Bob Rafelson, Monkees co-creator and key Hollywood new wave director, dies aged 89

After working on the hit pop TV show, Rafelson went on to collaborate with Jack Nicholson on films including Head, Five Easy Pieces and The Postman Always Rings Twice

Bob Rafelson, Monkees co-creator and key Hollywood new wave director, dies aged 89

Bob Rafelson, a co-creator of the Monkees who became an influential figure in the New Hollywood era of the 1970s, has died. He was 89. Rafelson died at his home in Aspen on Saturday night surrounded by his family, said his wife, Gabrielle Taurek Rafelson.

Rafelson was responsible for co-creating the fictional pop music group and television series The Monkees alongside the late Bert Schneider, which won him an Emmy for outstanding comedy series in 1967.

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But Rafelson was perhaps best known for his work during the New Hollywood era, which saw a classical studio system giving way to a batch of rebellious young voices and fresh film-making styles, and helped usher in talents such as Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma, Francis Ford Coppola and Steven Spielberg.

Jessica Lange, left, and Jack Nicholson in The Postman Always Rings Twice. Photograph: TCD/ProdDB/Alamy

Rafelson directed and co-wrote Five Easy Pieces, about an upper-class pianist who yearns for a more blue-collar life, and The King of Marvin Gardens, about a depressed late-night-radio talk show host. Both films starred Jack Nicholson and explored themes of the American dream gone haywire. Five Easy Pieces got Rafelson two Oscar nominations in 1971, for best picture and screenplay.

Alongside Bert Schneider, Rafelson also produced seminal New Hollywood classics including Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show and Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider. Coppola once called him “one of the most important cinematic artists of his era”.

The Monkees in 1967. Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Rafelson was born in New York City and was a distant relative of The Jazz Singer screenwriter Samson Raphaelson, who he said took an interest in his work. At Dartmouth College, where he studied philosophy, he became friends with legendary screenwriter Buck Henry. He developed an interest in Japanese cinema and the films of Yasujirō Ozu, especially Tokyo Story, while serving in the US army in Japan.

After college, Rafelson married his high school sweetheart Toby Carr, who would work as a production designer on his films and others. He got his start in the entertainment business in television, writing for shows like The Witness and The Greatest Show on Earth.

But The Monkees was his first big success. The idea for The Monkees, he said, pre-dated the Beatles and their comedy A Hard Day’s Night, but it hit the moment well when it premiered on NBC in 1966. It ran for two years and allowed Rafelson to take a stab at directing himself. The Monkees appeared in his feature directorial debut, Head, which would also be the first of many collaborations with Jack Nicholson. “I may have thought I started his career,” Nicholson told Esquire in 2019, “but I think he started my career.” He also directed Nicholson in 1981’s film noir The Postman Always Rings Twice.

Karen Black, left, and Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces. Photograph: Columbia/Sportsphoto/Allstar

Rafelson was proudest of the 1990 film he directed, Mountains of the Moon, a biographical movie that told the story of two explorers, Sir Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke, as they searched for the source of the Nile, Taurek Rafelson said.

Rafelson left Hollywood two decades ago to focus on raising two sons with Taurek Rafelson, Ethan and Harper, in Aspen. He and his first wife, Toby Rafelson, also had two children, Peter, and Julie, who died in 1973 at the age of 10.