Here for the first time is the real scoop on two of the grooviest faves of all time—how they met, and… What the future may hold for them!
Maybe you’re one of those people who doesn’t care about how things were during great moments of history. You don’t care what color the boat was that took George Washington across the Delaware, or what design was on Henry Ford’s tie as he drove the first Model T off the assembly line. But we’ll bet anything you’d love to have been a little mouse in the corner the day Davy Jones met Sally Field! See? History really can turn you on! Here is the way it really happened!
You know how Screen Gems uses all the Columbia Pictures sound stages and movie crews to shoot their many TV shows. Two of their grooviest series are “The Monkees” for NBC and “The Flying Nun” for ABC. “Monkees” shoots on Stage Seven, on one side of Beachwood Drive, and “Nun” shoots on Stage Three, on the other side of Beachwood Drive. Fortunately Beachwood Drive is on the Columbia lot at that point, so you might say it was the company main street.
Whatever you call it, you’d have to be standing there to see Sally Field and her stand-in and best friend, Connie Seim, ride their bicycles up and down the street. That’s right, bicycles! The girls ride their bicycles, nun habits on and all, up and down the studio street. There are flowered baskets on the bikes, usually containing copies of the current shooting script.
Now, prepare to witness some history! The Monkees operate on Stage Seven, and Stage Seven is right on Beachwood Drive (see your Monkeeland Map). Two years ago it housed “I Dream of Jeannie”, but when that show began to shoot for a second year it was moved to a larger stage, Stage One. When the Monkees became a hit they could have moved to a newer sound stage too, but they didn’t. The Monkees tend to be sentimental about things, and Stage Seven will always be known at Columbia as “The Monkee Stage,” no matter who shoots pictures on it.
Anyway, there you are watching Sally and Connie sailing up and down the street, and Stage Seven has been big and empty all summer because the fab 4-M’s are on their concert tour, making personal appearances all over the country. But today the Big Door is rolled shut, the red light outside the stage is blinking on from time to time, and there is a policeman in uniform outside the small pedestrian door into the stage, keeping out anyone who doesn’t have something to do on the show. This is the first shooting day for the Monkees’ new season!
Humming with activity Permalink
Connie stopped her bike and stood straddling the front wheel in her nun’s garb. She noticed that Stage Seven was no longer dull and lifeless. In fact some very interesting-looking young men were wandering on and off that stage. Sally didn’t want to stop and rode back down the street. But the next time she arrived at the North Gate, where she could look down the little alley by the Music Department into the now-closed doors of Stage Seven, she stopped also. It was natural. After all, this stage had been quiet for almost four months. Now it was humming with activity again. It was natural to be curious.
“Let’s go in!” Connie was already off her bike when she said it.
“No,” said Sally, and she wheeled and rode off again. Connie shrugged her shoulders and started to follow. But halfway down the street a white Pontiac GTO convertible pulled into a parking stall and a young man with a wide grin got out.
“Never saw a nun doing that,” Davy said as Sally flew by. She almost rode into another parked car!
“Hi,” she said. He just stood there. She walked over, wheeling the bike alongside.
“When did you guys get back?”. Sally asked as they both started to walk up toward Stage Seven.
“Two weeks ago,” he said.
Sally pointed to her friend. “This is Connie Seim. Connie, this is Davy Jones.”
“You’re kidding,” said Connie, who was now riding around them in circles, bothering the traffic on the street just enough to cause drivers to stop while the casual threesome walked by.
“Come on the Stage,” Davy waved his arm toward Stage Seven, and the girls followed them on.
Everyone knows Sally Permalink
The commotion on Stage Seven is always considerably more than on any other stage, but when The Flying Nun and her partner in crime were seated in guest chairs on the Monkee stage, everyone came over to say hello. Most of the crew knew Sally by sight from her “Gidget” series anyway, and many of the men had worked on it. There was quite a party for a while until the assistant director from Sally’s show, Mel Swope, wandered on the stage. He’d seen the bikes and figured out the rest.
“Girls, you’re in the next scene. Come on back to your own stage,” he said quietly, and for the moment, anyway, Davy and Sally went back to work without a thought of each other. At least, that’s the way it looked then.
But Sally began dropping in on the Monkee stage frequently. She always had Connie along.
When the time came for Sally to celebrate her twenty-first birthday, the studio threw a party for her. It was to be a small party, just for the “Flying Nun” crew, some studio executives, close friends of Sally’s, and the Monkees.
