"Honey West" Redux: Introduction

    NEXT: Opening Theme and Images of "Honey West"            Episode One: The Swingin' Mrs. Jones  

ANNE FRANCIS AS HONEY WEST, WITH BRUCE, HER PET OCELOT

Who is Honey West?

If you have to ask "Who is Honey West?" perhaps you are not among friends here, but I will humor the question, nonetheless.

Honey West was a fictional private detective first seen in print in 1957, having been created the year before by Forrest "Skip" Fickling and his wife Gloria (under the nom de plume G.G. Fickling, the "G.G." standing for Gloria Gautraud, which was her maiden name).

The saga of Honey West began in 1956 when [Skip] Fickling was talking to his friend, mystery writer Richard Prather.... “One day,” Fickling recalls, “I said, ‘Why don’t you do a female private detective?’ He said, ‘I’m too busy. Why don’t you try it?’ ”                                                                   Dennis McClellan, Los Angeles Times, 17 December 1986

Fickling said, “I first thought of Marilyn Monroe, and then I thought of Mike Hammer and decided to put the two together. We thought the most used name for someone you really like is Honey. And she lives in the West, so there was her name.”

The first novel, This Girl For Hire, was written in 25 days, but it took the Ficklings a little longer to find a publisher. Between 1957 and 1965, they produced nine novels and one short story. Two more Honey West novels were published in 1971, following which several writers have added their own Honey West novels and stories. Fickling's vision of her was just this side of racy. Honey has a sense of daring. She can be naughty, but she's smart, too. She can handle herself in the face of danger, knows her cars, and isn't a timid driver. She knows her guns and can fight. On TV, at least, she is a black belt in judo. (Anne Francis took karate lessons during her tenure as Honey.) 

Honey is the daughter of the late, well-respected private eye, Hank West. He had been murdered in the novels, but neither the novels nor the TV series dwell on this. (BTW except for the agency founder not being murdered, one could almost see "Veronica Mars" as a futuristic prequel to "Honey West.") She is also feminine, thanks to Gloria Fickling, who was an editor for Look Magazine and Women's Wear Daily. She made sure that Honey had a fashion sense.

Honey is no stranger to the coast of southern California. She lives by the sea (Laguna Beach—the TV series would move her to Los Angeles), and, in the first novel, goes on a cruise where she has to solve several murders onboard. She also spends time on Catalina Island where she wins a game of strip poker against a group of young men.

When Gwen Bagni and Paul Dubov became the showrunners for the "Honey West" TV series in the middle of the 1960s, the ABC Network's Division of Standards and Practices was not about to let them have Honey play strip poker or do anything else where sexual words or situations might be involved. (Well, at least there had to be some limit on how sexual she could be.)

Honey was introduced to television audiences in April 1965, in an episode of "Burke's Law" entitled "Who Killed the Jackpot?" before she was given her own series the following September. The episode was co-written by Bagni and Dubov. The name of her business in the "Jackpot" episode is "H. West Investigator," which was one of the d.b.a.s used by Fickling. In her own series, however, it becomes "H. West and Co.," and the layout of her office is changed, too.

For the TV version, Honey is given a male associate named Sam Bolt, who is an ex-U.S. Marine (actually, there are no EX-Marines). Sam had been an associate of Honey's father. On "Burke's Law," Sam is called an employee, whereas, on the regular series, he seems to morph into a full partner. On both shows, it is clear that Sam does not live with her (although he spends a lot of time in her apartment on both series). But on "Honey West," she lives with her Aunt Meg, who, week by week, chaperons Honey and Sam, nudging them toward marriage because they bicker so much that she thinks they ought to make it legal. Honey is also given a pet ocelot (which Skip Fickling dismissed as a needless gimmick).

Honey's character is slightly different on the two shows. The Honey West on "Burke's Law" seems more hard edged. The men she squares off with—including those who are supposed to be on her side—are more sexist than they are on "Honey West," which is saying something because Honey continues to face casual sexism on her own show. It is always most glaring when it comes from Sam, who is otherwise so supportive. Of course, it comes from Aunt Meg, too, since she is a believer in traditional roles for women. Despite all of this, Aunt Meg and Sam understand that Honey is who she is, and they know they have to accept her because they are living in her world. Honey is ultimately the boss.

