“For her I’d climb the highest mountain and swim the deepest ocean. I’d even put on a dinner jacket and one of those black ties for Annie!”
Tarzan and the Apes may be one of the minor classics of American mythdom. And that stretches the imagination pretty far.
But a Monkee and Ann-Margret? That boggles the imagination.
Yet, insists Monkee Micky Dolenz, we’d just better get ready for it. Because that is just exactly what he has in mind.
“I first saw Ann-Margret through the window of her pink Cadillac,” Micky says insistently, “and nothing has ever been the same since.”
Pressed further, Micky told us that this first sighting of the luscious, long-legged Annie took place at Columbia Studios, parent company of Screen Gems which films The Monkees. Annie was on the lot making a picture, and it just happened that Micky was near the studio gate one morning when the beauteous star drove onto the lot.
“Zowie,” Micky exclaimed. “What a cool, cool doll.”
Then, with a cheerful nod toward insanity, he added, “Stacked all the way to her toes.”
Despite the fact that, in the big car, Ann-Margret wasn’t visible much below the shoulder line. None of which bothered Micky at all when this was pointed out to him.
“I care not,” he stubbornly insisted, “I could just tell. And you see,” he added triumphantly, “I was right.”
Sure, he was. As every moviegoer could tell him.
Not that pretty Annie was the first star Micky Dolenz ever saw. Far from it. His father, George Dolenz, was a well-known Hollywood actor. Micky grew up around the motion picture industry—and all its glamour girls.
But, at the time, Micky paid little attention. He was more interested in his father’s deeds of derring-do that the elder Dolenz performed while starring in a series of pictures as The Count of Monte Cristo.
Then, too, Micky saw so many of the stars that their plentitude, as well as his tender years, made him take the beauties more or less in stride.
Even later, when Micky starred in the Circus Boy television series, his prime interests were pin-pointed on the animals and the aerialist acts featured in that show.
But time passed, for Micky as it must for everyone. And now, back in the highly competitive world of television, Micky is at the perfect age to ogle appreciatively all the beautiful women for which Hollywood justifiably is famed.
Especially Ann-Margret.
“I could just sit and drool over that woman twenty-four hours a day,” Micky enthuses. “But, of course, it might get a little damp out. And she might not like that. It’s a thought.”
Indeed, it is. Plus the fact that, even though Ann still is young, she is a bit older than Micky. Which bothers him not at all.
“I’m really an old soul,” he told a reporter, drawing his face down into what he thought of as lines of age and responsibility. And which made him look almost twenty years old.
But he couldn’t maintain the pose. Suddenly, faster than the eye could catch, Micky once more was the bouncing, never-still drummer of The Monkees. Moving, talking, never sitting down at all.
And talking to all who’d listen about his undying devotion to Ann-Margret.
“Climb the highest mountain?” Micky asked dramatically. “Why, man, I’d tear down the thing for her. Why bother to climb it? Swim the deepest ocean? Betcha!
“Why,” he intoned solemnly, “I’d even put on a dinner jacket and one of those black ties for Annie. I mean it. I would.”
Which, as everyone knows, is the outer limits of devotion for one of The Monkees. They aren’t exactly addicted to formal attire.
“I’ll tell you some other things that have made me pick Ann-Margret,” Micky answered the unasked question. “She not only drives that cool Cadillac, but she does extra special things. Like ride a bike. Now, how many girls do you know who do that? You can count ’em on one finger.”
A “bike” in Micky’s terms, is not the old machine which oldsters think of by that name. Not at all. It is, instead, a motorcycle. And Ann-Margret, it is true, has been seen on one often.
Tall, long-legged Micky points out that when Annie became engaged to actor Roger Smith, he wasn’t yet back in the entertainment business as a star. He was, in fact, a student of architectural drafting at Los Angeles Trade and Technical College.
“So how could she have picked me?” Micky asks with irrefutable logic.
“But now that she and Roger are finished,” Micky adds grandly, “things are different. They will develop.
“It just takes time.”
Then, in the next breath Micky, reluctantly, has to admit that he never has been so much as formally introduced to the lady of his dreams. A minor matter to him.
“She waved at me,” he said firmly. “And I figure that is a big thing. You can’t tell me that Ann-Margret goes around waving at everybody. It’s a big step forward for me.”
Not having the heart, the reporter didn’t tell him that friendly, outgoing Ann-Margret is, indeed, very likely to return a friendly wave given to her by all and sundry. That Annie is noted for her friendliness with her fans—even those working on the same studio lot that she is.
“I can see us now,” Micky went on, dreamily, his eyes fixed on far-away horizons, “spinning through the night, just the two of us, with the sound of the bike keeping us company. No need for words. Just the two of us, dancing to the rhythm of the engine.”
Dancing? On a motorcycle? At night? With the machine in motion?
“Just you wait. You’ll see us do it. Someday,” Micky insisted, refusing to be budged an iota from his wild imaginings.
“Ann-Margret can do anything. Anything. She will, too.
“Now that fellow named Roger Smith has gone from her life, we’ll see,” Micky opined.
“I’m ready to catch her. Bike, pink Cadillac and all. Just like in the movies.”
A movie which certainly nobody ever saw up to this point. Of a girl and a guy dancing on a motorcycle, while whizzing along through the dark.
A scene dear to Micky Dolenz’ heart. And about which Ann-Margaret has expressed no opinion. Because Micky hasn’t told her yet.
