Friday, December 29, 2017

From Primetime to Daytime: Monkees in a Ghost Town (1966)

As the title of this episode implies, The Monkees, with their car out of gas, pull into a ghost town, unaware that it's also a hideout for some bank robbers. Lon Chaney, Jr. & Rose Marie guest star in "Monkees in a Ghost Town":



Rose Marie would return in "Monkee Mother", her 2nd & final appearance on the show. This episode is dedicated in her memory, as the actress passed away Thursday at 94.

No rating.

2 comments:

magicdog said...

Damn! Another loss of a talented and memorable comedienne! I hadn't heard!

I'm a huge Monkee fan and I'd always hoped we'd get the guys (and their last surviving adult guest star) together one last time. Davy's passing in 2012 put the kibosh on that but I'd have loved a tribute TV movie with the rest of the guys.

I had fan wanked that the characters Rose Marie played were in fact twin sisters! My theory was that Bessie Kowalski (aka "The Big Man's wife") was a torch singer in the 30s and liked the excitement of show biz and being romanced by a gangster known as "The Big Man". Her sister, Millie didn't approve of the lifestyle nor her sister's choice in the company she kept so they stopped speaking to one another. Millie eventually married her first husband (described as an angel in "Monkee Mother" - the opposite of the kind of man Bessie was with) and was happily married till his passing. Bessie was married to her husband until she got rid of him and decided to take over his criminal endeavors (as per her episode backstory). As we know, Bessie went to prison and Millie married Officer Krupke and they lived happily ever after.

hobbyfan said...

From what I understand, the "Big Man" storyline was a reflection on real life. Seems that early in Rose Marie's career, she was helped along by real-life mobsters Bugsy Siegel & Al Capone. Read it on Wikipedia, so take that however you can.