DARRYL HICKMAN SIGNED APPROXIMATELY 3 1/4″x6″ INCH PHOTO SIGNED AND INSCRIBED IN BLUE INK. Darryl Gerard Hickman (born July 28, 1931) is an American film and television actor, television executive, and acting coach. Child actor in the 1930s and 1940s. Adult years as an actor. Television executive and acting coach. Hickman was born in Hollywood, California to Milton and Katherine Hickman. In the mid-1930s, Darryl was discovered by a dance school director and subsequently became a student there. The following year, the famed Hollywood studio Paramount signed a contract with the child actor. His first film role was as Ronald Colman’s son in The Prisoner of Zenda in 1937. [1] He attended Paramount’s school in California and had classmates like Gene Nelson and Jackie Cooper. In preparation for the 1939 Bing Crosby movie The Star Maker, Paramount casting agents, led by Leroy Prinz, interviewed over 1000 children. Hickman won one of the parts in the film. Pleased with Hickman’s performance, Crosby notified his older brother and talent agent Everett Crosby of the young actor. [3][4] After this, he went on to appear in multiple motion pictures throughout the 1930s and 1940s in a wide array of genres. A busy performer, he would sometimes work at different films simultaneously. He portrayed the role of “Winfield Joad”, the youngest member of a family trying to cope with the hardships of The Great Depression. [6] The film was a critical and commercial success, with Ford winning an Academy Award for Best Director, while actress Jane Darwell won for Best Supporting Actress. [7][8] Another notable role during this time included the war-time melodrama The Human Comedy, where he played a mentally slow child. Hickman made a featured appearance as well as “Frank” in the 1942 Our Gang comedy short Going to Press. In 1946, he played the younger version of Van Heflin’s character’Sam Masterson’ in the film noir The Strange Love of Martha Ivers. In order to make it seem credible that Hickman looked like a young Van Heflin, the latter provided a picture of himself as a teenager to the makeup artist Wally Westmore. [10] In this period he also acted alongside Gene Tierney and Cornel Wilde in the 1946 film Leave Her to Heaven. Being the sole survivor among the cast, he provided extra commentary in the DVD release of the movie. His experience of working with Tierney was mixed, considering her to have been aloof and not given her best performance. It won Tierney an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. [11] The year after the release of Leave Her to Heaven, Hickman was lauded by a newspaper as “one of Hollywood’s top juveniles”. [12] Hickman later became critical of child acting, lamenting how the profession for young actors deprives them of a real childhood. He opted to get therapeutical assistance for several years in order to come to terms with his past. Hickman graduated from Cathedral High School in Los Angeles in 1948 (his brother Dwayne graduated from the same school in 1952). [15] Finding it hard to adjust to adulthood after being in the limelight for most of his childhood, he retired from show business to enter a monastery in 1951 as a passionist monk. [16][17] He continued acting, but with fewer roles than he had at the peak of his career. He also began acting for the first time in the then-new entertainment medium of television. The switch did not always turn out successfully, for many shows were cancelled for various reasons in the early years of television. [18] Hickman’s ongoing efforts to reinvigorate his acting career were interrupted for two years while he served in the United States Army from 1954 to 1956. In 1959 and 1960, Hickman appeared on younger brother Dwayne Hickman’s CBS sitcom The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, playing his older brother Davey in three different episodes: “The Right Triangle” (1959), “Deck the Halls” (1959), and “Where There’s a Will” (1960). [20] In 1961, Hickman starred in a short-lived TV series The Americans. Aside from film and television, Hickman also starred in Broadway productions, such as the Pulitzer Prize-winning play How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying in 1963, substituting for star Robert Morse. [18] In 1976, after a 17-year hiatus from movies, Hickman had a minor role as “Bill Herron” in the film Network. Hickman eventually became a television executive, producer, and occasional screenwriter, mainly working in New York City. [14] He wrote the scripts for several 1961 episodes of The Loretta Young Show. [23] In the early 1970s, Hickman was associate producer of the long-running Love of Life. [14] He was also one of the producers of A Year at the Top with Norman Lear in 1977. During the production of the pilot episode for A Year at the Top, he reunited with guest-star Mickey Rooney with whom he had acted in the Boys Town sequel Men of Boys Town in 1941. Hickman’s book about acting techniques The Unconscious Actor: Out of Control, In Full Command was published in April 2007. [25] In it he explains how his approach to acting evolved through his interactions with the various actors and directors he worked with over the years. Among his most important influences came from working with Spencer Tracy and George Cukor in the 1942 movie Keeper of the Flame. In another book written by James Curtis and published in 2011, Spencer Tracy: A Biography, Hickman’s admiration for Tracy and Cukor is again documented. He praises the two men’s patience in that biography, as well as their ability to give due attention to inexperienced actors such as himself. [26] Earlier, in a 2002 interview, Hickman stated that the current generation of young Hollywood actors were talented but lacked the proper coaching and ambition. Hickman married actress Pamela Lincoln, with whom he had acted in the movie The Tingler, on November 28, 1959. [28][29] The couple, who had two sons, divorced in 1982. Their younger son, Justin, committed suicide at the age of 19 in 1985. The Prisoner of Zenda. If I Were King. The Grapes of Wrath. The Farmer’s Daughter. The Way of All Flesh. Victor as a boy. Sign of the Wolf. Men of Boys Town. Butch Malone aka Shrimp. Blackie’ as a Boy. Keeper of the Flame. Henry