On a side note, there are many connections between The Dean Martin Show and The Monkees, beginning with the connection between his daughter, Deana Martin, and The Monkees. She guest starred in “Some Like it Lukewarm” which aired as the next episode after “Mind Their Manor”.
Jean Powergirl takes the host reigns and welcomes her guest Rosanne Welch, PhD to the show! They’ll be discussing Roseanne’s book, “Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture.”
Transcript:
Hello again, I’m here with Dr. Rosanne Welch. She’s a professor She’s a screenwriter. She’s a producer. She’s this Hollywood lady and she has lots of interesting things to tell us about and I am fascinated. Here’s her book we’re going to talk about today — “Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture.” You can go to Amazon.com to get this book and yea, we have lift off now. Let me go ahead and tell you er credentials again because I’m going to have this memorized. I know all about my friend, Rosanne. Alright, she’s a professor at Cal State Fullerton, Mount San Antonio Community College, and Cal Poly Pomona. She has a Ph.D. in 20th Century United States Film History from Claremont Graduate University and she has a Master of Arts in 20th Century US History from California State University Northridge in 2004. She’s a writer. She’s a producer with credits for Beverly Hills 90210, CBS’ Emmy-winning Picket Fences and Touched by and Angel.
A hit television show about a fictitious rock band, The Monkees (1966-1968) earned two Emmys–Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Comedy. Capitalizing on the show’s success, the actual band formed by the actors, at their peak, sold more albums than The Beatles and The Rolling Stones combined and set the stage for other musical TV characters from The Partridge Family to Hannah Montana. In the late 1980s, the Monkees began a series of reunion tours that continued into their 50th anniversary.
This book tells the story of The Monkees and how the show changed television, introducing a new generation to the fourth-wall-breaking slapstick created by Laurel and Hardy and the Marx Brothers. Its creators contributed to the innovative film and television of 1970s with projects like Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Laugh-In and Welcome Back, Kotter. Immense profits from the show, its music and its merchandising funded the producers’ move into films such as Head, Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces.
Rosanne Welch, PhD has written for television (Touched by an Angel, Picket Fences) and print (Three Ring Circus: How Real Couples Balance Marriage, Work and Kids and The Encyclopedia of Women in Aviation and Space). In the documentary world she has written and produced Bill Clinton and the Boys Nation Class of 1963 for ABC NEWS/Nightline and consulted on PBS’s A Prince Among Slaves, the story of a prince from West Africa who was enslaved in the 1780s, freed by order of President John Quincy Adams in the 1820s and returned to his homeland.
Historians and social critics differ on the specifics of the timeline, but most cultural observers agree that the strange and fascinating creature known as the American teenager — as we now understand the species — came into being sometime in the early 1940s. This is not to say that for millennia human beings had somehow passed from childhood to adulthood without enduring the squalls of adolescence. But the modern notion of the teen years as a recognized, quantifiable life stage, complete with its own fashions, behavior, vernacular and arcane rituals, simply did not exist until the post-Depression era.
Here, in the first of a series of galleries on the evolution of LIFE magazine’s — and, by extension, America’s — view of teenagers through the middle part of the 20th century, LIFE.com presents photos that the inimitable Nina Leen shot for a December 1944 article, “Teen-Age Girls: They Live in a Wonderful World of Their Own.”
Summary From Raff & Gammon price list: A very interesting and amusing subject. $10.00.
Contributor Names Dickson, W. K.-L. (William Kennedy-Laurie), 1860-1935, production. Heise, William, camera. Welton, Henry, cast. Thomas A. Edison, Inc. Hendricks (Gordon) Collection (Library of Congress) Created / Published United States : Edison Manufacturing Co., [1894]
Subject Headings – Cats–Training–United States – Boxing–United States – Animal fighting – Animal trainers–United States
Genre Novelty films Peep shows (Motion pictures) Silent films Nonfiction films
Notes – Copyright: no reg. – Featuring: Henry Welton. – Camera, William Heise. – Duration: 0:20 at 27 fps. – MAVIS 179897; The boxing cats (Prof. Welton’s). – Filmed ca. July 1894, in Edison’s Black Maria studio. – Sources used: Copyright catalog, motion pictures, 1894-1912; Musser, C. Edison motion pictures 1890-1900, 1997, p. 104-5; Raff & Gammon. Price list of films, ca. June 1895, p. 1 [MI]. – Available also through the Library of Congress Web site as digital files. – Received: 1994-05-13; viewing print; preservation; Hendricks (Gordon) Collection. Medium viewing print 1 film reel of 1 (ca. 33 ft.) : si., b&w ; 35 mm.
