All the Crime in Half the Time

I returned home this afternoon from a short, out-of-Seattle fishing excursion with my nephew, only to discover 411 new junk-mail messages needing to be removed from my e-maibox … and my latest CrimeReads piece having been posted for public consumption.

My subject on this occasion is half-hour American TV crime dramas. Although such offerings long ago fell out of favor—overwhelmed by the spread of hour-long series—there were myriad 30-minute shows available from the 1950s through the early ’70s. As I write:

Billboard brought word in May 1948 that “the first half-hour mystery series,” NBC-TV’s Barney Blake, Police Reporter—centered on an indomitable newspaperman (played by Gene O’Donnell) and his trusty secretary, who together interview suspects and solve crimes—had recently flashed onto American television sets. The magazine then proceeded to excoriate that live-action drama for employing “just about every cliché in the whodunit book.” Barney Blake hung on for 13 weeks before being axed.

By the fall of 1959, the U.S. television landscape had changed markedly. Westerns continued to ride high on the nighttime schedule, but as Time magazine explained in an October cover story, that season also dished up a whopping “62 shows (network and syndicated) devoted to some variation of Cops & Robbers”—the majority of them lasting 30 minutes and headlined by fictional private eyes. There were so many such programs, Time quipped, that “as the evenings pass, one Eye blurs inevitably into another, a TV trouble that even an honest repairman cannot cure.”

Do you remember Peter Gunn or Staccato? How about Martin Kane, Private Eye or Honey West? And it wasn’t only gumshoe dramas shooting up the mid-20th-century airwaves. Divertissements also came in the form of abbreviated police procedurals, such as The Naked City, M Squad, and Decoy, in addition to amateur or part-time detective mysteries, among them The Adventures of Ellery Queen, Mr. and Mrs. North, Man with a Camera, and T.H.E. Cat.

Chances are, the majority of people reading this post weren’t around to take in those programs when they originally aired on network television or in syndication. (I was not either.) However, episodes of vintage half-hour series can still be found and enjoyed on YouTube, or can be purchased in DVD sets. I say they can be “enjoyed,” because over the months I spent sampling early, mostly black-and-white whodunits and cop shows on behalf of CrimeReads, I found myself far from bored. Yes, a few of the programs now seem hopelessly dated; yet many hold up reasonably well after half a century or more of gathering dust and being forgotten.

So recognize my latest CrimeReads piece as a curated guide to the lost world of classic, condensed TV crime and mystery dramas. And on some evening when you’re stumped for what to watch next, ditch the supposedly must-see shows of today in favor of a streaming installment of Peter Gunn or Decoy or Mr. Lucky, or a YouTube-borne episode of Dante or N.Y.P.D. or Markham. You just might find that half-hour stories can be as entertaining as their 60-minute cousins.

Begin your boob-tube investigations right here.

Merry Christmas from The Rap Sheet!

Could that be a very young and innocent Honey West (Anne Francis) I spy playing Santa Claus? Yes, I do believe it is!

We’ll Miss You, Honey, Good-bye

Anne Francis, the New York-born actress who first gained widespread attention through her co-starring role in the 1956 science-fiction film Forbidden Planet, but later played the sexy title role in ABC-TV’s Honey West (1965-1966), died on Sunday at a retirement home in Santa Barbara, California. She was 80 years old.

As the Los Angeles Times recalls,

A shapely blond with a signature beauty mark next to her lower lip, Francis was a former child model and radio actress when she first came to notice on the big screen in the early 1950s.

She had leading or supporting roles in more than 30 movies, including “Bad Day at Black Rock,” “Battle Cry,” “Blackboard Jungle,” “The Hired Gun,” “Don’t Go Near the Water,” “Brainstorm,” “Funny Girl” and “Hook, Line and Sinker.”

She also achieved cult status as one of the stars of “Forbidden Planet,” the 1956 MGM movie costarring Walter Pidgeon and Leslie Nielsen and featuring a helpful robot named Robby.

