Honey-Coated Memories
Are Sweeter Than Ever This will be my life, insisted my little child brain, glued to the tube whenever Anne Francis was playing ABC's bold '60s private eye "Honey West." All those other TV women of the day? Vacuuming the rug in high heels, fretting over ring-around-the-collar, or chasing after men to get married? Hah! She blew'em away! When Honey chased a man, it was painful. This karate-chopping, ocelot-owning detective seduced bad guys in her evening gown before mowing'em down with a wink, a nod and a swift kick where it hurt. Crime solved, she'd head home in her sporty white convertible for a soothing bubble bath in her sunken tub, with big cat Bruce purring happily nearby.

Ahhh—good life.

Too bad mine didn’t turn out like that.

"Well, why not?" exclaims Anne Francis, Honey West herself, now in her late 60s, and looking swank as ever and a whole lot more hearty than her superpoised detective. She's brooking no regrets. "Well get yourself a little black catsuit," Francis advises with a sly smile. "It's never too late." Indeed. Here I am in an L.A. hotel, three decades later, finally meeting my longtime hero, who seems to have immediately adopted me as a grand old pal. Me and Honey! I'm trying to be professional—journalists aren't supposed to gush — but Francis is such a great gal, so open, so eager, so fun-loving, so embracing. She's talking about doing nostalgia shows for fans where she chats'em up and autographs Honey photos. "It's really funnnn," she gushes herself. "You meet people and sign autographs and just have a wonderful time and run into other actors that you haven't seen in ages." Maybe I'm drooling. She knows to ask, "You want a Honey West picture? I'll send you my book and a picture," having previously promised a copy of her 1982 memoir "Voices From Home" (Celestial Arts). I apologize for my uncool. "You don't have to be laid back with me," she declares with the gusto of a cohort with a cold one in her hand (she's drinking only tea). Sure enough, the book and the photos soon arrive ("For Diane from 'Honey'— Anne Francis too!") And suddenly I understood why "Honey West" has meant so much to me. Check out the show this weekend on TV Land, eight episodes Saturday and Sunday from 4 to 6 p.m. (You lucky Time Warner and satellite viewers, tape’em for your poor TV Land-less Cablevision friends.) Honey locates a kidnapped rock star, Honey helps a thief return his stolen loot, Honey corrals a fraud gang Honey does movie stunts to catch a murderer—all to a cool jazz beat, with sexy style (Nolan Miller did her gowns). Private eye partner Sam Bolt (John Ericson) keeps telling Honey to quit the biz and settle down. But this "girl detective" just pulls out her "high tech" gadgets—concealed cameras and mikes in her sunglasses, lipstick or martini olive!—and goes to work rebuffing all entreaties to be "a good girl." Yes, ma'am! While Samantha was swearing off witchcraft on "Bewitched" to make Darrin happy, Honey was only out to make herself happy. Anne Francis has been after the same thing all her life, as "Voices From Home" makes intimately clear. It's not a Hollywood kiss-and-tell, but a- reflective think-and-tell. Francis recounts her youth (born in Westchester, she later lived on Manhattan's West Side and in Forest Hills and East Rockaway) as a child model and actress, her frustrating year under the MGM studio system, her work in radio and early live TV her movies, ~Honey,~—and beyond:~Bu7 all seen through the prism of her own spiritual quest to find her true self and happiness through that inner candor. Call it New Age if you like, as Francis delves into metaphysics, mysticism and more. Even as a kid, she had an eager mind and a clear sense of self. And that's what made Honey West so special. The glamour and the gadgets were fun. But Anne Francis’ confidence made her fine. Her fierce intelligence and self-reliance illuminated the character with a special light for girls like me, just beginning to see we had more options than we'd been led to believe. (Francis herself would soon adopt a daughter as a single mother and direct a rodeo film called "'Gemini Rising.") "And the strange thing was that it was as appealing to men as it was to women," says Francis. "As a matter of fact, I had a meeting with Oliver Stone a couple of years ago, and when he came to the office door, he got this big silly grin on his face, threw out his arms and said, 'Honey West!' "It's had a life of its own, as they say," and also for reasons that filmmakers like Stone would appreciate. "They did a lot of jump-cut editing, which was quite new in those days " Francis remembers of the 1965 series, one of Aaron Spelling's first productions. "I loved it when we could go from one scene to another, dovetailing lines. You could finish one scene saying, 'I don't think that's right,' and then cut to another scene saying 'I really think that's right' —that kind of a thing. That makes the show, to me, still new. Yet it does carry the feel of the Sixties and Seventies in it, too, which I think is fun." A lot of F ran~s' old work holds up that way, which is another tribute to her lifelong smarts. There's "Bad Day at Black Rock," the timeless Spencer Tracy tale; "Forbidden Planet," the '50s sci-fi classic; even "So Young, So Bad," in 1950, a hard-hitting expose of juvenile delinquency and reform-school conditions that showed up on Turner Classic Movies recently. The teen Francis was the "bad" girl of the piece, having had a baby (!). "Oh, my gosssh!" she blurts. "I didn't know Turner had that! Golly, they've got every thing, haven't they?"

Francis is hardly gosh-golly innocent, just constantly amazed at new things she finds in the world around her. There's always more to explore. She's still working, having chalked up recent guest spots on "Drew Carey" and "Nash Bridges." And "I just got my computer," she notes. "It's such fun to suddenly be able to pick your font and go red! You can be creative."

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Article from the April 20th Edition of Newsday New York.