Aldrich, Boy Scout. Meet Me in St. Eddie Rickenbacker as a Boy. Ira Gershwin as a boy. Leave Her to Heaven. Two Years Before the Mast. The Strange Love of Martha Ivers. The Devil on Wheels. Any Number Can Play. A Kiss for CorTelevisionliss. Island in the Sky. Senior Cadet Pete Bennett. Many Rivers to Cross. The Tragedy of King Lear. GoBots: Battle of the Rock Lords. Coffins on Wheels (1941) – Billy Phillips. Heart Burn (1942) – Nephew. Going to Press (1942) – Frank. Boogie Woogie (1945) – Junior Stumplefinger. The term child actor or child actress is generally applied to a child acting on stage or in motion pictures or television, but also to an adult who began their acting career as a child. To avoid confusion, the latter is also called a former child actor. Closely associated is teenage actor or teen actor, an actor who reached popularity as a teenager. Many child actors find themselves struggling to adapt as they become adults. Lindsay Lohan and Macaulay Culkin are two particular famous child actors who eventually experienced much difficulty with the fame they acquired at a young age. Many child actors also become successful adult actors as well, a prime example of this being Jodie Foster, whose career includes such films like the 1976 film Taxi Driver, the 1991 film The Silence of the Lambs and the 2007 film The Brave One. In the United States, the activities of child actors are regulated by the governing labor union, if any, and state laws. Some projects film in remote locations specifically to evade regulations intended to protect the child. Longer work hours or risky stunts prohibited by California, for example, might be permitted to a project filming in British Columbia. US federal law specifically exempted minors working in the Entertainment Business from all provisions of the Child Labor Laws. Any regulation of child actors is governed by disparate state laws. Due to the large presence of the entertainment industry in California, it has some of the most explicit laws protecting child actors. Being a minor, a child actor must secure an entertainment work permit before accepting any paid performing work. Compulsory education laws mandate that the education of the child actor not be disrupted while the child is working, whether the child actor is enrolled in public school, private school or even home school. The child does his/her schoolwork under the supervision of a studio teacher while on the set. Jackie Coogan earned millions of dollars from working as a child actor only to see most of it squandered by his parents. In 1939, California weighed in on this controversy and enacted the Coogan Bill which requires a portion of the earnings of a child to be preserved in a special savings account called a blocked trust. Also criticize the parents of child actors for allowing their children to work, believing that more “normal” activities should be the staple during the childhood years. Observe that competition is present in all areas of a child’s life-from sports to student newspaper to orchestra and band-and believe that the work ethic instilled or the talent developed accrues to the child’s benefit. The child actor may experience unique and negative pressures when working under tight production schedules. Large projects which depend for their success on the ability of the child to deliver an effective performance add to the pressure. Ethel Merman, who several times worked in long-running stage productions with child actors, disliked what she eventually saw as their overprofessionalization – “acting more like midgets than children” – and disapproved of parents pushing adulthood on them. The failure to retain stardom and success and the exposure at a young age to fame has caused many child actors to lead adult lives plagued by legal troubles, bankruptcy and drug abuse. Examples include child cast members of the American sitcom Diff’rent Strokes Todd Bridges, Gary Coleman, and Dana Plato. Plato went on to pose for Playboy magazine and was featured in several softcore pornography films. She was arrested twice for armed robbery and forging prescriptions, and died in May 1999 from an overdose of prescription medication, deemed suicide. After many charges of assault throughout the next years, Coleman died in May 2010. Bridges was plagued with many legal troubles as well as an addiction to cocaine. After breaking this habit, he traveled across the U. Touring schools and warning about the dangers of drug abuse. He has since made several cameo appearances on multiple television programs. The popular television sitcom Full House made child stars out of Jodie Sweetin and the Olsen twins. After the show, Sweetin went on to develop an addiction to methamphetamine, as well as alcoholism. She later overcame this and wrote a memoir describing her experiences. Mary-Kate Olsen and Tracey Gold (Growing Pains) developed eating disorders, for which they were treated with intensive rehab. Anissa Jones, of Family Affair fame, overdosed on August 28, 1976 at age 18. Jonathan Brandis, who appeared in a number of films as a child and teenager, committed suicide in 2003 at the age of 27 due to reasons possibly related to his lack of continued success into adulthood. Likewise, Sawyer Sweeten, a child actor who portrayed Geoffrey Barone on the American sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond, took his life in 2015 at the age of 19 after a period of depression. Drew Barrymore was notorious for her illegal and public antics beginning shortly after her first role in E. Barrymore admits to smoking cigarettes at age nine, drinking alcohol by the time she was eleven, smoking marijuana at the age of twelve, and snorting cocaine at the age of thirteen. At the age of fourteen, she attempted suicide. Another popular example today of child actors with post-success troubles would be Lindsay Lohan. Famous for her starring roles in The Parent Trap (1998), Freaky Friday (2003), Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen (2004), Mean Girls (2004), Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005), Just My Luck (2006) and Georgia Rule (2007), Lohan has since run into much trouble with the law. In May 2007, Lohan was arrested on a charge of driving under the