nobody's woman? honey west and the new sexuality

In September of 1965 a slinky sleuth stole onto America’s hom e screens and

overturned television’s seventeen-year history of confining female protago­

nists to situation comedies (often domestic ones), and at the end of the sea­

son, this sleuth silently stole away.1 Was Honey West “Mickey Spill an e in a

skirt,” or “James Bond in skirts-also slacks, evening gowns, leopard-skin

bikinis, and pajamas?” Was she “for dad, unless m om likes to look at bikinis?”

Then again, m ight audiences of the mid-1960s have been “just . . . ready for

something like this?”2 Wherever one comes down, then or now, on the m er­

its of Anne Francis’s prim e-tim e private eye, her very inclusion in the 60s