If ever a television program violated the maxim to not
tinker with success, The Many Loves of
Dobie Gillis fits that description to a T. Launched in the fall of 1959,
the program was based on a series of short stories by Max Shulman that began
appearing in 1945 and were collected into a full-length book with the same
title as the TV series in 1951. A feature film titled The Affairs of Dobie Gillis with Bobby Van and Debbie Reynolds was
released in 1953. In the literary and feature film versions, Dobie was a
college age youth, but on the TV show he began as a 17-year-old high school
student. What made the show successful was not only that it was the first
network program to portray life from the teenage perspective (and the first to
include a counter-cultural beatnik character in the person of Maynard G. Krebs)
but that it did so in a deliberately farcical, satirical manner. As star Dwayne
Hickman explains in his autobiography Forever
Dobie, the program was not the first to break the fourth wall in having
Dobie begin each show with a monologue directed at the audience while sitting
in the park in front of a giant rendition of Rodin's famous sculpture The Thinker--George Burns would
sometimes speak directly to his audience on his programs, and Jack Benny was
forever exploiting the artificiality of television on The Jack Benny Program. But Dobie
also featured a character who spoke in absurdly overblown language when
romancing a female, calling his primary love interest Thalia Menninger his
"tawny animal," amongst other adjectives, and being singularly driven
to find and secure a steady girlfriend who is soft and round and pink, amongst
other descriptors. In this exaggerated depiction Shulman captured the
irrationality and hormone-driven mania of the teenage male and presented it in
an edgy, ironic, and somewhat subversive manner that was far more cutting than
anything else on the air at that time. Hickman again in his autobiography
compared the show's opening monologues with those of Jerry Seinfeld some 30
years later, and the comparison between the shows is somewhat apt because while
Seinfeld was a show about nothing, Dobie was a show about one thing--finding
a girl, at least during its first season.
And therein lies the seed of its decline: after having Dobie
single-mindedly search for his perfect female in Season 1, Shulman and producer
Rod Amateau decided to change the formula for the second season. Hickman
explained it as broadening the choice of subjects to a variety of situations
and problems a teenager might face. In a story that appeared in the October 15,
1960 edition of TV Guide Shulman described
the changes as having the show grow as Dobie gets older. In particular he
remarked, "If I had to turn out the same show week after week, season
after season, I'd go batty." And admittedly, the show could not have
continued on its one-track theme forever, but the show also traded in its
cheeky subversive streak for sentimentality. After opening the second season
with an episode that was basically a commercial for Hickman's new singing
record album Dobie ("Who Needs
Elvis?" September 27, 1960), the show proceeded to have Dobie unwittingly
enter a newspaper essay contest about his father in "You Ain't Nuthin' But
a Houn' Dog" (October 4, 1960) when Maynard doctors a school essay Dobie
wrote about his dog and substitutes the word "dad" for every
occurrence of "dog." When Dobie wins the contest and its $25 prize,
his previously cynical, grumpy father Herbert is so overcome with emotion that
he begins spending more time with the son he was constantly berating in Season
1, playing tennis with him and taking him fishing and bowling. And Dobie comes
to truly treasure his time with his father, even though it means breaking a
series of dates with a beautiful southern belle. He even uses the prize money
to buy his father a much-desired new fishing rod. While Dobie would
occasionally choose to help his father at the expense of a girlfriend in Season
1--in "The Prettiest Collateral in Town" (April 12, 1960) he forces
Melissa Frome to break up with him when a spoiled bank official's daughter
demands to have Dobie in exchange for Herbert receiving a bank loan--he would
do so because he is forced to. In Season 2 he makes the trade-off with
affection.
Maynard becomes the focus of much more screen time in Season
2 as well, and though his character became popular with the public, he was
basically a dim-witted buffoon with a limited series of repetitious gags that
quickly grow tiresome--walking on stage and answering "You rang?"
whenever another character describes something hideous, squawking
"Work!" whenever someone mentions the word, launching into a series
of manic comparisons that derails a conversation in progress, and complaining
about how disrespected he is whenever someone says, "It's only you,
Maynard." In "Baby Talk" (October 18, 1960) he finds an
abandoned baby and wants to keep it because he was never allowed to keep his
pet dog and duck. Rather than just turn the baby over to the police, Dobie and
Zelda persuade wealthy Clarice Osborne to adopt the baby, until it is
discovered that the baby's natural parents have been recently fired by Osborne,
whereupon she rehires them so that parents and baby are financially set for
life. Such a heart-warming story would never have been presented in Season 1, wherein
the scandalously rich Osbornes, Clarice and her son and Chatsworth (at the
beginning of the series Clarice was named Armitage and her son was Milton, but
this was changed when Warren Beatty left the show), derive great pleasure from
looking down their noses at the hoi poloi, a biting satire of the isolated and
tone-deaf upper class. In Season 2, they become beneficent. In "The Mystic
Powers of Maynard G. Krebs" (November 1, 1960), Maynard is given the power
of ESP and is about to reveal the winner of the Nixon-Kennedy presidential race
on television the day before the election until Dobie persuades him that doing
so would violate our American democracy by influencing the vote. And in
"Around My Room in 80 Days" (November 18, 1960) Dobie and Maynard are
recruited by their English teach Mr. Pomfritt to help turn around promising but
poor student Paul Merrick, who has adopted a defeatist attitude and is on the
path to dropping out of school. In episodes such as these, the show steers
directly for the moralizing of straight-laced programs like Father Knows Best, which may have played
better in 1960 but is hard to stomach today.
