What became of the principal creative forces behind HONEY VICARRO?

Carlyle's L.A. Times Obituary - 11/12/69

GAVIN HURRELL - After the network declined to renew his contract, Hurrell retired in 1968, rarely setting foot outside his Benedict Canyon estate until his death of acute alcoholism in 1992.

Kim Carlyle):- Though she was, by all accounts, on a fast career-track and could have easily bounced back from the cancellation of HONEY VICARRO, Carlyle subsequently fell into a deep depression exacerbated by an addiction to prescription painkillers, tragically dying of an overdose at age 31 at her Malibu home on November 11th, 1969. 

Site of light-plane crash that claimed the lives of Smithe-Jones and The Dover Souls

Cliff dI Marco - Di Marco now resides in Dominical, a small, coastal expatriate community in Costa Rica.

Guy Warner - For most of his life, Warner suffered with congenital arrhythmia and, in 1983, on the set of FANTASY ISLAND, he collapsed and died due to heart failure.

Anthony Smithe-Jones - In the last of a series of disastrous "come-back" tours, a tragic plane crash outside of Clovis, California in July, 1978 claimed the lives of Smithe-Jones and the other two remaining original Dover Souls.

Merchandise

As they say, hindsight is an exact science. Before it actually aired, the general consensus was that HONEY VICARRO would be a huge hit. This gave Hurrell the negotiating leverage to negotiate several lucrative licensing deals.

The disastrous première resulted in massive losses for the licensees--primarily Mattel and Revell, who were forced to dump tens of thousands of HONEY VICARRO-related toys and models into the third-world market.  Though now extremely rare, occasional examples still show up on eBay and the collectible market, fetching huge prices.

Pictured above are a few examples from my personal collection. And no, they are definitely not for sale!

And what of the show itself?

Since the negatives disappeared, HONEY VICARRO has not seen the light of day. Though rumors abound of the existence of prints, my research has indicated that they are truly lost. 

Conspiracy theories which have popped up, most of which are unlikely or ridiculous. For instance, the latest speculation I heard was that Hurrell was actually a KGB operative whose mission was to corrupt the hearts and minds of America, and that the negatives are now in a Kremlin archive.

Truly laughable.

Nobody loved HONEY VICARRO more than I, and if I thought the episodes sill existed, I'd be the first to break the news. However, at this point, it is my opinion that the network simply discarded them as trash. Some see this as unlikely. Frankly, in my opinion, given the show's notoriety and its brief run, it would be extraordinary if the negatives had been preserved .

We are, therefore, left with only few surviving partial scripts, the opening theme and a handful of production stills. If you have any HONEY VICARRO memorabilia, scripts, or worked as a crewmember on the show, please contact me at gene_otto@hotmail.com.