Friday, April 26, 2013

Celebrity Toons: Scooby-Doo meets Davy Jones (1972)

When Monkees vocalist Davy Jones passed away, we ran a clip of his song, "I Can Make You Happy". Now, we can give you the episode of The New Scooby-Doo Movies from whence it came.

In "The Haunted Horseman of Hagglethorn Hall", Davy supposedly is inheriting the titular property from a heretofore unmentioned relative. The predictable chaos follows. The irony in all of this is, another Monkee, Micky Dolenz, was under contract to Hanna-Barbera at the time, having signed a year earlier to work on Funky Phantom, and would land three more series gigs before the end of the 70's, all of which have previously been covered (Devlin, Butch Cassidy, & Wonder Wheels). It's just too bad that there was so much discord within the band, else Micky and either Peter Tork or Mike Nesmith, the latter of whom was shifting his focus to folk and country by this point, could've been added to the mix.

Edit, 1/29/21: The video has been deleted by Dailymotion due to a copyright claim from WB. In its place, we will use the song, "I Can Make You Happy", sung by Davy. The video is already up separately, but, hey....



Does anyone know if Casey Kasem (Shaggy) ever plugged the series while doing American Top 40 back then? I doubt it, but I want to make sure.

Rating: B.

4 comments:

magicdog said...

Ironically, it took Davy's death for the other three Monkees to reunite on stage.

They staged a tour last fall and I just found out they will be coming to Las Vegas this August. I'm going to get tickets and not even the Frodis can stop me!

I've always liked this ep, just for Davy's presence alone as I think he elevates the material. Singing one of the old SDWAY tunes didn't hurt either.

It would have been great if all four Monkees could have lent their voices to themselves but at that time only Davy and Mickey were on speaking terms, as Peter was trying to make a musical comeback and Mike of course was doing his First/Second National Band projects before going corporate. At least The Monkees did get a shout out in this ep.

The show was also in repeats at that point so they weren't too far away from the public's consciousness, even if they weren't on the charts as a group anymore.

hobbyfan said...

"It would have been great if all four Monkees could have lent their voices to themselves but at that time only Davy and Mickey were on speaking terms...."

Which would validate my point about a missed opportunity in using Micky in this spot. One wonders, though, if Micky had actually recommended his buddy for the gig........

magicdog said...

I wouldn't be surprised if Mickey suggested taking the VA job, although in '72, Davy was still keeping up his celebrity profile (being a solo artist on Bell Records and his appearance on the Brady Bunch) so the timing was right in any event.

I'm not sure if the guys could have voiced thmselves as "The Monkees" since the name belonged to Colombia/Screen Gems and Hanna Barbera was no longer affliated with them by '72. Still, I would have loved a reunion of the group if only via voice!

hobbyfan said...

I don't know when they got the rights to the Monkees name outright, but it was probably after Sony's "New Monkees" crashed & burned in the 80's. I did see Davy, Peter, & Micky on their 20th anniversary tour in '86 in the hometown, and would've gone to another reunion show if the tix hadn't been jacked up by a certain greedy promoter.......