Francis, however, never became a major movie star and was more frequently seen on television as a guest star on scores of series from the late ’50s and decades beyond, including an episode of “The Twilight Zone” in which she played a department store mannequin who comes to life at night.

But it’s as the star of “Honey West,” the first female detective to be featured in a weekly TV series, that Francis may be best remembered.

Francis picked up a Golden Globe award as best female TV star and was nominated for an Emmy Award for her portrayal of Honey West. Despite being denied another leading role in a TV series, she racked up an impressive résumé of guest-starring roles in everything from The Name of the Game and Banacek, to Ellery Queen and Columbo, Search, Assignment: Vienna, Archer, Barnaby Jones, Murder, She Wrote, Riptide, Without a Trace, and ... well, the list could go on and on.

The actress had been treated for lung cancer, but cause of death was attributed to complications of pancreatic cancer.

WATCH MORE: At least for the time being, “The After Hours,” that June 1960 episode of The Twilight Zone in which Anne Francis played a peculiarly active mannequin, can be seen in three parts on YouTube.

READ MORE: “The Late Great Anne Francis,” by Mercurie (A Shroud of Thoughts); “Honey West: Anne Francis, R.I.P.,” by Jason Whiton (Spy Vibe); “Honey West Kicked Open the Door for Female Action Stars on American TV,” by Rick29 (Classic Film and TV Café).

Put Out the Call for Candles

This is a red-letter day for celebrating birthdays of folks near and dear to the hearts of crime-fiction fans. As Ivan G. Shreve Jr. reminds us, it was on this date in 1927 that actor Peter Falk, who would later star in television’s Columbo, was born in New York City. Falk is now 83 years old and reportedly suffering from “advanced dementia.”

It was on another September 16, in 1924, that a second native New Yorker, Betty Joan Perske--later to be introduced to film audiences as Lauren Bacall--took her first breaths. After co-starring with Humphrey Bogart in To Have and Have Not (1944), the two performers became lovers and, in May 1945, swapped “I do’s”; he was 45 years old, she was 20. Bacall went on to star with Bogie in The Big Sleep (1946) and Dark Passage (1947), and after his death from cancer in January 1957, she appeared with Paul Newman in 1966’s Harper (based on Ross Macdonald’s first Lew Archer novel, The Moving Target), served as one of the prime suspects in 1974’s Murder on the Orient Express, and co-starred with John Wayne in his last motion picture, The Shootist (1976). Bacall also featured in a two-part, 1979 episode of The Rockford Files. It was a memorable episode, if only because Bacall--the widow of the man who’d played the big screen’s iconic gumshoe (in The Maltese Falcon)--was now playing the latest love interest of the finest gumshoe ever to grace the small screen, Jim Rockford (James Garner). Below, I’ve embedded a scene from To Have and Have Not that shows why Bogart was so entranced by the woman he called “Baby,” who today turns 86.



Six years after Bacall’s birth, on September 16, 1930, Anne Francis was born in Ossining, New York. She first came to widespread public attention starring in the 1956 science-fiction film Forbidden Planet, but is undoubtedly more familiar to Rap Sheet readers as the star of ABC-TV’s Honey West (1965-1966). In the decades since, Francis has guest-starred in everything from The Name of the Game and Banacek, to Ellery Queen, Columbo, Search, Assignment: Vienna, Barnaby Jones, Without a Trace, and ... well, the list could go on and on. But many of us still remember the now 80-year-old Francis best as a lithesome sleuth. Below, I have embedded a 1965 teaser for Honey West.



Finally, let’s not forget that today would have been the 83rd birthday of Jack Kelly, who starred with James Garner in Maverick (1957-1962). He was later a regular on Get Christie Love!, guested on such shows as Ellery Queen and The Fall Guy, reprised his Bart Maverick role in a 1978 teleflick, The New Maverick, and again in Garner’s too-short-lived TV series, Bret Maverick, and like Bacall, showed up on Rockford (figuring into two episodes from 1977). After serving as the mayor of Huntington Beach, California, Kelly died of a stroke in November 1992.