If the TV show is famous for anything, it is the gadgets, especially electronic communication and surveillance gizmos, but also things like exploding earrings and garter-belt-gas masks. Then there are the automobiles: Honey's Shelby AC Cobra, which Sam drives as much as she does in the "Jackpot" episode, but Honey takes over on her series. Then there is the van, which everyone calls a truck. It is full of surveillance gear. ("We try to keep up-to-date," Honey says to Amos Burke in "Jackpot.") The van itself takes a great leap forward in that the van that appeared on "Burke's Law" in April 1965 was a 1950-ish vehicle with a long hood over the engine, whereas the van that appears on the series that premiered in September of the same year is a flat-fronted Ford Econoline. The first one looks almost like a milk truck in an old-timey movie, with lots of curves. The newer one looks sleeker by comparison. (Doubt has been cast on whether the newer van on the show was a 1965 model; it was probably slightly older than that.)

There are only 30 episodes of "Honey West," which were originally aired on the American Broadcasting Company network between September 1965 and April 1966. (In fact, it premiered on 17 September, the day after Francis's 35th birthday.) Though it really is not, the series was widely considered to be a knockoff of the then-popular British series "The Avengers," which had begun airing on ABC (Associated British Cinemas) Television Limited in 1961 but did not introduce regular female characters until 1962. By one account, the American ABC decided that it made more sense, budgetarily, for the network to cancel "Honey West" and then import and air "The Avengers," which is what they did.

Notes:

Honor Blackman as Mrs. Gale and Patrick Macnee as Mr. Steed in "The Avengers" in 1962

Was Honey West the first female TV action sleuth? No. In the United Kingdom, there was the TV series "The Avengers," which co-starred Honor Blackman from 1962 to 1964 and then Diana Rigg beginning in 1964. Even in the United States, there had been a TV series called "Decoy," which ran 39 episodes from 1957 to 1958 and starred Beverly Garland as an undercover police woman. There was also a "series" that did not even last as long as "Honey West" (apparently there was only one episode) called "The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong" (1951), which starred Anna May Wong and was about an amateur sleuth who is primarily the owner of an art gallery.

The Cast

The regular cast members are Anne Francis as Honey West, John Ericson as Sam Bolt, and Irene Hervey as Honey's Aunt Meg, with the participation of an ocelot as Bruce (not HER real name, but more about that below). 

Left-right: Irene Hervey, Anne Francis, and John Ericson

Anne Francis was born in Upstate New York in 1930. She was a teen actor and model during the 1940s. She performed on television in New York before most of America knew that television existed. As an ingenue, she gave memorable performances on the big screen in "Forbidden Planet" (1956), "Bad Day at Black Rock" (1955), and "Black Board Jungle" (1955). On television, she is well remembered for a 1960 episode of "The Twilight Zone" entitled "The After Hours."

She was not treated well by Hollywood as she aged. Most of her supporting role in the Academy-Award-winning movie "Funny Girl" (1968) was trampled on the cutting room floor. She was unceremoniously fired as a regular cast member from a TV series in 1984. 

Despite not being given the treatment that she deserved, Francis soldiered on in the business, appearing in over one hundred TV series as a guest star. Many of these performances were thankless even when she did them well. (I highly recommend a 1975 episode of the TV series "Movin' On" entitled "The Price of Loving," in which she nails the tragi-comic role of a woman who finds out that her husband of many years is a bigamist.) She even reprises her role as "Honey" in "Who Killed Nick Hazard?" an episode from the 1994 revival of "Burke's Law," except that her character is named "Honey Best" instead of "Honey West."

Francis died in Santa Barbara, California at the age of 80 after battling two kinds of cancer. She was married twice and had two children, one of whom she adopted as a single mother. (A first in the state of California in 1970.)

To me, Anne Francis will always be the definitive Honey West, although, so far, there are no others, aside from the one in Skip and Gloria Fickling's books. (Some years ago, Reese Witherspoon considered playing Honey West on the large screen, but the movie was never made.)

John Ericson was born Joachim Alexander Ottokar Meibes in Düsseldorf, Germany in 1926. His parents brought him to the United States when he was still a child, following the rise of the Nazis. His family at first lived in Detroit until his chemist father was hired to manage a chemical company in New York.

