Frankenstein's Kind of Town

Hey look -- a corner of my living room!

One year ago on this day ( it was 7/7/07!) I was out and about Uptown & Edgewater, and took a whole bunch of pics. Here are a few


Sinatra's Rat Pack. Classic Universal Pictures Horror Monsters. Mission: Impossible. They all go together so naturally don't they?? You'd think someone would have put them together in a single project, right? Well it did happen -- really!
Yes, in the mid-sixties, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. Peter Lawford, Joey Bishop and other members of the "Rat Pack" filmed a pilot for a series (working title Supernatural Mission Team) intended to capitalize on the spy craze. It actually was the original version of Mission: Impossible, but with Frankenstein, Dracula, Wolfman, Mummy and Invisible Man (each being played by a Rat Pack member) in place of Mr. Phelps and the IMF crew. Frank of course was the leader, but there was some question as to which character would lead the SMT; Dracula seemed the natural choice, but Frank felt that Drac was actually limited by his various weeknesses and chose Frankestein's Monster, but stipulated that it must be the Monster with Igor's brain (as seen in Ghost of Frankenstein). The stories would have been played as straight drama with the team performing secret government operations at home and abroad. Each episode would also feature some plot device that would enable the the stars to utilize their singing talents ( but in Bishop's case(as the Invisible Man), comic ability, and Lawford's (the Mummy), whatever).

Legend has it that J. Edgar Hoover had been given a private screening of the pilot; No one knows what happened at that screening, but the pilot never aired, and all known prints were destroyed. Though the project was dead, several scripts had been produced and these were revamped to became the basis for Mission: Impossible.

Well, OK -- maybe this never happened, but you never know!