influence of alcohol DUI. Lohan entered the Promises Treatment Center rehabilitation facility where she stayed for 45 days. In July of that year, less than two weeks out of rehab, Lohan was arrested a second time on charges of possession of cocaine, driving under the influence and driving with a suspended license. In August, Lohan pleaded guilty to misdemeanor cocaine use and driving under the influence and was sentenced to an alcohol education program, community service, one day in jail, and was given three years probation. The same month Lohan entered the Cirque Lodge Treatment Center in Sundance, Utah for a third stint at rehabilitation, staying for three months until her discharge in October. In November Lohan served 84 minutes in jail. A sheriff spokesman cited overcrowding and the nonviolent nature of the crime as reasons for the reduced sentence. In 1990, actor and writer Paul Petersen founded a support group for child actors, “A Minor Consideration”, following the suicide of another former child star, Rusty Hamer. The group seeks to improve working conditions for child actors and to assist in the transition to adult life, whether in acting or other professions. This section possibly contains synthesis of material which does not verifiably mention or relate to the main topic. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. (May 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this template message). Jodie Foster in 1974. There are many instances of troubled adult lives due to the stressful environment to which child actors are subjected. It is common to see a child actor grow up in front of the camera, whether in films, television shows or both. However, it is not uncommon to see child actors continue their careers throughout as actors or in a different professional field. Jodie Foster started acting at age three, becoming the quintessential child actor during the 1970s with roles in films such as Tom Sawyer (1973) Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974), Taxi Driver (1976), Bugsy Malone (1976), The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976), and Freaky Friday (1976). A child prodigy, Foster received at age 13 her first Academy Award nomination, and later took a sabbatical from films to attend Yale University. She made a successful transition to adult roles, winning two Academy Awards for Best Actress before the age of 30, and starring in several successful and acclaimed films such as The Accused (1988), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Nell (1994), Maverick (1994), Contact (1997), and The Brave One (2007). Thus, establishing herself as one of the most accomplished and sought-after actresses of all-time. Now adults, Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson, the three leads of the acclaimed Harry Potter film series (2001-11), starred in all the installments in the series, and have since then continued to act in film, television and theater in their late twenties and early thirties. Her performance earned her a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination at age eight in 2002, making her the youngest nominee in SAG history. She later appeared in major Hollywood productions, in such acclaimed blockbuster films as Man on Fire (2004), War of the Worlds (2005), Charlotte’s Web (2006), Hounddog (2007), The Secret Life of Bees (2008), Coraline (2009), The Twilight Saga film series (2009-12), The Runaways (2010), and The Motel Life (2012). Fanning’s younger sister, Elle Fanning also rose to prominence as a child actress, having appeared in many films since before she turned three. Miranda Cosgrove, known mainly for her role on Drake & Josh as a child, gained more attention for her role as a teenager in the show iCarly. Since the end of the show she has been featured in other roles, including as the voice of Margo in the Despicable Me franchise. Once she was of age she decided to pursue a college degree in film at the University of Southern California. Shirley Temple became a public figure and diplomat beginning in the 1960s. Ambassador in countries such as Ghana and Czechoslovakia. Mary-Kate Olsen was treated for an eating disorder, deemed anorexia, but her twin sister remained less troubled. In an article with the magazine Marie Claire, Mary-Kate expressed the bittersweet nature of the twins’ childhood. “I look at old photos of me, and I don’t feel connected to them at all, ” she said. I would never wish my upbringing on anyone… But I wouldn’t take it back for the world. Drew Barrymore started acting at age three. During her childhood she battled with drugs, but today she continues to act in films. Natalie Portman took a small break in acting to get a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Harvard University before continuing her career as an actress. Rider Strong, known as “Shawn Hunter” in Boy Meets World, was educated at Columbia University and now runs a successful blog and published a graphic novel. [8] Neil Patrick Harris got his acting start in Doogie Howser, M. He continues to act in television, films and theater. Jonathan Lipnicki, known mostly for the Stuart Little films, now successfully competes in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. [8] Sara Gilbert is known for her role on Roseanne and is now successful as a talk show host on The Talk. Also from Rosanne, Michael Fishman continued to work in film, but behind the scenes and has since been nominated for an Emmy for the work he did in Sports Science. [8] Kirsten Dunst and Lacey Chabert both made the transition from a child actress to an adult actress with a rough patch including depression. After a stay in a rehabilitation center, Dunst was able to recover and continue her career. She proves that the pressures of growing up under the spotlight may not come without repercussions. Roddy McDowall, who had a long and distinguished career including as the regular star of the Planet of the Apes series; Micky Dolenz, who started his career as a child star in the 1950s, grew up to be a musician of the successful 1960s pop group The Monkees, which had its own successful television show; Ron Howard, who, in addition to being the star of both of the long running The Andy Griffith