We offer a toast to every one of these performers on this special day.

A Taste of Honey

I’m not old enough to have been a Honey West watcher back in the mid-1960s. But when the full run of that short-lived ABC-TV series was released on DVD last fall, I immediately rented it from Netflix. I wanted to better understand what all the fuss was about.

Honey West proved to be unlike most of the other American TV series that debuted in 1965 (I Dream of Jeannie, Lost in Space, F Troop, The Wild Wild West, My Mother the Car, Green Acres, etc.), if only because it was a dramatic series with a female lead (played by Anne Francis) who could handle herself even under the diciest circumstances. And of course, the show had all those marvelous high-tech spying gadgets--exploding gas earrings, microphones secreted in lipstick tubes, and my personal favorite, Honey’s garter-belt gas mask. (James Bond never had one of those, now did he!) Then there was the speedy little Shelby Cobra that Honey drove, and her pet ocelot, Bruce. Those weren’t necessarily components of the 11 novels written by Forrest E. “Skip” Fickling and his wife, Gloria, who’d created Honey West back in the late 1950s. But they helped make the Aaron Spelling-produced TV series hard to forget.

John C. Fredriksen remembers Honey West well. Better than just about anyone else you’re likely to meet in this lifetime. The 56-year-old Rhode Island historian is the author of Honey West, a new non-fiction tribute to that long-gone Friday night program. In his introduction to the book, Fredriksen writes:

Compared to the staid female role models preceding her on television, Honey West was everything that the emerging social paradigm allowed a woman to be. Hence, my reminiscences about the series are couched in a unique dichotomy. Having shed and evolved beyond the social conventions of my youth, I freely acknowledge Anne Francis for her demonstrated intelligence, varied acting talents, and the impressive longevity of her career. But in Honey West she was also an in-your-face, male-wish fantasy and I embrace my inner Neanderthal by forever cherishing those daunting blue eyes, the sexy mole, the sixties flip-do, flipped to perfection, that husky voice, and pantherine form lurking beneath a skin-tight suit. In sum, Anne was the first smokin’ hot babe I ever beheld, gloriously female in appearance, speech, and deportment. In fact, her portrayal of Honey West remains appealing simply because she never forsook her femininity, even in the rough-and-tumble world of private investigating.

Fredricksen’s volume has just about everything a Honey West enthusiast could want, including interviews with both Francis and her co-star, John Ericson, who played Honey’s hunky, overprotective partner, Sam Bolt; a profile of Irene Hervey, who filled the mostly comic-relief role of Honey’s aunt Meg; and extensive synopses of all the Honey West episodes, as well as “Who Killed the Jackpot?” the episode of Burke’s Law, starring Gene Barry, in which Anne Francis made her original TV appearance as “private eyeful” Honey West. It’s a pretty phenomenal collection of material, the work of someone obviously devoted to his subject.

I took the opportunity recently to ask the author a variety of questions, via e-mail, about how ABC’s Honey West came into being, distinctions between the TV series and the Ficklings’ novels, why the show disappeared so damn fast, and what has become of both its stars and the car Honey wheeled about in so attractively. Fredriksen’s responses carry the same playful tenor as the text of his slim (228-page) new book.

J. Kingston Pierce: What first got you interested in Honey West?

John C. Fredriksen: I was only 12--you know, that impressionable age--when I first saw Honey West and, for reasons then unknown to me, I was simply captivated by Anne Francis. I had never quite beheld as woman like her before, especially in such a forceful, commanding role. I’ve been hooked ever since!

JKP: Tell us how the character first came into being, in print.

JCF: In the mid-1950s Forrest “Skip” Fickling was an aspiring fiction writer and, to be different, he toyed with the idea of a sexy female private investigator, something that had never been done before. When several of his writer friends declined to take up the mantle due to projects of their own, Skip wrote the first novel [1957’s This Girl for Hire] himself with some input from his wife, Gloria.

JKP: I’ve read more than once that Honey was based, in part, on Gloria Fickling. Is that correct?