Additional Metadata Formats MARCXML Record MODS Record Dublin Core Record
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I teach several classes for the Stephens College Low-Residency MFA in Screenwriting, including History of Screenwriting. In fact, I created the curriculum for that course from scratch and customized it to this particular MFA in that it covers ‘Screenwriting’ (not directors) and even more specifically, the class has a female-centric focus. As part History of Screenwriting I, the first course in the four-class series, we focus on the early women screenwriters of the silent film era who male historians have, for the most part, quietly forgotten in their books. In this series, I share with you some of the screenwriters and films that should be part of any screenwriters education. I believe that in order to become a great screenwriter, you need to understand the deep history of screenwriting and the amazing people who created the career. — Dr. Rosanne Welch
This book signing at Book Soup was wonderful – good people, good conversation (before and after the signing). Just another example of the kind of quality positive people who have been drawn to The Monkees across generations – I even met a former head of publicity for ScreenGems who had some fun stories to tell. — Rosanne
…and The Monkees were part of the childish period where they were playing around with what they could do. I think that makes them very special. We think about where we were in 1966. it was only two decades after World War II. People were still holding on to memories of rationing– whether you’re in England or here in the United States — you remembered that period and the United States was still trying to figure out where it fit in the world. we were becoming a super power, but we didn’t know what that meant and so here come these four kids with the long hair breaking all the rules showing up on television and when you’re supposed to be the nice kids on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet or Leave it to Beaver and that made people sit up and take notice.
As an extra bonus, this episode also contained one of the 19 end-of-show interviews that gave the viewers a chance to see the stars discussing their personal lives. Rafelson found those final moments to be so important he left them raw. “Those interviews are strictly unedited. I don’t touch them. I don’t want to. If I have to edit them, out they go. I can tell you damn well they’re not puppets, they’re sensitive and intelligent–they have opinions on everything–they can speak for themselves.”
You Can Please Some of the People Some of the Time… None of the People All of the Time: A History of the Art of Adaptation in Movies like Dune, The Godfather, Harry Potter and More!
Dr. Rosanne Welch speaks on A History of the Art of Adaptation in Movies like Dune, The Godfather, Harry Potter and More! at the California State University, Fullerton Library
Part of the program series for Dune by Frank Herbert: A 50th Anniversary Celebration.
The latest latest is the Martian which is a really interesting book on several levels. You guys know it was self-published and he would put chapters online one chapter at a time and he would take input from people and then he would add that to the stuff he was writing as he went further and he had so much of a following online he was able to take it to publishing companies. They said “well so many people care about what’s happening we’ll try publishing it.” It became a best-seller now of course it’s become a movie with Matt Damon hugely successful the last two three weeks at the box office. It’s been the number one movie. What have they changed? Well happily not too much. In the book they jump right into him being there you know in the movie they have to show you how stuff exploded so it’s big and exciting. That’s why we know he’s stuck at Mars. That’s a small change no one’s too upset. What bothers me is we have another Argo situation. There’s a character in the book named Mindy Park and she is his connection down at NASA right. If I say the last name Park to you does any ethnicity come to mind? Korean-American that’s who she is in the book. In the movie can’t get much blonder than that. Absolutely every bit of ethnicity has been washed out of that character which is amazing because clearly it’s a very successful and popular character inside the novel. Why they didn’t think that they could allow a Korean-American actress to portray here kind of fascinating but also kind of sad because if you don’t read the book you don’t really get the story. and so frankly the moral of the story which I thought was hilarious is actually a book called the moral of the story. The Morel of the Story, you got to read the books. You can’t just see the movies.You have to read the book so you’re not really having the experience that the person wanted you to have and I think that’s the coolest thing because it lets a movie continue to live with you. If you liked it that much you’re going to love the extra details you get inside the book. That’s it. Thank you very much.