Show and Happy Days television series, became an Academy Award-winning director in adulthood; Elijah Wood, who continued his career successfully into adulthood starring as Frodo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings film series and starring as Ryan Newman in the TV series Wilfred. Other child actors who have continued their careers into adulthood include Rose Marie, Hayley Mills, Ann Jillian, Johnny Whitaker, Kathy Garver, Tim Matheson, Bonnie Franklin, Melissa Gilbert, Danielle Brisebois, Erika Eleniak, Max Pomeranc, Christina Ricci, Shelley Fabares, Candace Cameron Bure, Karron Graves, Gaby Hoffmann, Hilary Duff, Molly Ringwald, Stacy Ferguson, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Lisa Whelchel, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Soleil Moon Frye, Melissa Joan Hart, Dean Stockwell, Fred Savage, Neil Patrick Harris, Michelle Chia, Shawn Lee, Joshua Ang, Aloysius Pang, and other Academy Award winners and nominees include; Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Jake Gyllenhaal, Joaquin Phoenix, Helen Hunt, Irene Cara, Reese Witherspoon, Hilary Swank, Christian Bale, Saoirse Ronan, Brie Larson, Elizabeth Taylor, and Leonardo DiCaprio. Many actors’ careers are short-lived and this is also true of child actors. Peter Ostrum, for example, is now a successful large-animal veterinarian after a starring role in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. Shirley Temple became a public figure and diplomat. Jenny Lewis, formerly of Troop Beverly Hills, is a well-known indie rock musician. In Poland, child actor identical twin brothers Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski became very successful politicians, at one time Lech being President and Jaroslaw the Prime Minister. The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (also known as simply Dobie Gillis or Max Shulman’s Dobie Gillis in later seasons and in syndication) is an American sitcom starring Dwayne Hickman that aired on CBS from September 29, 1959, to June 5, 1963. The series was adapted from the “Dobie Gillis” short stories written by Max Shulman since 1945, and first collected in 1951 under the same title as the subsequent TV series, which drew directly on the stories in some scripts. Shulman also wrote a feature-film adaptation of his “Dobie Gillis” stories for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1953, titled The Affairs of Dobie Gillis, which featured Bobby Van in the title role. Hickman in Dobie Gillis was one of among the first leads to play a teenager on an American television program. [1] Dobie Gillis broke ground by depicting elements of the current counterculture, particularly the Beat Generation, primarily embodied in a stereotypical version of the “beatnik”. [2][3] Series star Dwayne Hickman later said that Dobie represented “the end of innocence of the 1950s before the oncoming 1960s revolution”. Dobie Gillis and Maynard G. Series regular casting notes. Dobie Gillis (Dwayne Hickman, left), Maynard G. Krebs (Bob Denver, right), and one of Dobie’s “many loves”, Yvette LeBlanc (Danielle De Metz), in a still from the Dobie Gillis episode “Parlez-Vous English”, originally aired December 27, 1960. [1] He did not have any of these qualities in abundance, and the tiny crises surrounding Dobie’s lack of success made the story in each weekly episode. Also constantly in question, by Dobie and others, was Dobie’s future, as the boy proved to be a poor student and an aimless drifter. His sidekick and de facto best friend was American television’s first beatnik, Maynard G. Krebs (Bob Denver), who became the series’ breakout character. An enthusiastic fan of jazz music (with a strong distaste for the music of Lawrence Welk), Maynard plays the bongos, collects tinfoil and petrified frogs, and steers clear of romance, authority figures, and work yelping Work? ! Every time he hears the word. Always speaking with the vernacular and slang of the beatniks and jazz musicians he admired, Maynard punctuates his sentences with the word “like” and has a tendency towards malapropisms. The main running gag on Dobie Gillis would have Dobie or one of the other characters rattling off a series of adjectives describing something undesirable or disgusting I’d be a ragged, useless, dirty wreck! “, at which point a previously unseen Maynard would appear (entering the scene in close-up), saying “You rang? Dobie Gillis is set in Central City, a fictitious city in the Midwestern United States (the original short stories are explicitly set in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area). One of the show’s running gags is the reference, especially by Maynard, to a movie called The Monster that Devoured Cleveland and its sequels, one of which always seems to be playing at the local cinema. Dobie’s often apoplectic father, Herbert T. Gillis (Frank Faylen), owned a grocery store and was only happy when Dobie was behind a broom. Dobie’s mother, Winifred (Florida Friebus), was a usually calm and serene woman who protected Dobie to the best of her ability and tended to baby him. Herbert Gillis, a proud, hard-working child of the Great Depression and World War II veteran, was often (during the first season of the show) heard to declare, in relation to Dobie, I gotta kill that boy, I just gotta! The Gillis family also originally included an older son, Davey Gillis (portrayed by Dwayne Hickman’s own older brother, Darryl Hickman), who made three appearances during the first season while home on break from college before being written out of the show. Dobie’s two main antagonists were rich kids Milton Armitage (played by Warren Beatty), who appeared in five episodes, and after Beatty’s departure, Chatsworth Osborne Jr. Milton’s cousin (played by Steve Franken). Both characters represented the wealth and popularity to which Dobie aspired, but also served as romantic and competitive rivals for Dobie. Beatty’s Milton was taller, better looking, and more athletic than Chatsworth. Doris Packer played Clarissa Osborne, Chatsworth’s overbearing and snobbish mother. Dobie was hopelessly attracted to the beautiful but greedy blonde Thalia Menninger (Tuesday Weld). Thalia was written out of the series after the first