JCF: Gloria tells me that Skip was the brains behind Honey West, although he patterned her to a degree after this wife of his. Gloria is something of a character in her own right, so I can see why he used her as a template.

JKP: In what way is she “a character”?

JCF: Gloria is very outspoken, and when she was young she dealt with rambunctious young men at parties with a good kick or an occasional shove. In sum, short but fierce--not unlike Honey.

JKP: Do you know anything about how the Ficklings penned their novels together? Did they both develop plots and characters, or did they have separate responsibilities?

JCF: As far as I know, Skip wrote the stories, which were then proofed by Gloria, who then tendered suggestions and modifications. I consider both of them essential to the process that crystalized the Honey West “character.”

JKP: Have you read all 11 of the Honey West novels? And do you have a favorite among those?

JCF: I was too young in the 1950s to have read the novels, and if I tried bringing them home in the 1960s, my mom would have batted me over the head for reading such “racy” materials. So, no, I am aware of the novels, but have yet to leaf through one.

JKP: I’ve never seen the 1965 episode of Burke’s Law in which Honey West was introduced to TV audiences. Can you tell us something about that episode? And what about it made it so successful in selling the spin-off series?

JCF: In casting Honey West, Anne’s natural dynamism fit like a hand in a glove. The story was engaging, like all Burke’s Law episodes, but Anne and John were clearly giving their all in developing these new screen personalities. Everything just clicked.

JKP: How did the Honey West TV series differ from the Ficklings’ books starring that same character?

JCF: From what I am told, the TV series is considerably toned down. Honey is sexy but never comes close to removing her clothes--something she did repeatedly in the novels. Nor does she have an on-screen affair with Sam Bolt, which in the novels she had and apparently enjoyed several paramours. Given the mindset of 1965 America, this was about all that networks were willing to show.

JKP: I understand that the Ficklings never had much contact with star Anne Francis. But did they like her portrayal of their character?

JCF: Gloria tells me that they loved the choice of Anne as Honey West--it remains her best-remembered role outside of Altaira in Forbidden Planet [1956]. In fact, I cannot think of another actress, before or since, that could fill her high heels!

JKP: Do you think that Honey, as the Ficklings created her, could have worked on television? And if she couldn’t have been herself in the ’60s, could the “real” Honey West work on TV nowadays?

JCF: These days anything goes. I consider popular culture so debased by sex and violence that, if they left them out of a proposed new series, I do not think that the networks or cable channels would buy into it. For that reason I would actually hate to see a new series; it would probably have little or nothing in common with the old, “fun” one. That being said, I waited all 30 episodes for Sam and Honey to kiss, if only once--and they never did!

JKP: In the novels, Honey West’s love interest and occasional rescuer was actually a bounty hunter named Johnny “Doom” Dombella. In the TV series, John Ericson played her “cantankerous sidekick” and, as you note, not-quite-ever lover, Sam Bolt. [The two are shown together at left.] Why exchange one character for the other?

JCF: I believe they tried to break clean from the novels. In the novels, Johnny was actively known for cavorting with Honey. Sam, however, is square and totally professional towards her--much safer from a broadcasting perspective.

JKP: High-tech gadgets were a big thing on Honey West, just as they were in the contemporaneous James Bond films. Do you have any favorites among Honey’s gizmos?

JCF: I really dug those radio sunglasses with the little antenna on the side. Face it, how many people can be seen these days talking into their shades and not get carted away?

JKP: As was so often the case in those days, I understand the Ficklings didn’t benefit as much as they should have by selling their character to television. Correct?

JCF: Welcome to Tinseltown. The Ficklings were victimized by the Hollywood mentality and the machinations of their attorney, who I am sure got an even bigger pound of flesh by denying them theirs. Pure slime at work--but then they should have known this going into the belly of the beast.

JKP: Honey West didn’t last long--just a single season. But can it be said to have had a lasting influence on television?

JCF: Honey West enjoys the unimpeachable quality of hosting TV’s first liberated women, at least from an American standpoint. The same can be said for Cathy Gale [played by Honor Blackman] from the first season of The Avengers in the UK, but those episodes never made it over here. Honey certainly cut the template for strong female leads to follow. And Anne did it in her own sexy style.

