FORGOTTEN TELEVISION: THE MANY LOVES OF DOBIE GILLIS

Two of my favorite writers when I was much younger were named Shulman.  Irving Shulman wrote gritty, tough-guy novels like The Amboy Dukes, Cry Tough, and The Big Brokers and the screenplay for Rebel Without a Cause. and Max Shulman wrote gloriously insane humor novels like The Barefoot Boy with Cheek and Rally Round the Flag Boys!, as well as the Dobie Gillis short stories.  It's hard to find two more dissimilar writers but I reveled in both their works.

There was no reason for me to mention Irving Shulman here other than my desire to stroll down Memory Lane.  The focus is on Max Shulman, or, rather, his Dobie Gillis character.  Dobie (Dwayne Hickman) was a romantic teenager whose dreams of love, especially with the enticing Thalia Menninger (Tuesday Weld, written out after the first season **sigh**), came to naught.  The one girl who wanted Dobie was Zelda Gilroy (Sheila James), who felt Dobie and she were meant to get together.  Dobie's best friend was a young beatnik, Maynard G. Krebs, who (as played by Bob Denver) became the show's breakout character.  Dobie lived with his parents, Herbert T. Gillis (played wonderfully by Frank Faylen), who owned a small grocery store, and Winifred (Florida Friebus).  For a brief while, Dobie had an older brother Davey (played by Hickman's real-life brother Darryl) but Davey went the route of Richie Cunningham's older brother Chuck, never to be heard from again.  Other cast members included Warren Beatty as rich kid Milton Osborne, Steve Franken as Milton's cousin Chatsworth Osborne, Jr., and William Schallert as (first high school, then college) teacher Leander Pomfritt; Herbert Anderson played Promfitt in the pilot episode only.  Another important, but unspeaking character, was Rodin's "The Thinker," the statue were Dobie sat to suss out his problems.

The television show ran from 1959 to 1963 for 148 episodes.  The first episode of the series, "Caper at the Bijou" has Dobie desperate for money so he can take Thalia to the dance, so he and Maynard hatch a plot to win $100 at the Bijou Theater's Jackpot Night.  It aired on September 29, 1959.

Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGi9OZrhx94