season and was succeeded by a seemingly endless stream of women for whom Dobie hankered. Zelda Gilroy (Sheila James) was a brilliant and eager young girl, hopelessly in love with Dobie, much to his annoyance. Zelda did not find Dobie particularly attractive, but fell in love with him because she found him helpless and needing of her care, and also because of the concept of “propinquity” (or nearness; as Gillis and Gilroy, they were typically seated together in class). [3] Despite his protests, Dobie was clearly fond of Zelda, and Zelda claimed Dobie loved her, but just had not realized it yet. To prove this, she would wrinkle her nose at Dobie, who would reflexively do the same back to Zelda and then protest now cut that out! Dobie and Zelda later appeared as a middle-aged married couple in the two spin-off Dobie Gillis reunion projects of the 1970s/1980s. Leander Pomfritt (Herbert Anderson in the pilot, William Schallert thereafter) was Dobie’s English and science teacher at Central High School, and later, when Dobie went to S. Peter Pryor Junior College, Pomfritt (played by Schallert) was on the faculty there, as well. A stern educator fond of deadpan quips, Pomfritt referred to his pupils as “my young barbarians” and served as a father figure to both Dobie and Maynard. Maynard was not prepared to give up his beard after entering the army. Bob Denver and Kaye Elhardt are featured in this still from the Dobie Gillis episode “The Ballad of Maynard’s Beard”, originally aired April 18, 1961. Most of the action for the first season-and-a-half of Dobie Gillis centered on the Gillis grocery store, Central High School, and the Central City park. The park scenes are used as the show’s framing device, with Dobie sitting on a park bench in front of a reproduction of Auguste Rodin’s statue The Thinker. The teen characters graduated from high school halfway through the second season, and Dobie and Maynard (along with Chatsworth) subsequently did a brief stint in the U. [4] Dobie continued to break the fourth wall and narrate the episodes, with the park set eschewed for an abstract set with the same reproduction of The Thinker. At the start of the third season, Dobie and Maynard received their Army discharges, after which they, Zelda, and Chatsworth enroll in S. Peter Pryor Junior College, where Mr. Pomfritt was now a professor after having resigned from his position at Central High. Dobie’s science and history teacher at the college was Dr. Imogene Burkhart (Jean Byron, whose real name was used for that of the character). In season four, Dobie’s teenaged cousin Duncan “Dunky” Gillis (Bobby Diamond) moves in with the Gillises, and becomes something of a tag-along for Dobie and Maynard. The fourth-season episodes tended more towards surreal plots and situations featuring Maynard as the central character rather than Dobie. Dwayne Hickman as Dobie Gillis is a clean-cut teenager (later young adult) and unremarkable student whose young heart finds poetry and literature resonant. He aspires to have dates with all of the beautiful girls he pursues, despite the pressures of home life, high school, and later the military and college. Dobie also serves as the series narrator, relating his observations to the audience from in front of a statue of Rodin’s The Thinker. Frank Faylen as Herbert T. Gillis, Dobie’s old-fashioned, short-tempered, and gruff father who runs a small independent grocery store. Florida Friebus as Winifred “Winnie” Gillis is Dobie’s doting mother, who tends to baby her son and critique her husband’s parenting skills. Bob Denver as Maynard G. Krebs is Dobie’s lazy and somewhat goofy best friend. Maynard is a would-be beatnik who shuns romance, authority figures, and work. Like Dobie does later, Maynard briefly joins the Army in season two between his high-school graduation and enrollment in college. Tuesday Weld as Thalia Menninger (season one) is a beautiful high-school classmate of Dobie’s. [6] Weld departed the series after the first season, later returning to make two guest appearances, as a somewhat chastened Thalia, once in season three and once in season four. Warren Beatty as Milton Armitage (season one) is a rich jock at Dobie’s high school and a rival of Dobie’s for Thalia’s affections. Beatty quit the series midway through the first season. Sheila James as Zelda Gilroy is the smartest girl in Dobie’s high school and college. Zelda is in love with the uninterested Dobie and schemes ways to get him to date and marry her. Steve Franken as Chatsworth Osborne, Jr. Is a spoiled rich boy and a classmate of Dobie’s in high school and college. Chatsworth assumed the role left vacant by the departure of Milton from the series. Like Dobie, Chatsworth also briefly joins the Army in season two between his high-school graduation and enrollment in college. William Schallert as Professor Leander Pomfritt is a dry-wit English and science teacher at Dobie’s high school and later one of Dobie’s college professors at S. Peter Pryor Junior College (seasons one-three). Herbert Anderson plays Mr. Pomfritt in the pilot episode. Jean Byron as Mrs. Ruth Adams is Dobie’s math teacher in high school (season one), and as Dr. Imogene Burkhart, is one of Dobie’s professors at S. Peter Pryor Junior College. (seasons three and four). One of the series’ inside jokes was that Jean Byron’s birth name was Imogene Audette Burkhart. Doris Packer as Mrs. Clarice Armitage is Milton’s mother, a rich and eccentric socialite. She shifted to Mrs. Clarissa Osborne Chatsworth Osborne, Jr. S mother when Franken replaced Beatty midway through season one. She has disdain for anyone outside her social class and considers all boys, including her own son, as “nasty”. Darryl Hickman as Davey Gillis (season one) is Dobie’s older brother, a college student no more responsible and no less girl-crazy than Dobie. Davey was written out of the series after season one and Dobie is regarded as an only child thereafter. Pollard as Jerome Krebs (season one) is Maynard’s cousin, also a beatnik. Marjorie Bennett as Blossom Kenney (seasons one and two) is a frequent and persnickety customer of the Gillises’ grocery store. Tommy Farrell as Riff Ryan (seasons one and two) is a beatnik record-store and coffee-house