JKP: How do you think Honey West might have developed, had it been allowed to go on to second, third, even fourth seasons?

JCF: First of all, they would have gone color and possibly adopted a one-hour format. I believe that, over time, as tastes evolved in the later ’60s, Honey may have cavorted with Sam in much the same way as the leads of Moonlighting did [in the 1980s]. I also feel that the role of Aunt Meg, a comic prop, would have been written out.

JKP: Was the half-hour format simply too short to accommodate everything the series was trying to do?

JCF: No, the series remains crisp and watchable to this day, so I do not think that 30 minutes or black and white did them it. The program failed because a bunch of suits at ABC felt they could save money without it.

JKP: So why did the network cancel Honey West?

JCF: Two reasons. The first was programming. The biggest hit on Friday nights turned out to be none other than Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.--it literally clobbered all the competition. The second was money: ABC decided that they could dress Diana Rigg up in black leather and have her beat up guys for less money than they were shelling out for Honey West.

JKP: Do you think that last fall’s release of Honey West on DVD will bring in a new generation of fans, or is the series now too dated?

JCF: The response to the DVD has been overwhelmingly positive among fossils/viewers of my generation. However, the lack of overt sex, vulgarity, and mindless violence may alienate younger viewers who are inured to it and have come to expect it.

JKP: There’s been talk of making a Honey West movie. Do you think that will ever happen? And I know you said before that no other actress could fill Anne Francis’ high heels in the part. But if a movie is made, who do you think ought to star? Surely, not Reese Witherspoon, right?

JCF: I hope not. Hollywood has lost its ability to tell a coherent story for the past two decades or so. Face it, the talent simply does not exist anymore. Today’s politically correct Honey West would probably be a lesbian or closer to a whore than a private investigator. I, for one, remain true to the original series. As far as casting goes, forget it. There is not a single actress in Hollywood today with the combination of grace, grit, looks, and class of Anne Francis. Reese Witherspoon would be terribly miscast in my opinion--which is why she’d get the role.

JKP: You interviewed Anne Francis for your new book. How hard was it to set up that interview? And was she happy to talk about Honey West after all these years?

JCF: Talking to Anne was a snap. She is very polite and considerate toward her fans, and freely gave me an hour of her time on the phone. Just a class act.

JKP: Does Francis look back fondly on Honey West?

JCF: She loved being cast as Honey West. Prior to that she was always just another “pretty face” on the screen. Anne wanted a chance to demonstrate her range of skills, and she did so quite memorably. And, coming off a second bad divorce, she was probably glad to take it out on the male of the species by knocking them about each episode.

JKP: Didn’t Francis have to do karate training and some of her own stunts for Honey West?

JCF: Anne studied Okinawa Tai under Sensei Gordon Doversola for several weeks and acquired some of the basic moves necessary to make her look proficient. Quite a change from June Cleaver!

JKP: I understand that Francis and co-star John Ericson made a pact early on to not smoke or drink on Honey West. Why was that?

JCF: Again, this is a reflection on Anne the person. She realized that Friday night scheduling has a large youthful audience and she did not want to smoke or drink in front of youngsters. John agreed in principle; they are both classy, thoughtful people.

JKP: Most of us just know Anne Francis from Honey West and a succession of guest-starring roles on everything from Columbo to Ellery Queen to Fantasy Island. But you had the opportunity to interview her. Any personal impressions?

JCF: Anne is a typical New Yorker of her generation. Classy and gutsy in the same breath. As an actress she always battled against her looks, for no studio exec in the 1950s believed that a women that beautiful could actually act! She also sought out “bad girl” roles like prostitutes and drunks just to prove that she could act convincingly.

JKP: You interviewed John Ericson as well. I didn’t even realize he was still alive, at age 82. What did you think of him, both in his role on Honey West and in talking with him for your book?

