Rosanne Welch, PhD, Author of Why The Monkees Matter, presents “How The Monkees Changed Television” at a Cal State Fullerton Lunch Lecture on May 8, 2018.
In this talk, she shows how The Monkees, and specifically their presence on television, set the stage for large changes to come in the late 1960s.
Transcript
My non-Monkee example of that is Cher because when Cher was doing rock music she wanted to act everybody said well you can’t do that you’re a singer. Then she got an Oscar for Moonstruck and she got Best Supporting for Silkwood and then she wanted to go on tour again. Like well you can’t be a singer in a concert you’re an actress. How about both? Maybe we can actually do more than one thing. So America is not good at that and it really harmed them when the show was over. For a little moment Micky Dolenz was considered to play the Fonz on Happy Days but they were afraid his fame coming into the show would be too hard to make you understand and believe the rest of the characters. So as we know Henry Winkler got that job right but that might have been his next TV show?
A hit television show about a fictitious rock band, The Monkees (1966-1968) earned two Emmys–Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Directorial Acheivement 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 Riderand Five Easy Pieces.
Learn more about the American Revolution through the eyes of an important, Italian Immigrant, Filippo Mazzei. Read his story today!
“To bolster the King’s subjects back in England their newspapers reported large numbers of Englishmen flooding into the Royal army to help put down the insurrection. Rather than instill terror into the Americans, the news drew hundreds more volunteers from all over the colonies, determined to help stand against the flood of what to them were foreign invaders.”
Watching several current and alumni students of the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting who shared their research on female screenwriters with professional presentations at the Citizen Jane Film Festival in a panel titled: Frank and Funny Female Screenwriters Who Should Be More Famous”. @citizenjanefilmfestival
Philip Mazzei (1730-1816), a Florentine merchant, surgeon, and horticulturist, befriended Thomas Jefferson through business connections several years before the two men actually met.1 After working as a wine merchant in London for about eighteen years, Mazzei sailed to Virginia in 1773 to indulge his interest in the political life of the Colonies and to conduct agricultural experiments. The Virginia Legislature had promised Mazzei some land in Augusta County and, on his way to the Shenandoah Valley, he stopped to see Jefferson. When he discovered that the land he was to receive was divided into separate tracts, Mazzei was persuaded by Jefferson to settle in Albemarle County. Jefferson gave him a tract of land on the south side of Monticello.2 Mazzei purchased about 700 more acres by 1778 and named his farm Colle.3
So we’re here today to talk about why I created a history of screenwriting class not a history of film class and that’s my problem. This is quickly Who I am. I’ve been a screenwriter in Los Angeles. I’ve written on Touched By An Angel Beverly Hills 90210, Picket Fences and for ABC news…oh… too fast. I’ve also just come up with a book and I’ll tell you about that came out of my class so that’s part of why I love this class. It’s another set of books that I’ve done. I’m also the book review editor for Journal of Screenwriting which I mentioned the other day. So please offer to review books and I’m on the editorial board for Written By which I always recommend as part of a screenwriting class because it’s free online digitally. You can look it up as Written By magazine and you’ll have the digital copy every month we interview either a movie writer or a television writer and it’s quite good, Of course, it’s in English. My apologies and I work for Stephens College which is located in Columbia Missouri but we do a low residency program where the students come to Los Angeles and work at the Jim Henson studios…hence Kermit … and this is Charlie Chaplin’s original studio so it’s still designed the way it was when he set it up in 1917.
* 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! † Available from the LA Public Library
“At the height of her career, “Weber would receive an annual salary amounting to $5,000 per week, making her the highest-paid director in Hollywood” (Stamp 148). So how did a modest girl from Allegheny, Pennsylvania become the highest paid director, male or female, in Hollywood? Like many successful creative people, their stories begin with an eventful childhood.”
* 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!
† Available from the LA Public Library
On Saturday, November 3rd, 2018 several of the contributors to When Women Wrote Hollywood gathered at the Skylark Bookshop in Columbia, Missouri for a signing and launch party that functioned like a mini-reunion of the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting Class of 2017.
Many thanks to all who came to hear them each speak with passion about the research subjects who became whole chapters in this book of essays on female screenwriters from the Silent Era into the 1940s.
* 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! † Available from the LA Public Library
Rosanne Welch, PhD, Author of Why The Monkees Matter, presents “How The Monkees Changed Television” at a Cal State Fullerton Lunch Lecture on May 8, 2018.
In this talk, she shows how The Monkees, and specifically their presence on television, set the stage for large changes to come in the late 1960s.
Transcript
Micky Dolenz is gonna leave the country and go to England and become a director for 15 years and he directs children’s television programs that are classics in England right? So he was going the Ron Howard I’m not gonna be Opie anymore thing and then he got drawn back to the states for their 20th anniversary tour and has been touring ever since but had he not given up being a director who knows where he might have gone with his directing right but he couldn’t get taken seriously as an actor here in the States even though he’d had his own TV show when he was 10 and he had his own TV show when he’s 18 and they were both hits. So but his acting career nobody believed right because he was just the goofy guy. Mike Nesmith wanted to be more of a songwriter and a country songwriter. Nobody took him seriously. He started the First National Band. It didn’t work. He ended up going off and you know running his own video company and he’s now a millionaire so he’s happy and Davy Jones probably had it the worst because being a boy teen idol — look look how hard it was for Justin Timberlake to grow up right — I mean that is the hard position for a man to grow out of. So we’re not good with Renaissance people. The fact that you can have more than one talent.
A hit television show about a fictitious rock band, The Monkees (1966-1968) earned two Emmys–Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Directorial Acheivement 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 Riderand Five Easy Pieces.
Learn more about the American Revolution through the eyes of an important, Italian Immigrant, Filippo Mazzei. Read his story today!
“Filippo sent Jefferson the Virginia Declaration of Rights and Jefferson sent back drafts of his Declaration of Independence, pointing out the places where he had incorporated several of the points Filippo had argued so strongly for in the Virginia version. Filippo sent back his ideas as if the two men were once again across the table at Monticello, something that would rarely happen again in the tumultuous new world they were helping to create, if they both survived the creation.”
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