The Monkees are responsible for everything.

[ladybug_archive]

Very saddened by Casey Kasem's death this past day. Although I didn't grow up with him as Crystal and many others did, I longed to be able to see Scooby-Doo for years before I was finally able to. And JP made me a couple of tapes of the Top 40 show. I was thinking I should get those out again for a listen.

Crystal mused in her post how Casey was somewhat responsible for her interest in the Monkees, due to the Davy Jones episode of Scooby-Doo. Meanwhile, I've mused many times how The Monkees are responsible for almost all of my current interests. How in the world did that happen? Behold:

- Because of The Monkees, episode 25, Alias Micky Dolenz, I became interested in Jimmy Murphy, who played Tony Ferano.

- Because of that, I started looking up all of his roles and finally decided to try Kolchak: The Night Stalker, a show I'd been idly curious about for years.

- Because of that, I got interested in Simon Oakland, whom I knew years before from Perry Mason, West Side Story, and I Want to Live!, although I hadn't taken note of his name.

- Because of that, I got back into Perry Mason while watching Simon's episodes.

- Because of that, I rediscovered my interest in Hamilton Burger/William Talman and added Wesley Lau (from I Want to Live! too), Richard Anderson (from The Student Prince), and H.M. Wynant (from a Nancy Drew episode; see icon) to my list of interests.

- Because of them and Simon (and Darren), I got around to trying The Wild Wild West, The Virginian, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Cannon, Mannix, Mission: Impossible, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, and other shows that I liked enough to start watching religiously.

- Because of WWW, I discovered Christopher Cary.

- Because of that, I watched The Rockford Files and discovered Luke Andreas.

- Meanwhile, while watching Mannix, I finally tried season 1 and discovered Joseph Campanella.

All thanks to The Monkees.

Comments

[insaneladybug.livejournal.com]

Yep! That's a fun game to play sometimes.

Neat! I often run across Leonard Nimoy by accident in his early guest-starring roles. :)

[spikesgirl58.livejournal.com]

Exactly. I do this with Robert Vaughn all the time. I say Leonard Nimoy in "Gunsmoke" as a halfbreed Indian... the man did anything to feed his family.

[insaneladybug.livejournal.com]

Neat! I haven't run into Robert Vaughn too often.

I don't think I've seen that Gunsmoke. I saw Richard Anderson play a Native American once.

[spikesgirl58.livejournal.com]

I think the last time I stumbled across Robert Vaughn was as a very young man, again, in Gunsmoke. It was my mom's favorite show, so we watched it a lot when I was growing up.