JCF: Like Anne, John considers Sam Bolt one of the highlights of his lengthy career. He and Anne had been good friends since Bad Day at Black Rock (1952), they got along well, and both appreciated the sheer physicality involved in Honey West. Both of them liked their fight scenes!

JKP: While Francis has gone into semi-retirement, I understand that Ericson is still working. What’s he been up to lately?

JCF: John is still active on stage, although he limits himself to local theater in New Mexico. He still enjoys good health, loves life, and would very much want a cameo role in any new Honey West television show or movie. I found him to be a very nice, friendly person to deal with.

JKP: Why do you think neither Francis nor Ericson ever went on to star in other American TV series?

JCF: Probably because few people can handle the 15- to 18-hour workdays needed to produce a TV series. They both knew this going into Honey West, but the roles they were offered were so intriguing from what they had done previously, they considered it a
good trade-off.

JKP: There’s a section of your book devoted to Sharon Lucas, who did some of Francis’ stunts. Most stunt people don’t get much credit. Why write about Lucas?

JCF: According to Gene LeBell, stuntman extraordinaire, Sharon Lucas was one of the most talented stunt women in the business and, in some respects, was equal to or better than most guys. She was a real Honey West, as some of those intense fight scenes demonstrate. Anne loved her as a person, they were very close on and off the set. I felt it was time that this individual, who did so much for the series, get the credit she deserved.

JKP: One of the most memorable things about the small screen’s Honey West was that little Shelby Cobra she drove. Do you have any idea whatever happened to that car?

JCF: It is in the hands of Joyce Yates of Nashville, Indiana, a private collector, who keeps it well-maintained. Cobras have quite an automotive legend to them and are quite sought-after as collectibles. A less imaginative producer might have settled for a Mustang or an XKE (as in the Burke’s Law episode) but, hey, this was the height of the British invasion and the sexy British Cobra was right on the mark!

JKP: You must have had to watch all 30 episodes of Honey West in order to write the synopses at the back of your book. Did you enjoy the experience, or were your memories of the show somewhat better than the reality? And do you have favorite episodes of Honey West?

JCF: I had a hell of as good time freeze-framing Anne Francis just to behold her, or sometimes just watch her move in that slinky fashion of hers. I am especially drawn to the pilot, “The Gray Lady,” as that had a bigger budget, extreme imaginative photography (including a vertical wipe!), and a fantastic fight scene with Sharon Lucas. The later ones got sillier in order to compete with Batman, but the first five episodes are very noir-ish and stylish.

JKP: I understand that, in 1994 when Burke’s Law was revived, Anne Francis guest-starred in a role that was obviously that of Honey West, but she was called “Honey Best.” Why the name change?

JCF: What else? To avoid being sued. Too much money involved.

JKP: Your Honey West book was published by a small press in Albany, Georgia, called BearManor Media. Why go with that house?

JKP: I chose BearManor because it is a high-quality press that specializes in media titles and sells them at very competitive prices. There are others that do likewise, but they charge so much money--even for softcover titles--there is no way a book can sell in sufficient quantity to make any profit.

JKP: Finally, is it true that Honey West was your first love interest? How did Anne Francis react when you told her that?

JCF: She hit me with a decidedly New York snicker, followed by a sympathetic, matronly “Awwwwwww!” I am sure she hears this from guys my age all the time!

READ MORE: “Honey West,” by Joel Sternberg (The Museum of Broadcast Communications); “Honey West: A Fresh Look,” by Gary Warren Niebuhr (Mystery*File).

The Best TV Crime Drama Openers, #24

Series Title: Honey West | Years: 1965-1966, ABC | Starring: Anne Francis, John Ericson | Theme Music: Joseph Mullendore

“I first thought of Marilyn Monroe, and then I thought of the fictional detective 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.”

That quote comes from sportswriter-turned-novelist Forrest E. “Skip” Fickling, who with his wife, Gloria, invented the glamorous and kick-ass female private investigator Honey West. Under their joint pseudonym “G.G. Fickling,” this Southern California couple produced 11 West novels, beginning with This Girl for Hire in 1957 and concluding 14 years later with Stiff as a Broad. In between, the books inspired a short-lived TV series.

