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"The Monkees" (1966) More at IMDbPro »

• Aired from 12 September 1966 to 9 September 1968 on NBC for 58 episodes. It ruled its NBC primetime slot (Mondays 7:30) for the entire duration of its run. CBS carried repeats of the series on its Saturday Morning schedule between 13 September 1969 and 2 September 1972; after which, it was seen for a season on the ABC Saturday Morning schedule from 9 September 1972 to 1 September 1973.
  
  
• The show had two chief sponsors: Kellogg's cereals and Yardley Cosmetics of London, and as such, they rotated each week. The Monkees made humorous half-minute sponsor tags for Kellogg's Rice Krispies and Yardley Black Label Aftershave. In 1969, when the show was picked up by CBS, The Monkees (sans by-now departed Peter Tork) were hired to shoot commercials for the series' new sponsor: Kool-Aid.
  
  
• Among those who auditioned to be members of The Monkees were Paul Williams (who later wrote "Someday Man" for the group) and Stephen Stills, who was almost cast but pulled out when he learned Columbia Pictures would demand the publishing rights to his songs. It was Stills who suggested his then-roommate, Peter Tork, audition for the group, and Tork was cast.
  
  
• Peter Tork actually did play guitar on "Papa Gene's Blues," one of the songs on their first album. This was done at the insistence of Michael Nesmith, who produced this song as well as "Sweet Young Thing" for the debut LP. Other than Peter's guitar deployment here, it is widely known that none of the four Monkees played any instruments on their first two albums, supplying only vocals; in the case of Nesmith's tracks he himself was producer. This all changed on their third LP, "Headquarters," in which they sang and played on every track, with some backup help from Mike's longtime bassist pal John London, producer Chip Douglas and bassist Jerry Yester. Their fourth album, "Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, and Jones Ltd." had a little of both studio musicians and Monkees playing the instruments (this was due to the crushing time constraints of a hectic concert tour as well as filming the TV show's second season; primary outside involvement revolved around the use of drummer "Fast Eddie" Ho), and by the fifth album, "The Birds, the Bees, & the Monkees," they had gone full circle, employing studio musicians and supplying only the vocals, again due to time constraints. They would continue this practice until they stopped recording altogether in 1970, but picked it back up for their 1996 comeback LP, "Justus."
  
  
• Of the four Monkees, only Peter Tork and Micky Dolenz participated in all 58 episodes. Davy Jones was written out of an episode so he could attend his sister's wedding in England; Michael Nesmith was written out of three episodes; one while he recovered from a tonsillectomy, one when his son Jonathan was born, and one to make a family trip home to Texas.
  
  
• During the first season and part of the second season, a laugh track was used. However, during the second season, the laugh track was discarded.
  
  
• Songwriter Harry Nilsson also tried out for the Monkees but was rejected. Nilsson would later write the song "Cuddly Toy", which was covered by the group.
  
  
• The address of the beach house where the boys "lived" on the show was 1134 North Beechwood Drive. The real-life location of that address was in the middle of the Columbia Pictures studio lot, and it was used by their Sixties fan club for correspondence.
  
  
• Monkees filming and recording sessions were usually closed to fans and outsiders, with only session personnel and occasional VIPs as guests. One person who fit both definitions was Micky's sister Coco Dolenz, who'd always sung with him, and sang background vocals on some of their later records.
  
  
• Twelve of the 58 episodes featured a candid end-of show interview of The Monkees as filler. One such epilogue interview discussed rioting on the Sunset Strip early in 1967, an act that Michael Nesmith cryptically discussed in the lyrics of the song "Daily Nightly".
  
  
• The Monkees' self-titled first album, "The Monkees" (Colgems #COM/COS-101), was released to coincide with the airing of the 10/10/1966 episode.
  
  
• To cast the show, the producers placed an ad in Variety, which was answered by 437 hopefuls, all of whom were interviewed. The only one cast as a result of the ad, it turned out, was Michael Nesmith; Davy Jones was already under contract to Screen Gems, which wanted to place him in a series, while Micky Dolenz learned of the audition from his agent and Peter Tork had been referred by his friend Stephen Stills. The four actors selected had to take a six-week course in improvisational acting, taught on the set by director James Frawley.
  
  
• The second season was rushed into production immediately after the first one stopped filming, probably because Davy Jones was eligible for induction into the U.S. Army and the producers were afraid he would be drafted. When Jones was let off the hook due to being sole support of family, The Monkees -- with plenty of episodes in the can -- spent the summer touring and shooting videos for the completed episodes. When they resumed filming in the fall, producers Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider were "kicked upstairs" to executive-producer status and Ward Sylvester was promoted from associate producer to producer.
  
  
• If two of the "Prefab Four" had been billed by their real names instead of their stage names, the complement of the group would have looked like this: Davy, Peter, George, and Robert! Micky Dolenz's real name is George Michael Dolenz; Mike's real name is Robert Michael Nesmith.
  
  
• The opening title sequence seen in syndication is from the second season (it's used for the first-season episodes as well). The producers redid the sequence to include clips from "The Monkees on Tour" (the first-season finale) and even some second-season episodes such as "The Devil and Peter Tork" before they even aired. In the final three episodes of the second (and last) season, three of the Monkees invited special musical guests onto the show. Davy Jones talked to Charlie Smalls about soul, Michael Nesmith interviewed Frank Zappa and vice versa, and Micky Dolenz introduced a song by Tim Buckley. Peter Tork had planned to do a similar item with Janis Joplin but this never came about.
  
