Category: Books

“Television forced families to see things they might not have chosen to see, but needed to see, such as independent women, people of color and new political perspectives. All these things appeared on The Monkees long before the rise of social commentary comedies such as All in the Family.”

from Why The Monkees Mattered by Dr. Rosanne Welch — Coming Fall 2016 – Click for more info!

Who Wrote The Monkees? –  “Monkees At The Circus” by David Panich – Part 6 of an on-going series

David Panich wrote Monkees at the Circus as one of only a few freelancers contracted for the series and was also on the staff 1967 of writers who won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing Achievement in a Music or Variety show for his work on Laugh-In, a show that took a page from The Monkees by bringing the counter-culture into more and more homes in that era.  

The other Monkees freelancer who shared the Emmy with Panich was Coslough Johnson.  

Likewise, Panich had been nominated for the same Writing award but for a different show and with a different future Monkees writer – Gerald Gardner – when they both worked on That Was the Week That Was.  This is likely where Gardner knew of Panich and why Panish was invited to pitch ideas for The Monkees.  He would be nominated for Laugh-in three more years in a row, and then receive a writing nomination in 1975 for his work on Cher, the show she headlined after her divorce from Sonny.  A seasoned variety show sketch writer Panich had also written for The Dean Martin Show, and would later work for the Hudson Brothers and Dom DeLuise.  Sadly, Panish died in 1983.

 

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Receive on-going info about “Why The Monkees Mattered” book and more!

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More information on The Monkees:

• Read more about the writers of “The Monkees” own this article for Written By Magazine – Hey, Hey They Wrote the Monkees!
• “Monkees At The Circus” on IMDB
• David Panich on IMDB

Previously in Who Wrote The Monkees?:

• Case of the Missing Monkee and  I Was A Teenage Monster by Gerald Gardner and Dee Caruso and Dave Evans
• I’ve Got a Little Song Here” written by Treva Silverman
• “Don’t Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth” by Dave Evans
• “Monkees in a Ghost Town” by Robert Schlitt and Peter Meyerson
• “Success Story” by Bernie Orenstein

“This book allows academics to critically study The Monkees as a program that challenged the nascent rules of a new medium and paved the way for future innovation.”

from Why The Monkees Mattered by Dr. Rosanne Welch — Coming Fall 2016 – Click for more info!