Replete with humor and plenty of risqué innuendos, the novels made Honey out as “the nerviest, curviest P.I. in Los Angeles--or anywhere else for that matter,” to repeat one description. She was also an important precursor to some of today’s best-known distaff dicks, including V.I. Warshawski and Kinsey Millhone. “Of course, these days nobody would dare call her a feminist icon,” wrote Kevin Burton Smith in a 2004 profile of Gloria Fickling for Mystery Scene magazine, “but in her time she was a rarity--an independent woman calling her own shots. She may have been prone to frequent ‘wardrobe malfunctions,’ but she was out there knocking on doors, taking down names, and answering to nobody but herself.”

Hoping to win the sort of fiction-writing success that their friend Richard S. Prather had with his Shell Scott gumshoe novels, the Ficklings gave their books similarly screwballish but captivating qualities. Ms. West spent much more time in her late 20s than most women would be able to do, was markedly clothes conscious (Gloria Fickling having once been a fashion writer), and had a tendency to ... er, lose her stylish garments on a fairly consistent basis during her investigations. Confident and sexually liberated, she was at least as much a male fantasy as a female one. But the Ficklings also peppered her past with a few darker elements. As part of his excellent reassessment of the Honey West books for Mystery*File, Gary Warren Niebuhr summed up the character thusly:

Honey West was born in Bellflower, California. Her mother was a dancer at The Casino on Catalina Island who acted in B-movies. Honey’s mother died at Honey’s birth. Honey’s father, Hank West, a private detective, was murdered six years prior to [book] #1 ... when he was shot in the back of his head in an alley behind the Paramount Theater. In #9, Honey reveals that she was a witness to his death. This is the most pivotal event in Honey’s life, and what sets her down the path to be a private investigator like her father. At times in the novels she toys with the idea of finding her father’s killer, but any attempts to really plumb the depths of her emotional soul is lost by the authors. ...

When Honey decides her destiny is to replicate her father, she moves right into his office and sits at her father’s roll top desk. Honey’s office is on the third floor, room #304, of the Wilks Building on Anaheim Street and Third in Long Beach. She has a view of the alley. It says, “H. West, Private Investigator,” (“Investigations” in #8) on the frosted glass of her door, a holdover from her father’s day. Honey carries a .32 revolver (#1) and has a pearl handled Hi-standard .22 revolver in her garter in #3. She knows judo. ...

The obvious major attribute for this character is her good looks. Everyone notices, everyone comments, and everyone desires her. Honey is 38-22-36, 5’ 5” tall, 120 lbs., blue eyes, with taffy colored hair. She has a heart-shaped birthmark on the inside of her right thigh and a small mole on her left cheek above her mouth.

Whatever popularity the Ficklings’ novels accrued, it was the mid-’60s ABC-TV series based on their work that finally made Honey West a household name. Executive-produced by Aaron Spelling (who would later go on to develop The Mod Squad, Charlie’s Angels, and Hart to Hart) the show was headlined by Anne Francis, a then 30-something actress with an already long film and TV career. Curvaceous and blond, with a delicate mole on the right side of her lips, she exuded sensuality--a perfect fit for the Honey role. Her first appearance as the Ficklings’ “private eyeful” was in an April 1965 episode of the Gene Barry cop series Burke’s Law (another Spelling project) titled “Who Killed the Jackpot?” The spin-off series Honey West began running on Friday nights at 9 p.m. the following fall.

