MONKEE MICKY DOLENZ INVENTS HANG-IT-ALL

He may have sold in excess of 65 million records; sat in on some Beatle-sessions of their soon-to-be legendary SGT. PEPPER album; written a children’s book; been in the Broadway casts of AIDA; GREASE; and, PIPPIN; and, produced and directed multiple film and TV projects; but, there’s been one invention that MICKY DOLENZ, lead singer of The Monkees, has been sitting on since 1984 … the HANG-IT-ALL. “The year was 1984, and I had just moved into a stately Georgian manor situated in the English countryside not far from Sherwood Forest – home of the legendary Robin Hood. One day, I decided to hang the stack of gold records that I’d received for my work with The Monkees. I had quite a few of them and wanted to hang them all in a straight line down a hallway. But as I started to line them up I noticed that each of them was in a slightly different frame with a slightly different length of wire on the back. And that’s where my troubles started. I went through the standard measuring/calculating/marking process and got the first one up okay. But when I tried to hang the others in the same line I ended up with so many misplaced holes, the wall looked like Swiss Cheese!” Dolenz felt at this point, there must be a better way and envisioned a device that would mark a wall behind a frame at exactly the spot where the hook should go, thereby eliminating the measuring, the math, and the imprecision of hanging things on a wall. After fabricating several prototypes in his home workshop, Dolenz received a patent for his invention, and, christened it the HANG-IT-ALL … precision hanging at its best! HANG IT ALL is a product of K AND COMPANY of Kansas City, Missouri.
Photo By: Sara De Boer/Retna