proprietor who serves as something of a reluctant mentor for Maynard. Lynn Loring as Edwina “Eddie” Kegel (season three) is Chatsworth Osborne, Jr. Raymond Bailey as Dean McGruder (seasons three and four) is the head of S. Main article: List of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis episodes. Not in Top 30. Auguste Rodin’s statue of The Thinker. Max Shulman’s first Dobie Gillis short stories were printed in 1945, and a short-story compilation, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, was published in 1951. [8] These stories were originally published in such magazines as Cosmopolitan and The Saturday Evening Post. A follow-up collection, I Was a Teen-age Dwarf, appeared in 1959. The titular character appeared at various ages in these stories, all of which are set in St. Paul, Minnesota, though the majority of the stories centered on his college years at the University of Minnesota. [9] Aside from Dobie and his parents, Zelda Gilroy was the only other character from the books directly adapted to the series as a regular or recurring character. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer produced the first media adaptation of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis in 1953 as The Affairs of Dobie Gillis, a black-and-white musical film starring Debbie Reynolds, Bob Fosse, and Bobby Van as Dobie Gillis. Following its release, Shulman set about attempting to bring Dobie Gillis to television. An initial pilot was produced by comedian and producer George Burns in 1957, with his son Ronnie Burns starring as Dobie. After this pilot did not sell, Shulman took Dobie Gillis to 20th Century Fox Television, run at the time by Martin Manulis. Manulis asked Shulman to reduce the Dobie character’s age from 19 to 17, making him a high-school student instead of a college student and an age peer of Ricky Nelson from The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and Wally Cleaver (Tony Dow) from Leave It to Beaver. [10] Shulman agreed to the change after negotiating employment for himself on the series as show runner. [10] The Fox pilot, “Caper at the Bijou”, featured Dwayne Hickman as Dobie, Frank Faylen and Florida Friebus as his parents, newcomer Bob Denver as a new character, Dobie’s beatnik best friend Maynard G. Krebs, and Tuesday Weld as Dobie’s unattainable love interest Thalia Menninger. First pitched to and rejected by NBC, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis was greenlit for series by CBS. [3] Colgate-Palmolive replaced Pillsbury as the alternate sponsor in season three. While the pilot for The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis was shot at the main 20th Century Fox lot in Century City, California, principal photography and production for the series proper took place at the original Fox Film Corporation studio at the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Western Avenue (next to the headquarters of DeLuxe) in Hollywood. [4] Dobie Gillis was filmed with two cameras, a method that producer and director Rod Amateau had learned while working on The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show. Fox turned out one episode of Dobie Gillis a week, working from May to December of each year. Dwayne Hickman’s fourth wall-breaking monologues were saved for the end of the production of each episode; their length resulted in Hickman requesting and getting a teleprompter from which to read them for season two forward. The show was not filmed before a live studio audience; during the first season, a live audience viewed each episode and provided its laugh track. [11] Subsequent seasons used a standard laugh track provided by technician Charles Douglass. Creator Max Shulman served as the show runner for and an uncredited producer of Dobie Gillis. [13] He contributed scripts for episodes of the show during all four seasons, with several stories – including “Love is a Science” (season one, episode three), “Love is a Fallacy” (season one, episode 22), and “Parlez-Vous English” (season two, episode 11) – directly adapted by Shulman from his original Dobie Gillis short stories. During its fourth season, the show, by then known as Max Shulman’s Dobie Gillis, suffered both from competition with NBC’s color Western The Virginian and from the growing inattention from Max Shulman. [2] Shulman began spending increasing amounts of time at his home in Westport, Connecticut, while the show was in active production, [2][13] ceding his role as show runner to associate producers Joel Kane and Guy Scarpitta. CBS decided not to renew Dobie Gillis after production had concluded on its fourth season. The theme song “Dobie” was written by 20th Century-Fox musical director Lionel Newman, with lyrics by Shulman. The theme was sung by Judd Conlon’s Rhythmaires, with music conducted by Newman. Session singer Gloria Wood of the Rhythmaires provided the scat singing used as incidental score during the first two seasons. Dwayne Hickman, at the time the breakout star on The Bob Cummings Show (also known as Love That Bob) as nephew Chuck MacDonald, gained the part of Dobie Gillis over several other candidates, including Michael Landon. [1] Despite being cast as a 17-year-old, Hickman was 24 when he starred in the pilot in the summer of 1958. Because Hickman had appeared for several years on Bob Cummings as Chuck, he was required by Shulman and CBS to bleach his dark brown hair blond for the role of Dobie to distance himself from that character in the public’s (and the sponsors’) minds. [16] By the second season, however, Hickman was permitted to return to his natural hair color, after he had complained to the producers that the constant bleaching required to keep his low crew cut hairstyle blond was causing his scalp to break out. Bob Denver, a 23-year-old grade-school teacher and postal worker with no previous professional acting experience, won the part of 18-year-old Maynard G. Krebs after his sister, a casting director’s secretary, added his name to a list of candidates auditioning for the role. [17] Denver and Hickman had both attended Loyola University together several years earlier and were casually acquainted before Dobie Gillis. [2] After filming the third episode of