Television took some liberties with Honey. Oh, it did, indeed. Most of the lascivious innuendos were purged for prime time, but in return our girl was given a racy little Cobra sports car to drive, a wardrobe bursting with slinky catsuits and animal-print garments, a collection of Jackie O-style sunglasses, and a pet ocelot named Bruce. Because spies and their high-tech accoutrement were doing well on screens large and small in those years (blame James Bond and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.), Francis’ Honey “also owned an arsenal of weapons filled with ‘scientific’ gadgets including a specially modified lipstick tube and martini olives that camouflaged her radio transmitters,” according to a backgrounder at the Museum of Broadcast Communications Web site. And let’s not forget about the garter-belt gas mask she owned, or the tear-gas earrings, either--fashion accessories essential for any woman liable to get in as much trouble as Honey did on a consistent basis. Fortunately--or not so, depending on your outlook--one of the other things Spelling gave our Ms. West was a male partner, Sam Bolt (John Ericson), who could pull her shapely ass out of the fire whenever necessary. (In the books, Honey had several masculine suitors, chief among them being bounty hunter Johnny “Doom” Dombella, but no partner. “That made Honey look like she couldn’t stand on her own ...,” Gloria Fickling complained to Mystery Scene’s Smith.)

One of the most appealing things about that ABC series was its opening title sequence (above). A succession of black-and-white still shots that captured the drama and danger--and the protagonist’s desirability--integral to every episode, that intro incorporated a bouncy, brassy theme (“Wild Honey”) by composer Joseph Mullendore, who was the arranger on a number of TV projects undertaken by his colleague Herschel Burke Gilbert and contributed his talents as well to Star Trek, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and Lost in Space. I particularly like the honeycombing of Anne Francis faces at the start, and the closing fade between shots of a wide-eyed Bruce the ocelot and a wary-eyed Honey sporting a revolver. Such a main title presentation would probably never work today, but it was quite effective in 1965.

The Museum of Broadcast Communications observes that Honey West was “the first woman detective to appear as the central character [in] an American network television series,” and the show “broke ground for other female detective/spy programs to follow, such as The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. (1966-67), Get Christie Love! (1974-75) and Police Woman (1974-78).” It adds that Honey West “premiered to reasonably good reviews. Citing the show’s sensual aspects, smooth production values and Honey’s ability to bounce Muscle Beach types off the wall with predictable regularity, Variety’s 1965 evaluation predicted some success ‘as a short subject warm up to The Man from U.N.C.L.E.’ Season opening Nielsen ratings ranked the show in a tie for nineteenth place but this proved short-lived as her CBS competition, Gomer Pyle [U.S.M.C.], knocked her quickly out of the top forty.” There’s nothing quite so ignominious as being bested by Gomer Pyle. Honey West was canceled after a single season, with only 30 half-hour black-and-white episodes having been shot--all of which are scheduled to be released on DVD this coming September in a four-disc set.

After Honey West disappeared from the air, Skip and Gloria Fickling witnessed the publication of only two more novels featuring their callipygous crime solver, both of which incorporated some of the espionage aspects of Spelling’s adaptation. The latter of those books was the aforementioned Stiff as a Broad, which paired Honey with the Ficklings’ other series character, corporate consultant/investigator Erik March. Skip Fickling died in 1998, but as Mystery Scene reported, his wife continues to live in their Laguna Beach, California, beachfront home.

Meanwhile, Ann Francis--who captured a Golden Globe Award for her portrayal of Honey--became a fixture of American series television, appearing in Charlie’s Angels, Crazy Like a Fox, Murder She Wrote, Columbo (twice), and more recently, Without a Trace. In 1994, she even reprised her sleuthing role in one episode of a briefly revived Burke’s Law, though for some reason (probably having to do with broadcast rights), the character was called “Honey Best.”

There’s been talk in recent years about a theatrical film being made from the Honey West novels, perhaps with Reese Witherspoon in the starring role (though Gloria Fickling would prefer Charlize Theron). However, when I last checked there are no listings for such a production at the Internet Movie Database. Which may be for the best. After all, it’s hard to imagine someone else filling Anne Francis’ leotards.

READ MORE: “A Taste of Honey,” by J. Kingston Pierce (The Rap Sheet); “Hollywood Heroine: An Interview with Anne Francis,” by David D. Duncan (Weekly Wire); “New Spy DVDs Out This Week,” by Tanner (Double O Section); “Iconic Women Private Eyes on TV: Honey West,” by Colleen Collins (The Zen Man).