Robert Rafelson was born on February 21, 1933 in New York City. His father was a hat maker who hoped his sons would enter the family business. But Mr. Rafelson found inspiration in his uncle, the screenwriter Samson Raphaelson, who worked with the director Ernst Lubitsch on many films, including “Trouble in Paradise” and “The Shop Around the Corner.”
Rebelling against his comfortable Upper West Side upbringing, Mr. Rafelson left home as a teenager to work in a rodeo in Arizona and to play with a jazz band in Acapulco, Mexico. He returned to the United States to study philosophy at Dartmouth College and upon graduation was drafted into the Army. He served in Japan, working as a DJ for the Far East Military Radio and Television Network. He was court-martialed twice, once for hitting an officer and once for uttering an obscenity on air.
Mr. An avid moviegoer as a child, Rafelson had been exposed to foreign films from a young age, and while in Tokyo he worked as a consultant for the Japanese studio Shochiku. Back in New York, he began as a story editor on the television anthology series “Play of the Week.”
After moving to Los Angeles in 1962 with his first wife, Toby Carr, a production designer, continued to work in television, but the constraints of the format didn’t sit well with his ambitions and eclectic tastes. .
He lost his job at Universal Pictures’ television arm when he fell out with Hollywood titan Lew Wasserman over a casting choice. Mr. Rafelson dropped everything on Mr.’s desk to the floor. Wasserman and was escorted off the premises.
At Screen Gems, then the television subsidiary of Columbia Pictures, he met Mr. Schneider, a kindred spirit whose father, Abraham, was a top Columbia executive. The two well-connected young producers tried to capitalize on the success of Beatlemania with a show about a made-up pop group. Their ads looking for “4 crazy boys, 17-21” gave rise to The Monkees, and the gals became real headliners.