The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis

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The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis
Format	Comedy
Created by	Max Shulman
Starring	Dwayne Hickman Bob Denver
Country of origin	Image:Flag of the United States.svg United States
No. of episodes	147
Production
Producer(s)	Martin Manulis 20th Century Fox
Running time	30 minutes per episode
Broadcast
Original channel	CBS
Original run	29 September, 1959 – 18 September, 1963
External links
IMDb profile
TV.com summary

The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis was a situation comedy which ran on CBS from 1959 to 1963. The television series and some episode scripts were adapted from a 1951 collection of short stories with the same name, written by Max Shulman, that also inspired the 1953 film The Affairs of Dobie Gillis with Debbie Reynolds, Bob Fosse, and Bobby Van as Dobie Gillis. A follow up novel, I Was a Teen-Age Dwarf, appeared in 1959. This program was from Martin Manulis Productions in association with 20th Century Fox Television; creator Shulman also wrote the theme song.

1 Overview
- 1.1 Main Cast
- 1.2 Story
2 Other media
3 Pop culture influences
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Overview

[edit] Main Cast

Dwayne Hickman as Dobie Gillis
Bob Denver as Maynard G. Krebs
Warren Beatty as Milton Armitage
Sheila James as Zelda Gilroy
Steve Franken as Chatsworth Osborne, Jr.
Tuesday Weld as Thalia Menninger

[edit] Story

The TV series revolved around teenager Dobie Gillis, who aspired to have popularity, money, and the attention of beautiful and unattainable girls. He didn't have much of any of these qualities in abundance, and the tiny crises surrounding Dobie's lack of success made the story in each weekly episode. His partner in crime was television's first beatnik, Maynard G. Krebs. Maynard was convinced life is for enjoying and Dobie's father, who owned a grocery store, was only happy when Dobie was behind a push broom. Dobie's father would lie, cheat, or steal for money and while Dobie often got caught up in his father's schemes, by the end of the happy half hour he would always come around to Maynard's point of view.

Each episode began and ended with Dobie pondering his problem, posing à la "The Thinker" by Auguste Rodin. In fact, he was usually in a park on a bench with a reproduction of the famous statue immediately behind him. At these moments he would break the fourth wall and talk directly to the audience.

Dobie's two main antagonists were popular rich kids Milton Armitage [and after his departure, Armitage's cousin Chatsworth Osborne, Jr.], and lively busybody Zelda Gilroy; the former Dobie hated as he had all that Dobie wanted, and the latter Dobie despised because she was hopelessly in love with him and he was annoyed by her advances. Dobie himself was hopelessly attracted to wealthy, distant blonde Thalia Menninger, as well as an endless number of other beautiful women. (Future "Batgirl" Yvonne Craig appeared on the series, in several different roles.)

As a high school student, Dobie lived at home with his parents in the show's early years, and his interaction with his parents was a source of much of the humor. His mother Winnie (Florida Friebus) was very caring and perhaps tended to baby her son a little too much; his father Herbert (Frank Faylen), a grocer, was a very proud, somewhat belligerent World War II veteran who would often, on the slightest provocation, remind his listeners, "I was in the Big One—W W Two!" or declare "I've gotta kill that boy! I've just gotta!", but was deep down a good and decent man. In later years, Dobie moved on from high school to S. Peter Pryor Junior College, surrounded by many of the same people; in between, he and Maynard (along with Chatsworth) even did a brief stint in the peacetime U.S. Army. Conscription in the United States was in effect at the time and the Vietnam War was still of a minor concern to most Americans when the series ended. William Schallert played Leander Pomfritt, the english teacher at both the high school and the junior college; and the late Jean Byron (whom Schallert co-starred with on The Patty Duke Show) played math teacher Ruth Adams and Professor Imogene Burkhart (which was coincidentally, Jean Byron's real name).

The theme song "Dobie" was written by 20th Century-Fox Musical Director, Lionel Newman with lyrics by Max Shulman. The theme was sung by Jud Conlon's Rhythmaires with music conducted by Lionel Newman.

This program, like several others from roughly the same period, was probably more popular as a late-afternoon rerun than it had ever been in prime time and is probably remembered as well as it is for that reason. The program even spawned two sequels, the pilot Whatever Happened to Dobie Gillis (1978) and TV movie Bring Me the Head of Dobie Gillis (1988). In these, Dobie had married Zelda and had a son named Georgie, who was almost like Dobie had been at his age. The latter of these took its title from the Sam Peckinpah film, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and its plot from the play The Visit by Friedrich Dürrenmatt.

In real life, after largely retiring as an actor, Dwayne Hickman spent many years as an employee of CBS in the programming department, at one point being its vice president. He also worked as a television director.

[edit] Other media

DC Comics published a Many Loves of Dobie Gillis comic that ran 26 issues in the early 1960s, featuring work by Bob Oksner. Stories from this comic would later be revamped as Windy and Willy.

[edit] Pop culture influences

The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis was a major influence on the characters for another successful CBS program, the Saturday morning cartoon Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!. Scooby writer Mark Evanier noted that "Fred was based on Dobie, Shaggy on Maynard, Velma on Zelda and Daphne on Thalia." [1]