Yea!
About this talk
Dr. Rosanne Welch (RTVF) speaks on the craft of history of film adaptations from the controversy of the silent film Birth of a Nation (protested by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1915) to Breakfast at Tiffany’s (to which author Truman Capote famously said, “The only thing left from the book is the title”) to The Godfather . Naturally, the behemoth in adaptation – Harry Potter (which depended on the relationship created by adapter Steve Kloves and author J.K. Rowling) will be discussed, as will the subject of this month’s celebration: Dune.
Date: Wednesday, October 14, 2015 Time: 1:00pm – 2:00pm
About Dr. Rosanne Welch
Dr. Rosanne Welch is a professor in the Low Residency MFA in Screenwriting Program from Stephens College, California State University, Fullerton, Mount San Antonio Community College and Cal Poly Pomona. In 2007, she graduated with her Ph.D. in 20th Century U.S./Film History from Claremont Graduate University. She graduated with her M.A. in 20th Century United States History from California State University, Northridge in 2004.
Welch is also a television writer/producer with credits for Beverly Hills 90210 , CBS’s Emmy winning Picket Fences and Touched By An Angel . She also writes and hosts her own podcasts on 3rdPass.media, her first one titled “Mindful(I) Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch.”
An essential collection of essays, interviews and filmographies, this was a seminal work (and a precursor to Corliss’s 1974 manifesto, Talking Pictures) in terms of bringing the screenwriter out from under the director’s shadow, following a decade of auteurist criticism run rampant. There are essays on Anita Loos, Jules Furthman, Ben Hecht, Preston Sturges and Dudley Nichols; a memoir by Howard Koch about working with Max Ophuls on LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN; interviews with Ring Lardner Jr., Borden Chase, Dalton Trumbo, James Poe, Eleanor Perry and Penelope Gilliatt; a ” Screenwriters Symposium,” featuring twelve noted screenwriters’ answers to a questionnaire (included are Philip Dunne, Norman Krasna, Ernest Lehman and Michael Wilson); and filmographies of fifty prominent screenwriters. The Foreword is by Carl Foreman.
I teach several classes for the Stephens College Low-Residency MFA in Screenwriting, including History of Screenwriting. In fact, I created the curriculum for that course from scratch and customized it to this particular MFA in that it covers ‘Screenwriting’ (not directors) and even more specifically, the class has a female-centric focus. As part History of Screenwriting I, the first course in the four-class series, we focus on the early women screenwriters of the silent film era who male historians have, for the most part, quietly forgotten in their books. In this series, I share with you some of the screenwriters and films that should be part of any screenwriters education. I believe that in order to become a great screenwriter, you need to understand the deep history of screenwriting and the amazing people who created the career. — Dr. Rosanne Welch
“Firemen in working uniform, rubber coats, helmets, and boots. Thrilling rescue from burning building. Smoke effects are fine.” – from the Edison Catalog
Learn more about Thomas Edison and Early Movies with these books and videos
* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs ** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!
This book signing at Book Soup was wonderful – good people, good conversation (before and after the signing). Just another example of the kind of quality positive people who have been drawn to The Monkees across generations – I even met a former head of publicity for ScreenGems who had some fun stories to tell. — Rosanne
…but it’s not just 50 years that makes the show special. That’s not the only reason that people were paying attention to it. I think it’s the ability to analyze the artistic achievements of the writers, the actors, the directors on the program. Many of these people had earned awards later in their career with Emmys, Grammys. Oscars across the whole time and the book wants to critically study who The Monkees were as a television program. Something that challenged the new rules of a new medium and the show itself paved the way for future innovation on television. Now television itself took nearly the same 50 years to climb out of the shadow of film. People have not wanted to respect television for a long time. We didn’t have television studies. We had film studies. That’s what important people went for, but in this time period, think about the shows that had been winning Emmys — in fact, last night we had the Emmys — so we had all the new stuff. In the last few years we’ve had Breaking Bad and Mad Men and now we have Game of Thrones and happily, Master of None won for best writing last night, so television has grown up.
![01 - Introduction: “Why The Monkees Matter” Interview with Jean Hopkins Power [Video] (1:02)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/rmw-power-01-intro.jpeg)
