When you’re told that Micky Dolenz and Samantha Juste aren’t planning to marry, what do you naturally assume? You assume, of course, that Micky doesn’t want to marry Sam.
You know that he flipped for her after guesting in London on her “Top of the Pops” show. And small wonder, since her looks and style won her a place in “Birds of Britain,” a photo album of her country’s most beautiful girls. So, learning that he isn’t going to marry her, you figure he must be having too much fun with his fame and fans and females to settle down with anyone. After all, it couldn’t possibly be that any girl is so dotty, balmy, eccentric and just plain nuts as to refuse to marry Micky! Could it?
It could.
Every red-blooded female Monkee fan who reads this is likely to suggest that Samantha be confined for intensive psychiatric care, but according to Micky’s own next-door neighbor, it’s Samantha Juste who doesn’t want to marry Micky Dolenz! It’s Samantha’s ardor which has cooled, and it’s Samantha who seems to have done the loving and leaving!
Micky’s neighbor has seen the evidence of Micky’s own ardor all over the walls of his new Laurel Canyon home. They are literally papered with pictures of Samantha! He’s got her smiling, pouting and winking at him from every possible square inch. But he’s got her only on film. The real Sam is stoutly refusing to be pinned down.
“She was supposed to be here now, and she isn’t!” sighed Scotty Mandell, the 19-year-old night club music director and manager who lives next door. “She was to come to Hollywood after touring America with him. She went on the tour, but she didn’t come here to visit him after all.
“I don’t think they were ever formally engaged. You know how things are nowadays people like Micky don’t have formal engagements any more. They just see each other and wait to see what happens. I think Micky will see her again.”
It’s hard to understand Samantha’s absence when you hear Scotty talk about Micky. The way he tells it, Micky will make a husband any girl might be happy to own.
“He’s really groovy!” Scotty enthused. “He’s a very warm, deep, intelligent human being.
“He has nice things in his head—and there are so many empty-headed pop stars around. He’s always building things—with wires, beads, molds—now he’s always busy with cameras, and with decorating his new house. He’s also building a helicopter from a kit!
“There’s no uptightness with him at all. He’s kind and good-natured, and you ask him for anything. There was one kid who came up to his house and asked him to pay for the cab. I would have, said, ‘Get lost!’ but Micky gave him the money. His sister, Coco, is really a sweet girl, too.
“I respect the Monkees very much—which is weird, because when they first came out here, I didn’t think I’d like them at all. I expected them to be phony and corny, but they’re all nice. And they have great integrity. They won’t sell out to the brass who created them and who want to keep them in the same old mold, with no chance to grow.”
Aha! you will exclaim. A bright light begins to dawn. Samantha is acting crazy, all right—crazy like a fox!
She knows what a wonderful guy he is, but she also knows that the best way to make him her wonderful guy is by pretending not to care about him at all! That way, he’ll be the one who chases madly after a girl, for a change—until she catches him!
Right?
Wrong.
For Micky’s other neighbor claims to see another side of the Monkee next door. He believes there are things about him that might frighten any girl away.
“He’s a funny guy,” this neighbor mused. “He sort of keeps to himself. He doesn’t go out of the house a lot. When he’s with people he always tries to make everybody laugh and keep everybody happy. But the real Micky never comes out, and I don’t think that’s a very good thing.
“He’s strange. He keeps at least a dozen cats and three dogs, and goes around the house in way-out Indian outfits and loud prints.”
He’s also been known to jump, fully dressed, into the fountain of the Hollywood Bowl in the middle of a Monkee concert. And he became so attached to a double-decker bus in England that he bought it! These are things which a girl finds far more appealing in a boyfriend than in a husband!
It might be fun to go around with a guy who’s slightly strange and very mysterious, who keeps you guessing what off-beat trick he’s going to pull next, and wondering what he’s really like. But Samantha might have decided that when it comes to marrying, she’ll take someone who’s duller, tamer, and easier to understand.
Then again—she might finally decide that she can live with a little oddness and mystery after all. For, strange or not, even this neighbor agrees that Micky is a very kind and generous guy.
“He met a boy in England who wanted very badly to come over here,” he recalled. “When Micky got back to America, he arranged to bring the kid over on a work permit.”
“He always has people in and out of his house. There’s always music coming from there. It’s a fun place to be.”
And what more could any woman ask than to be mistress of a home that’s always full of fun and music?
