THE SWINGIN' MRS. JONES was the first episode in the half-hour private eye series Honey West, which lasted only one season on ABC from late 1965 through early 1966, with 30 episodes in all. It starred Anne Francis as the sultry blonde detective with martial arts skills along with John Ericson as her associate Sam Bolt...and Bruce the ocelot. When TV Guide came out with the three networks' fall lineup issue in August or September of 1965, as a nearly nine-year old television fanatic I studied it intensely. One of the featured new series was Honey West, and I instantly fell in love with its star just from the pictures. Tragically, when it was time for the new season to start, my local ABC affiliate in Miami, Channel 10 WLBW, wouldn't show this series for some reason and Palm Beach's ABC Channel 12 just didn't come in on our rabbit-ears-antenna TV set. So I never got to see it back then...as a matter of fact I only saw my first episode, this one, a few weeks ago because it was on YouTube! In it Honey West has been hired by a wealthy middle-age married woman being blackmailed for indiscrete behavior at a resort with one of the attractive young men hanging out there. She goes undercover as a young married, rich woman looking for some action when her husband wasn't around and quickly discovers that the resort itself is running the ring. The acting is top-notch and funny...it reminded me of a great concurrent series with the same theme from Britain: The Avengers, starring Patrick MacNee and Diana Rigg. Before writing this article I read up on the Honey West series and discovered that they not only wanted the Avengers' original star Honor Blackman (who played the role of Pussy Galore in the Bond flick Goldfinger) to play the Honey West part, but that the network decided after a year of Honey West that it would be cheaper to cancel it and just import the wildly popular British series and stick it in that same time slot. The irony of it all is that Honey West was critically acclaimed and Anne Francis was nominated for an Emmy for her performance. Francis was already an established actress...I've seen her also in the old Twilight Zone episode The After Hours (about mannequins) and as a villainess in a couple of early Man from U.N.C.LE. episodes. During that era while I was 9-10 years old I had a string of crushes on pretty female celebrities: besides Anne Francis as Honey West there were Julie Newmar as Catwoman in Batman, Monica Vitti as Modesty Blaise from that movie, and Nancy Sinatra as...well, Nancy Sinatra. Now that I've finally seen an episode of Honey West from my 64-year old perspective, I wonder how I would have reacted to it had I been able to see it way back then...
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