Sally was going to go with a date so that she wouldn’t appear obviously smitten with Davy, although everyone in Hollywood is convinced that she was. Davy was going to take her, or so she hoped, but she wasn’t aware of his decision until two days before the party.
Connie and Sally were sitting together on the set when Davy came to ask her to the party.
“Why aren’t you working?” he asked in his flat London accent.
“We’re working,” Sally said nervously. She didn’t know exactly how to handle a situation like this. She’d always been a popular girl in school, never had to go through the agonies of wondering if she were going to be asked to a dance. But here she was, about to celebrate her twenty-first birthday, and she was acting like a child.
When Davy stood there on Stage Three talking about silly things like why wasn’t she working, Sally got angry. Not at Davy. At herself! She jumped off the high wooden make-up chair she’d been sitting in and strode off the stage.
Davy stared after her, then turned to Connie. “What’s eatin’ her?”
“I don’t know,” Connie said quite honestly, because she didn’t know, and then followed after her chum.
Davy looked puzzled, turned, and kicked a crumpled lunch bag that was on the floor with his black boots. His friend and stand-in David Pearl walked on the stage at that moment, just as the girls were walking off. Davy walked slowly toward him.
“Did you ask her?” David Pearl wanted to know.
“Don’t be so nosey,” Davy barked at him and walked on out through the heavy, soundproof doors. David Pearl shook his head and followed.
Outside the boys crossed the lot and walked back to the Monkees’ Stage. The girls were nowhere to be seen. Davy kicked things on the ground with the toe of his boot all the way back to the stage. He told David Pearl nothing.
Independent Davy Permalink
David Jones doesn’t let his emotions rule his life. He’s worked for a living since he was fourteen years old, and he’s quite independent of anyone and anything. He doesn’t fall in love easily, and he doesn’t like long entanglements.
For any girl, consequently, the job of interesting Davy Jones in any romantic interludes looms as a big assignment. Sally knew all the stories of Davy’s individualism, of his closely-guarded privacy. Davy loves the girls, but he’s been known to pass by their company many a night and go someplace with his close male chums, maybe just go out bowling at La Cienaga Lanes near his old apartment.
Davy is a tough catch for a girl, yes indeed.
Sally’s shyness Permalink
Sally, on the other hand, has always been open and loving. She was terribly in love with one boy even before she was “Gidget.” But the strain of sudden stardom hurt that romance, jolted Sally out of her teenage acceptance of things as they came along.
She became aware of the problems of being in love and in the limelight. She knew how difficult it could be to try and keep one side of your private life private. Sally grew stronger as her success grew, but she also grew more suspicious of that success. She wanted it on her terms, and that meant the right way, with romance to one side, alone, hers, not for the world to share. So she stopped involvements that could start gossip columnists raving. She dated lots of different people. She went on important dates with upcoming young actors. She left her heart well hidden, far from the prying eyes of the world.
But Davy is an especially attractive young man. Sally knew that the first moment she met him. Here it was her birthday and all her well-laid plans were going to go down the drain. She was getting emotional about a boy while she was basking in the huge success of The Flying Nun series at the same time that the boy was the idol of girls all over the world. Nothing ever worked out right!
It happens! Permalink
That afternoon Sally and Connie rode the bikes at the other end of the lot. They didn’t even ride by Stage Seven.
But as dusk settled over the giant beehive of sound stages and scene docks and dubbing rooms and make-up rooms and all the other paraphernalia associated with making movies, Davy walked across the lot once again. This time he was alone.
Davy walked right onto Stage Three and went over to where Sally was sitting in her flower-decorated trailer. The pinks and lavenders and petals and stems of the hand-painted garden on the trailer wall were in stark contrast to the blue nun’s habit Sally wore as she sat on a bunk in the corner reading the next scene in her script.
“Your party,” a voice said from the door of the trailer. She didn’t even look up. “I’m taking you, you know,” the voice continued.
“Figures,” she said, still not looking up. But a smile played around the corner of her mouth, and the British accent continued, dry as a bone, but full of mischief, “After all, I can remember when I was twenty-one! It’s a wonderful age.”
Sally picked up a pink and white striped pillow and threw it at him, but the Jones boy was already halfway out the stage door. Sally sat there grinning happily to herself. She wasn’t sure why, but she knew she liked Davy, and she knew he liked her.
Where will it end? Who knows? Love, after all, isn’t that much different in Hollywood, California, than it is anywhere else in the world!