He attended the Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York where his classmates included Grace Kelly and Jack Palance. His career began on the stage and included the highly successful play "Stalag 17." In 1955, he appeared in the film "Bad Day at Black Rock," in which a young actress named Anne Francis also appeared. Later, Ericson alternated between supporting roles in A pictures and starring roles in B pictures, all the while keeping his hand in live theater.

Like Anne Francis, he appeared in guest roles on many popular TV series during his later career, including some of the same series that Francis was in, such as "The Invaders," "The FBI," and "Murder, She Wrote." In 1987, he briefly appeared on the soap opera "General Hospital."

He married twice, had two children, and remained with his second wife until his death in 2020. By then, he had retired to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he painted, sculpted, and made photographs.

Irene Hervey played Aunt Meg in only half of the episodes in this series. She made her final appearance in the episode "Pop Goes the Easel," in which she is more or less the victim of a crime (though not a fatal one). 

A native Californian, born in 1909 (when her name was Beulah Irene Herwick), she made her first movie in 1933 and made two or three pictures a year thereafter until 1951 (except for a brief period in the 1940s when she was recovering from a car accident).  Often, her movie roles during the 1940s were starring ones, albeit in B movies. During the 1950s, she became prolific on television, but by then she was most often relegated to supporting roles. 

After leaving "Honey West," Hervey continued to work until 1981, mostly in television, although she had supporting roles in the award-winning movie "Cactus Flower" (1969) and in Clint Eastwood's directorial debut, "Play Misty for Me" (1971). In her last couple of TV roles, her characters either had no personal names or were not listed in the official credits. 

She was married twice and divorced twice. She had two children, one of whom is singer Jack Jones. She passed away in Los Angeles in 1998.

Leopardus pardalis (ocelot) (not Bruce)

Bruce, the ocelot, was a handful. Also, he was a she and happened to be named "Honey." An ocelot is a wild cat native to much of Latin America, ranging as far north as the southwestern U.S. It tends to be a solitary, nocturnal hunter and can weigh between seven and fifteen pounds. It is characterized by its spotted coat and compact size, and it was once prized as a pet by Aztec rulers.

“Anne didn’t like the ocelot a bit,” said Skip Fickling twenty years later. “It kept nipping at her.”

Well, if he never bit you, you might feel warmly toward "Bruce," and you might want to know more about his/her life and presumed demise. (Domesticated ocelots live for twenty years at the outside.) If I find out anything more about "him," I will post it here.

Bonus: "Burke's Law": "Who Killed the Jackpot?"

Honey West is Mean....Sorta (article from TV Guide 1965)

Opening Theme Music & Images

Episode One: The Swingin' Mrs. Jones 

Episode Two: The Owl and the Eye 

Episode Three: The Abominable Snowman

Episode Four: A Matter of Wife and Death

Episode Five: Live a Little.... Kill a Little

Episode Six: Whatever Lola Wants....

Episode Seven: The Princess and the Paupers

Episode Eight: In the Bag

Episode Nine: The Flame and the Pussycat

Episode Ten: A Neat Little Package

Episode Eleven: A Stitch in Crime

Episode Twelve: A Million Bucks in Anybody's Language

Episode Thirteen: The Gray Lady

Episode Fourteen: Invitation to Limbo

Episode Fifteen: Rockabye the Hard Way

Episode Sixteen: A Nice Little Till to Tap

Episode Seventeen: How Brillig, O, Beamish Boy

Episode Eighteen: King of the Mountain

Episode Nineteen: It's Earlier Than You Think

Episode Twenty: The Perfect Un-crime

Episode Twenty-one: Like Visions and Omens... and All That Jazz

Episode Twenty-two: Don't Look Now, But Isn't That Me?

Episode Twenty-three: Come to Me, My Litigation Baby

Episode Twenty-four: Slay, Gypsy, Slay

Episode Twenty-five: The Fun-Fun Killer

Episode Twenty-six: Pop Goes the Easel

 (Note: Irene Hervey's final appearance)

Episode Twenty-seven: Little Green Robin Hood

Episode Twenty-eight: Just the Bear Facts, Ma'am

Episode Twenty-nine: There's a Long Long Fuse A'Burning

Episode Thirty: An Eerie, Airy, Thing

(Note: Series Finale's overall rating: 5/5; martial arts rating: 1/5)

Warning: All ratings are graded on a curve because “Honey West” is a guilty pleasure that doesn’t get better.

(To be continued)