Dobie Gillis, Denver announced that he had received his draft notice. The character of Maynard enlisted in the Army and was given an elaborate sendoff in the show’s next episode, “Maynard’s Farewell to the Troops”. Stage actor Michael J. Pollard was brought out from New York to play Maynard’s cousin, Jerome Krebs, who was introduced at the end of “Maynard’s Farewell to the Troops” and was to assume Maynard’s role in future scripts. [17] After completing “The Sweet Singer of Central High”, Pollard was bought out of his contract – he had signed a “play-or-pay” contract and was paid for all 30 episodes in which he was to have appeared, while Denver was rehired. Maynard’s return was explained by stating that the Army had given Maynard a “hardship discharge” – the Army’s hardship, not Maynard’s. Initially only a supporting character, Denver’s Maynard had graduated to co-lead by season two, as the character’s “beatnik” mannerisms and eccentricities made him a hit with the viewing audience. [17] For a handful of episodes towards the end of season three, Maynard became the show’s lead character while Dwayne Hickman was hospitalized with and later recovering from pneumonia. [12][17] Denver was able to parlay his role on Dobie Gillis into lead roles on later television series, in particular the one for which he is best remembered, the 1964-67 CBS sitcom Gilligan’s Island. Established actors Frank Faylen, a longtime acquaintance of the Hickman family and a fellow parishioner at their church, [2] and Florida Friebus were cast as Dobie’s parents, Herbert T. Gillis and Winifred Gillis. Faylen’s gruff, no-nonsense father character, which according to Hickman, was essentially the same as Faylen’s real-life personality, [2] was more of an antagonist to Dobie during the first season of the show, his demeanor underscored by his often-repeated catchphrase I gotta kill that boy! Both CBS and Marlboro strongly disapproved of the catchphrase and the Herbert T. Gillis character’s hard edges. [2] An early season-two episode, “You Ain’t Nothin’ But a Houn’ Dog” (episode two), in which Dobie inadvertently wins a father-and-son essay contest, was produced to explain why Herbert ceased use of his catchphrase. Herbert was further softened as the series wore on, the character’s anger tempered to frustration. Experienced child actress Tuesday Weld was cast as Dobie’s love interest in “Caper at the Bijou” and stayed on as a semiregular. Weld and Dwayne Hickman had previously appeared as a teenaged couple in the 1958 Fox feature film Rally’Round the Flag, Boys! Based on a Max Shulman novel, though produced without his input. [2] Neither Hickman nor Weld was fond of the other, with Hickman later stating he felt Weld was not as dedicated as necessary to rehearsal and referring to her as “a pain in the neck”. Weld reportedly found Hickman pushy and out-of-touch. Aged 15 at the time of shooting the pilot, Weld had to legally spend much of her time on set in school with a tutor, [2] and the production periodically ran into issues involving Weld’s later publicly known difficult home life. Her work in Dobie Gillis and the feature film The Five Pennies made Weld a star, leading to substantial publicity. [12] She departed the series after the first year to star in features, although she was persuaded by Max Shulman to return for two guest appearances, “Birth of a Salesman” (season three, episode 21) and What’s a Little Murder Between Friends? (season four, episode two). Herbert Anderson was cast as Mr. Pomfritt, Dobie and Maynard’s English teacher at school. Anderson appeared in a lead role in the pilot for Dennis the Menace; when that show was picked up (also by CBS), he chose to stay with that cast, and actor William Schallert appeared in the recurring role of Mr. Pomfritt through the end of season three. Warren Beatty was cast as Milton Armitage, a recurring rival of Dobie’s at his high school, during the first half of season one. [19] Hickman later recalled that Beatty “looked at me like I was a bug” while on set. [2] Beatty did remain friends with his brief co-star Michael J. The two co-starred in Bonnie and Clyde eight years later. He quit the series in September 1959, midway through production of the first season after filming his fifth and final Dobie episode, “The Smoke-Filled Room”, to appear in A Loss of Roses on Broadway. Former child actress Sheila James, who, playing daughter “Jackie” on The Stu Erwin Show, had worked with Dwayne Hickman on that series and The Bob Cummings Show, was cast without an audition as Zelda Gilroy, the tomboyish brainy girl who was in love with Dobie. [3] Originally intended as a one-shot character for the episode “Love is a Science” (season one, episode three), Max Shulman liked both Zelda and Sheila James and had Zelda retained as a semiregular character. Signing a contract with Dobie Gillis necessitated James, then an 18-year-old college student, changing her major from theater to English, so Shulman could assist her with her studies on set. After the third season of Dobie Gillis, Rod Amateau and Max Shulman produced a pilot for a Zelda spinoff starring Sheila James as Zelda Gilroy, with Joe Flynn and Jean Byron cast as her parents. [3] However, CBS president James Aubrey lingered over moving forward with the Zelda series for a long time before firmly rejecting the series, with Amateau telling James in private that Aubrey had found Zelda (and by extension James, then a closeted lesbian) “too butch”. [8] James’ contract for the pilot and the resulting waiting period caused her to be absent from much of the fourth and final season of Dobie Gillis, though Amateau was able to hire her to return as Zelda for four episodes towards the end of the season. [3] Acting roles became sparse for James by the late 1960s; she went into law and politics under her birth name of Sheila Kuehl, and later became the first openly gay person elected to the California State Legislature. Steve Franken, a 28-year-old character actor, was cast immediately after Beatty’s departure as Chatsworth Osbourne, Jr. A replacement character for Milton Armitage. While both Milton and Chatsworth were rich rivals of Dobie Gillis’s (and both characters shared the same actress, Doris Packer, for