The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis

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

The series revolved around teenager Dobie Gillis (Dwayne Hickman), who aspired to have popularity, money, and the attention of beautiful and unattainable girls.[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 that Maynard is going downtown "to watch them knock down the old Endicott Building" (which is in Saint Paul, Minnesota). Another running gag is the reference, especially by Maynard, to a film 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.[3]

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. Weld returned as a slightly wiser Thalia for two guest appearances in seasons three and four.

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).[4] 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 Battle 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. Breaking the fourth wall, he would explain to the viewing audience his problem of the week, usually girls or money (in the earliest episodes, Dobie is seen emulating the trademark pose of The Thinker – head planted on fist in deep contemplation – before turning and acknowledging the camera).[3]

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.S. Army.[3] 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.[5]

• 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. Thalia is only willing to date Dobie when he has money or helps her in her schemes to make some for herself (with a father in poor health and a sister who married a layabout, Thalia sees it as her duty to bring some money into the family; she acknowledges that were this not a factor, she would date Dobie).[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.
• Michael J. Pollard as Jerome Krebs (season one) is Maynard's cousin, also a beatnik. Jerome was intended as a replacement for Maynard when Bob Denver was drafted in mid-1959, and was written out of the show after Denver failed his Army physical and returned to the series.
• 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.'s beatnik cousin.
• Raymond Bailey as Dean McGruder (seasons three and four) is the head of S. Peter Pryor Junior College.

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.[3]

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]

Before Pollard had completed his first episode, "The Sweet Singer of Central High", however, Denver returned and announced that he had been designated "4F" – unfit for service – during his physical because of a neck injury he had sustained some years earlier.[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.[17][18]

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.[2]

Despite Maynard's increasing screen time, however, Denver – who had signed on as a Fox contract player without an agent – was unable to negotiate a raise in his $250 a week salary until season four.[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.[17]

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! I just gotta!" 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.[2]

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.[8]

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).[2]

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. Pollard. 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.[19]

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.[4] 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.[4]

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.[4] 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.[4] 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.[8]

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.[13]

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.[2]

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".