Rant #1,678: The Pickle Brothers

It is always nice to discover something that was always under your nose, but you never knew about.

I did that this weekend.

While going through my Saturday Newsday as I ate breakfast, there was a feature story on something called "The Pickle Brothers." Evidently, one of the former members of the troupe has written a book about his experiences, and Newsday interviewed him.

But the Pickle Brothers? This was something I was going to have to read up on ... and boy, was I ever happy that I did.

It seems that the Pickle Brothers are sort of, well, sort of the missing link to the Monkees that I never knew existed, and let me tell you a little bit about these comedians and their link to Peter, Micky, Mike and Davy as we begin "Monkees Week" leading up to the release of the new "Good Times!" album on Friday, May 27.

I will try to summarize here what I learned about the Pickle Brothers, and again, I only found out about this on Saturday.

After the successes that they had with the Monkees, Gerald Gardner and Dee Caruso--two of the creators of TV's answer to the Beatles--were looking for their next venture, and they found it in the Pickle Brothers, a real-life comedy trio that mixed in everything from the Three Stooges, the Marx Brothers and Milton Berle (!) into their madcap brand of comedy.

The Pickle Brothers were, as I said, a real trio, one which had appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show" and had toured the country as the opening act for the Beach Boys.

They were young, they were brash, and they were really the comedic equivalent of the Monkees, so they were a natural for Gardner and Caruso to try to construct a TV series around, especially with how hot the Monkees were at the time.

The Pickle Brothers--billed as Baxter, Buddy and Bobo Pickle but who were actually Ron Prince, Michael Mislove and Peter Lee, met while at Hofstra University. The clicked as a comedy team, and ended up being the resident act at The Bitter End nightclub, and they had connections with everyone from Ritchie Havens to Robert DeNiro to Francis Ford Copolla.

Anyway, having conquered comedy stages both at home in New York and across the country, the next step was to showcase them in their own series, and Gardner and Caruso set out to do just this.

If you want to see a pilot episode that was a true mix of the Three Stooges, Marx Brothers, and yes, Milton Berle--Baxter Pickle bore a stinging resemblance to the comic--with the Monkees attitude thrown in, then this series was right up your alley.

The boys were, of course, in and out of work--much like the basic premise of "The Monkees" TV sbow--and in the pilot episode, they end up running a hotel, to often very, very funny results.

The pace is manic--even more so than "The Monkees" early shows were--and many of the same character actors that appeared on "The Monkees" appeared on this show.

The show even uses quick edits, with "The Monkees" TV show pretty much pioneered, inserts of old movie footage ... it was like Peter, Micky, Mike and Davy had morphed into Baxter, Buddy and Bobo, less the music.

And William Friedkin, a few years prior to fame with "The Exorcist," directed this episode.

Anyway, it appeared the basic premise for the show each week would have been that the boys looked for work, found it, were successes after some wild, madcap adventures, but were bored and moved onto something else.

One problem with this scenario--the show had to be given the green light to proceed, and ABC balked on the show, feeling that it was too manic, and doubting that the trio--or their writers--could keep up the pace week after week.

In the background, the trio--who had had problems prior to the show--had just about fallen apart. They soldiered on through 1968, but due to various disagreements, they broke up, and the three went their separate ways, pretty much forgotten.

Recently, one of the Pickles--Peter Lee--decided to put down his memories of those days in a new book, "Leave 'Em Laughing: A Brief History of the Pickle Brothers," and Newsday spoke with the former comic about how this book came about--through a writing class that he took--and about the quick rise and fall of the trio.

It was all very interesting, sort of a footnote to the Monkees that I never knew existed, and since then, I have been digging up whatever I could find on the Pickles.

Incredibly, the pilot for the TV series is easy to find on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIcODB6rc6Q. I have also attached it to this Rant; find it below.

There are also a couple of other things on YouTube related to the Pickles, like some unreleased music that they recorded.

But anyway, it was as if I opened up a book, and somehow, read the entire book but missed a short chapter as I went through the pages.

Yes, the Pickle Brothers are a mere, very, very minot footnote to the Monkees, but it was nice to discover this, something that I never knew about.

And I thought I was kind of a Monkees expert!

It shows that you can never stop learning, even about something that you supposedly know so much about.

More tomorrow as Monkees Week continues ... .