  
• At the age of 11, Davy Jones appeared in the British soap opera "Coronation Street" (1960).
  
  
• After the first season ended, Davy Jones disappeared from the public eye for several weeks, while a series of morbid rumors about his health made the rounds. The truth was that Jones had received a draft notice, and subsequently fasted for three weeks in order to fail the physical. It worked.
  
  
• Michael Nesmith produced nearly a dozen recording sessions during 1966, producing music for the television series and for potential inclusion onto other artists' albums. Among his "stock" session guitarists was future country superstar Glen Campbell, and Mike strove to include Peter Tork, Davy Jones and Micky Dolenz in those sessions. The musical signature of Nesmith's 1966 sessions was the use of a Danelectro or "dano" bass by bassist Robert West as well as possibly Tork and one of the other guitarists in Nesmith's "stock" company; the "dano" bass was an electric bass with lighter strings than a normal bass that when played with a pick produced a distinctive percussive plucking sound, sometimes called a "tic-tac twang." The "dano" bass thus produces a slightly higher sound registering on recording, particularly useful for the monaural soundtracks of television of the time.
  
  
• After their six-week improvisational acting course with director James Frawley, the boys rehearsed and recorded as a band during the spring and early summer of 1966 with instruments rented for them by Screen Gems; among the songs they "tracked" was Michael Nesmith's "The Girl I Knew Somewhere," and Nesmith has said "about a hundred" tracks from these sessions were made. This musical gestation was quashed when Don Kirshner was retained as music supervisor.
  
  
• The four Monkees were each paid $450 per episode, raised to $750 for the second season. They received standard royalty rates for their recordings (and publishing, when they wrote the songs), but received virtually nothing for their merchandising. Micky Dolenz and Davy Jones sued Columbia Pictures in the late 1970s, but had to settle for a payment of only $10,000.
  
  
• It was long believed that the song "Sugar Sugar" was originally offered to The Monkees but they refused to do it, leading to a huge argument that ultimately resulted in the firing of Don Kirshner as the show's musical supervisor. "Sugar Sugar" became a huge hit in 1969 for Kirshner's later creation, The Archies. However, at the time of this series, Kirshner recorded a Sandy Linzer-Denny Randell song, "Sugar Man", that he offered to the group, which they balked at doing; confusion about "Sugar Sugar" came about because of the similarity in the titles of the two Kirshner-related songs. The incident that led to Kirshner's dismissal from the project was his release, against an agreement with the group, of the single "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You", which was written by Neil Diamond, in February 1967 with the song "She Hangs Out" on the flip-side. "She Hangs Out" was recorded in New York in January 1967 and Davy Jones laid down vocals reportedly without the knowledge of the other three Monkees, who at the time were preparing for the group's vacation in Europe before commencing recording on the album "Headquarters". The single was released in Canada and some American DJs began playing "She Hangs Out", and when it got heard in the US Kirshner was fired.
  
  
• Danny Hutton, later of Three Dog Night, auditioned at the original tryouts but was turned down.
  
  
• The Monkees officially broke up in 1970, two years after the show was canceled by NBC. Peter Tork had actually left at the end of 1968, using an opt-out clause in their original contract; Michael Nesmith left late in 1969, and had to pay a default of nearly $500,000. After the failure of the "Changes" album (featuring only Micky Dolenz and Davy Jones, standing back-to-back on the cover) Jones announced he was resuming his solo career, and a joke went around that Dolenz would continue on as "The Monkee".
  
  
• The initial version of the pilot set a new record at the time--for the lowest ratings for a pilot. A re-edited version that featured Davy Jones' and Michael Nesmith's original screen tests at the beginning scored one of the highest test ratings ever.
  
  
• The original inspiration for the series was the film A Hard Day's Night (1964) starring The Beatles. Coincidentally, when The Beatles made their American debut on "Toast of the Town" (1948) (aka "The Ed Sullivan Show") on February 9, 1964, Davy Jones was also on the show as a member of the stage acting troupe performing a scene from Charles Dickens "Oliver Twist".
  
  
• Davy Jones' nickname on the set was "Frito". His personal nickname for Michael Nesmith was "Skinny the Schneid" and for Micky Dolenz was "Mayonnaise".
  
  
• Originally the producers had tried to recruit The Dave Clark Five, then thought about hiring The Lovin' Spoonful, but decided instead to go with four unknowns.
  
  
• It was long rumored that and notorious cult figure and convicted killer Charles Manson auditioned for The Monkees, but that rumor is unfounded, as he was in federal prison at the time the auditions were held.
  
  
• The Monkee Mobile was a modified 1967 Pontiac GTO. The trunk was shortened in volume and a third seat was added, the front end had a fiberglass grille and headlight shroud and the exhaust pipes exited from the back of the front wheel wells. The huge air scoop and supercharger were fake and added to the top of the engine for display and for filming. There are three Monkee Mobiles, each can be differentiated from the others by the size of the Monkees logo on the door.
  
  
• The mis-spelling of the band's name is an allusion to The Beatles and their mis-spelled name. The Beatles and the film "A Hard Day's Night" was the inspiration for the series.
  
  

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