest, he bought the rights to G.G. Fickling’s series of Honey West novels.

Honey and Bruce

G.G. Fickling was a husband and wife writing team, Gloria and Skip Fickling, whose Honey West paperback potboilers were published between 1957 and 1971. Honey, the authors said, was a “beautiful, brainy and a very much determined, sensual female.”

What Spelling seemed to have in mind was for Honey West was an American version of The Avengers; his first choice for the lead was Honor Blackman, who played Cathy Gale in The Avengers and was fresh off the blockbuster Goldfinger film.

The role went instead to Blackman lookalike Anne Francis, whose most prolific film work included Forbidden Planet (1956), Bad Day at Black Rock and Blackboard Jungle (both 1955) before she moved on to a long string of television guest shots.

Honey was introduced in a back-door pilot episode of Burke’s Law in April 1965. She wore slinky evening wear, drove a Jaguar convertible and is referred to twice as a “private eyeful.” Clearly Burke’s equal, they circled each other warily before teaming to solve a murder. Five months later, Honey West was on ABC’s fall schedule.

Smart, confident and sexy, Honey inherited her father’s private eye business and with partner Sam Bolt (played by John Ericson; he and Honey had a wisecracking, do-they-or-don’t-they relationship), they often rely on high-tech (for 1965) gimmickry: a microphone disguised as a martini olive on a toothpick, lipstick radio transmitter, two-way communication devices wired into sunglasses. A disguised TV repair truck serves as a roving surveillance nerve center (an idea borrowed from notorious real-life L.A. private investigator Fred Otash).

Also on the scene was Honey’s pet ocelot Bruce, whose “playful” behavior got a little rough at times. If Honey or Sam needed the occasional tetanus shot, they also spent a lot of time in concussion protocol. No episode was complete without one – or both – of them getting clunked on the back of the head with a pistol butt, despite Honey’s proficiency in judo and karate (which Francis studied prior to shooting).

Sharp and chic, the show started strongly, as Honey and Sam bust a cocaine ring, take on industrial spies, gem smugglers and arsonists, and match wits with Don Draper-style smoothies like Ray Danton and Lloyd Bochner. Every episode seemingly guaranteed a slugfest in the final minutes and a reason for Honey to wear her form-fitting black jumpsuit.

But with the debut of Batman in January 1966, the plots grew sillier and camp: robots, a Robin Hood imposter, “kooky” pop artists, Honey’s evil double (Anne Francis in a dark wig, of course). A random POW! superimposed over a fight scene clearly signaled the show’s death knell.

Francis soldiered on, winning a Golden Globe and being nominated for an Emmy. TV Guide reported that she was pulling in a $5000 weekly salary and owned 20 percent of the show.

Despite all the trappings we’ve come to expect in an Aaron Spelling production: attractive leads, glamour and adventure, Honey was a one-season wonder, a victim of scheduling (going up against Gomer Pyle) and the less-expensive availability of, ironically, the syndicated The Avengers.

Coming full circle, Anne Francis’ last appearance as Honey was in the 1994-95 revival of Burke’s Law, this time as Honey “Best.”

Honey West crashed the all-male adventure series party, paving the way for Charlie’s Angels. While Aaron Spelling’s success suggests that he was never in need of an elevator pitch, he likely had the perfect four-word proposal for his series about the crime-fighting adventures of three women working at a private detective agency in Los Angeles: Honey West times three.

The What If Woodstock

Hard to believe that Woodstock II, as it came to be known, was 50 years ago this month, August 1974. All the news magazines back then, back when their word meant something, were tripping over themselves trying to describe it.

Time, going a bit overboard, called the festival goers "running dogs of capitalism,” picturing us as willing servants to the event’s many corporate sponsors including RJ Reynolds, Anheuser-Busch, Coca-Cola and several record companies (and not to mention a few high-profile drug dealers who funneled cash into the event). William Buckley’s National Review called it the “last gasp of hippie idealism.” Newsweek seemed more optimistic, noting that with Richard Nixon leaving the White House that month, Vietnam in the rear-view mirror and the military draft all but over, Woodstock II was a “national redemption.”

For those of us who attended, we look back with fading memory at the little things, totally mismanaged at the original festival, but in 1974 planned and handled correctly: fences that kept everyone without a ticket at bay, food stations, showers, jitneys that took us to and from the festival site, camping grounds with toilets. Luxury.

But it was the movie and the record box set that made Woodstock II a cultural touchstone (a phrase the media somehow missed in 1974). There was nothing dodgy about any of the acts at Woodstock II, grouped here into handy categories.

The usual suspects: Allman Brothers; J. Geils Band; The Band; Eagles; Grateful Dead; Eric Clapton; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

Stills, Crosby, Nash and Young

Oddballs not normally associated with festivals: Steely Dan, Harry Chapin, Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, Traffic, War, Renaissance 

Anointed forefathers: Muddy Waters, B.B. King

Perennial opening acts: Joe Walsh, America, Blue Oyster Cult, David Bromberg, Garland Jeffries

Game-changers (and here’s where Woodstock II out us into some sort of fugue state): Pink Floyd playing Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety as the moon rose from behind the stage on Saturday night. The unannounced appearance of an obviously drunk John Lennon, backed by several of his Lost Weekend buddies, including Ringo Starr, doing a messy set of 1950s oldies. The brave idea of ending the festival with the funk of James Brown and Stevie Wonder, plus icon-in-the-making Bob Marley. Some didn’t dig the thought of three black acts in a row, but tough shit. Roll over Beethoven.

Nick Drake

Life-changers: Bruce Springsteen, with only two albums to his name, onstage at 9 a.m. Saturday and afterwards vowing to never play another festival or open for anyone else ever again. Friends of Nick Drake convinced him that playing the festival might help lift him out from under the blanket of depression that threatened to swallow him. He later wrote in his memoir that at some point during his performance he underwent “a mystic epiphany” and didn’t look back from there, with more than a dozen critically acclaimed albums over the next two decades.

From the list of Woodstock II acts, the music was clearly beginning to splinter off into different areas, some unforetold in 1969. Try as hard as we might, the sixties were over, man.

More than over

Early on in my career, more than three decades ago, I found myself in a discussion with two older colleagues about when to use “more than” versus “over” in our corporate communications.

They decided – I was more of a spectator in this conversation – “more than” should always be preferable, except when writing about spatial relationships; it wasn’t more than six feet, it would be over six feet. This was the nuts-and-bolts stuff of writing, and I remember thinking I'd gotten pretty far on some natural writing ability, but this was the big leagues. I'd better start paying better attention to the elements of style.

I learned on the job, backed up by the Associated Press stylebook. I stuck to “more than” through the years, whether writing or editing other people’s pieces. I was defending, in my small way, the stability of the universe of grammar – isn’t that something writers are supposed to do?

Last month I was proofing something my boss wrote, and he used “over” when the sentence called for “more than.” I marked it up and got an email back from him with a link to a ten-year old article in Forbes. Citing overwhelming usage, AP was now allowing “over” in place of “more than.”

Ten years ago? How'd I miss that?

The world keeps turning, although sometimes consistency is the gravity keeping our feet on the ground. I just finished what I believe will be my final week as a corporate communicator and I’m okay with moving on from a world where “over” replaces “more than.” Just not here.