a mother) and were, according to canon, cousins, where Beatty’s Milton was a menacing and athletic physical threat, Franken’s pompous, foppish Chatsworth tended to plot and scheme his way through competitions with Dobie, more often than not using his riches to get ahead. [13] The Chatsworth character became popular enough that the producers had to consciously limit his appearances on the series to roughly one per month to prevent Franken from upstaging Hickman and Denver, but Franken stated both during and after Dobie Gillis that playing Chatsworth led him to be typecast and stifled his career. Young actor Bobby Diamond was brought on at the beginning of season four as Dobie’s teenaged cousin, Duncan “Dunky” Gillis. By 1962, the 28-year-old Dwayne Hickman had begun to look too mature to carry the teenager-based plot lines, [2] and instead Diamond’s “Dunky” was given this material, with the older yet immature Maynard as a running partner. The character was dropped midway through the fourth season, with attention shifting back to the characters of Dobie, Maynard, Chatsworth, and Zelda for the remaining episodes of the series. Actresses who played Dobie’s love interests included Cheryl Holdridge, Michele Lee, Susan Watson, Marlo Thomas, Sally Kellerman, Ellen Burstyn (then billed as Ellen McRae), Barbara Babcock, Sherry Jackson, and Danielle De Metz. Yvonne Craig appeared in the opening credits and the closing sequence of the pilot film used to sell the series to CBS, but did not appear in the actual episode, “Caper at The Bijou”, when it was broadcast. She eventually played five different girlfriends on the show, more than any other actress. Actress Sherry Alberoni, an original Mickey Mouse Club “Mouseketeer”, played one of Zelda Gilroy’s sisters in the 1960 episode “Dobie Spreads a Rumor”. After the first season of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis had aired, Capitol Records attempted to make a recording star out of Dwayne Hickman, ignoring the fact that Hickman, by his own admission, was not a singer. [2] Recording engineers had to piece together numerous takes to get a usable vocal track from Hickman for each song. Hickman introduced several of the songs from the Dobie! Album on the show during its second season, including “I’m a Lover, Not a Fighter” and “Don’t Send a Rabbit”. DC Comics published a Many Loves of Dobie Gillis comic book that ran for 26 issues from 1960 to 1964, featuring artwork by Bob Oksner. Stories from this comic-book series were later reprinted, with updates to the artwork and lettering to remove any references to Dobie Gillis, by DC as a short-lived series titled Windy and Willy in 1969. The program spawned two 20th Century Fox-produced sequels, the pilot Whatever Happened to Dobie Gillis? (1977) and the TV movie Bring Me the Head of Dobie Gillis (1988). Whatever Happened to Dobie Gillis? Was an unsuccessful pilot for a new weekly sitcom series, which was produced, directed, and developed by James Komack after creator Max Shulman was fired from the production. [4] It was broadcast by CBS on May 10, 1977, as a one-shot special. In the pilot, Dobie had married Zelda and is helping his father Herbert run the Gillis Grocery when Maynard comes back to Central City from his world travels. Depressed over turning 40 and not living the life he had dreamed of as a teenager, Dobie goes to his beloved Thinker statue and attempts to destroy it, landing in jail. [22] The production starred Dwayne Hickman, Bob Denver, Sheila James, Frank Faylen, and Steven Paul as Dobie and Zelda’s teenaged son Georgie, who was a lot like Dobie had been at his age. Bring Me the Head of Dobie Gillis, first aired as the CBS Sunday Movie on February 22, 1988, was directed and co-written by Stanley Z. Cherry after Dwayne Hickman, who was the film’s producer, was forced by the network to fire Max Shulman and Rod Amateau, with whom he had originally conceived the film. [3][4] The plot features the married Dobie and Zelda running the Gillis Grocery-now also a pharmacy-on their own, Dobie’s parents having died. Pomfritt, and Scott Grimes as son Georgie Gillis. [3][4] Connie Stevens’ daughter, Tricia Leigh Fisher, played Chatsworth’s daughter Chatsie, who chased Georgie Gillis with the same zeal Zelda had once used chasing Dobie. On July 2, 2013, Shout! Factory released The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis – The Complete Series on DVD in Region 1. [23] The set included all 147 episodes of the series, plus the original prenetwork version of the pilot and appearances by Dwayne Hickman and Bob Denver on other television programs of the time. And Bring Me the Head of Dobie Gillis were not included, the latter due to music clearances, and the former because the master copy could not be located. [3] The first season of the show was also made available on Amazon Prime Video on this date. Subsequently released each season individually, season one on September 10, 2013, [24] season two on January 14, 2014, [25] season three on May 6, 2014[26] and the fourth and final season on December 16, 2014. In addition to the physical releases, all episodes of Dobie Gillis are also available on the streaming services Shout! Factory TV, Amazon Prime Video, Tubi, and Vudu. The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis was a major influence on the characters for another successful CBS program, the Hanna-Barbera Saturday morning cartoon Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! Which ran on the network from 1969 to 1970 followed by several spin-offs. As confirmed by series creators Joe Ruby and Ken Spears[29] and writer Mark Evanier, [30] the four teenaged lead characters of Scooby-Doo were based on four of the lead characters from Dobie Gillis: Fred Jones on Dobie, Daphne Blake on Thalia, Velma Dinkley on Zelda, and Shaggy Rogers on Maynard. Garry Marshall said that he drew inspiration from Dobie Gillis when he created the ABC sitcom Happy Days. Singer-songwriter Dobie Gray’s stage name served as a reference to the Dobie Gillis character. This item is in the category “Collectibles\Autographs\Movies”. The seller is “memorabilia111″ and is located in this country: US. 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