Dwayne Hickman has passed away at 87
Dobie Gillis was my favorite show back in the day, and one of my projects in the early COVID months was to binge-watch all four seasons of Dobie. The show gave us two things to remember. The first is one of the most memorable and beloved characters in TV history, the dumb but lovable Maynard G. Krebs, a clueless beatnik played by a pre-Gilligan Bob Denver – and played very well, indeed, with just the right combination of slapstick, pathos and clever wordplay. The second legacy of “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis” was the women who played those many loves. You must certainly remember Tuesday Weld if you are of the age, because she was spectacularly sexy and appeared in many episodes as the unattainable Thalia Menninger. You may not remember some of the honest-to-god real actresses who spent part of their youth being pursued by Dobie and inevitably dumping him, like Ellen Burstyn and Sally Kellerman.
Introduce me to that big blonde
She’s got a touch of Tuesday Weld
She’s wearing Ambush and a French twist
She’s got us wild and she can tell
It’s funny. I’m retired. I live alone and have nothing to do all day but watch TV and surf the Internet and I can’t seem to keep up with even a significant portion of new shows. I just read through the Golden Globe winners and I think the only nominated TV shows I have seen were Wanda Vision and Lupin. But I have always been a fan of shows that aired before I was born. One of my all time favorite shows was What’s My Line. Just as an aside, I was watching an episode on YouTube yesterday from 1953 with Kirk Douglas as the Mystery Guest. They used to let the panelist have a free guess before the questioning started. For a second I thought Donald Trump was on the panel. Bennett Cerf guessed a woman from Texas “drove off wetbacks.” Anyway, my point was I have always liked old shows, especially the ones that were in syndication in the 1970s. But while I must have seen every episode of Gilligan’s Island dozens of times each, I have never seen Dobie Gillis. It just wasn’t on anywhere in NYC when I was growing up, at least not that I remember. But neither was WML and I became a big fan of that. Maybe, I’ll check out Dobie Gillis one of these days.
RIP. I used to watch that show in reruns when I was a kid, and recently started streaming it, and discovered it holds up well and was way ahead of its time in some ways. I even ordered an autographed photo of Dobie and Maynard from Dwayne’s website and have it proudly displayed in my office. I had him inscribe it to my wife and me, and add, “Keep thinking!”
I strongly recommend his memoir “Forever Dobie.” Great stories, and he had a terrific self-deprecating sense of humor, especially about the doomed attempts to turn him into a pop music idol.
“Work!?” and “You rang?” were classic catch phrases from Maynard G. Krebs. Great show.
I enjoyed the show when I watched it on Nick at Nite and TV Land in the 90s. But the biggest legacy of the show has to be being ripped off by the creators of “Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!” Hickman will probably live on past a lot of bigger stars as the inspiration of Fred. They’re still making new Scooby-Doo shows and I don’t see Warner Media letting the property die anytime soon.
And Hickman’s older brother Darryl is still alive! He was a child actor in classic movies like “The Grapes of Wrath” and “The Prisoner of Zenda.”