Other changes for Season 2 included Dobie changing his hair
color from a surreal peroxide blonde to Hickman's natural brunette color. The
idea for making Dobie a blonde was Shulman's, whom Hickman surmised wanted to
be blonde himself, though he rationalized that Dobie was supposed to be the
All-American boy--blonde haired and blue eyed (never mind that Hickman's eyes
were actually hazel). But the weekly dye sessions required to keep Hickman's
hair its unnatural shade of yellow caused his hair to start falling out in
clumps and gave him sores on his head so that he had to threaten to quit before
Shulman and Amateau relented. Dobie's irascible father Herbert was also toned
down: in Season 1, Herbert had a catchphrase "I gotta kill that boy, I
just gotta" that may have struck a chord with frustrated fathers
everywhere who couldn't get a lick of work out of their sons, but the network
received complaints from humorless viewers and the catchphrase was jettisoned
during the second season. Also gone was actress Tuesday Weld and her character
Thalia Menninger as Weld pursued more serious work in feature films. Some have
said that a feud between Hickman and Weld led to her departure, but he disputes
this claim in his autobiography.
All of these changes made the show less interesting, not
more interesting, despite what Amateau told TV
Guide. Instead of the morality plays presented in Season 2 (except for the
deliciously cynical "Drag Strip Dobie" shown on December 6, 1960),
the first season episodes showed a young man pursuing a dream that was as
unnatural as his hair color. The ridiculous names of the females he
pursues--Thalia Menninger, Aphrodite Millican, Clothilde Ellingboe, Imogene
Burkhart (itself an inside joke because it was the real name of actress Jean
Byron who in Season 1 played teacher Mrs. Adams but would return in Season 3 as
Dr. Imogene Burkhart)--reflect his unrealistic perception of them and absurd
strategies for winning them. However, like Sisyphus, all of Dobie's efforts in
pursuing his ideal woman are a failure. Meanwhile he himself is pursued by
Zelda Gilroy, a plain-looking but intellectually superior girl who has an
equally irrational attraction to him and a determination that allows her to
persevere despite his disregard for her because she reasons that since nobody
else will have either one of them, they are bound to end up together. Even the
greedy, seemingly uncaring Thalia Menninger is more nuanced than one would
expect in a farce like Dobie. She
actually admits that she cares for Dobie but feels obligated to spurn him for a
wealthier mate because, she claims, her father has a kidney condition, her
mother isn't getting any younger, her sister married a loafer, and her brother
is headed for the poorhouse; therefore, she must be her family's breadwinner,
and Dobie will never amount to anything financially because, rather than
working and striving, his head is in the clouds dreaming about girls. One
cannot be sure if Thalia's family story is a fabrication or not, but this
ambiguity only adds to the show's complexity.
It's this complexity that makes the first season of Dobie play more like a post-modern
comedy than a naive 1950s sit-com. We see the title character stoop at
practically nothing--duping the always loyal Zelda and Maynard--in pursuit of
an unrealistic ideal but constantly getting jerked back to reality when his
conscience forces him to make a choice in favor of his father or best friend or
when he is outmaneuvered by a richer rival. Dobie has a heart and a conscience,
but he is easily led astray by selfish motives, and this tension is the source
of the show's comedy and depth. Dobie's father Herbert seems to regret ever
having a son, constantly saying that he has to kill him, but when pressed
admits that he cares for him. And gold-digging Thalia Menninger also has a
heart that is constantly having her agree to go steady with Dobie before coming
to her senses and realizing how impractical such an arrangement is for her
future. Unlike the tune "Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing" that
occasionally tinkles in the background on the show, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis shows that idealized notions of love
seen on other naive sit-coms don't work and that real love involves sacrifices
and trade-offs that are not always splendid. Too bad the show's producers felt
that such a statement didn't bear repeating past the show's first season.
The music for the series was composed and arranged by Lionel
Newman, with lyrics for the theme song provided by Max Shulman. One of 10
children, Newman was born in New Haven, CT, younger brother to noted
composer/arrangers Alfred and Emil Newman (and uncle to Randy Newman). He
became a recognized pianist by age 15, was the accompanist for Mae West, and by
age 16 was leading his own orchestra aboard the S.S. Rotterdam. With assistance
from brother Alfred, he moved to Hollywood and became a rehearsal pianist at
20th Century Fox. He got his first crack at film composing when he was hired to
write the title theme for The Cowboy and the Lady in 1938, for
which he received his first of 11 Academy Award nominations. In 1948 he wrote
his most successful hit with "Again" for the film Road House.
While at Fox his wry sense of humor made him a favorite of Marilyn Monroe and
she insisted that he write for many of her best-known pictures, including Gentlemen
Prefer Blondes, There's No Business Like Show Business, Niagra,
and River of No Return. When brother Alfred left 20th Century Fox in
1959, Lionel was named his successor as musical director and then Vice
President of feature and television music. He also continued composing and
arranging for feature films such as Cleopatra, The Sand Pebbles,
and Alien during this time.
He won the Oscar for Best Score for Hello, Dolly! in 1969. In 1985
he left Fox for a similar position at MGM/United Artists, where he remained
until his death from cardiac arrest at age 73 on February 3, 1989.
The entire series has been released on DVD by Shout!Factory.
The Actors
Dwayne Hickman
Dwayne Bernard Hickman was born in Los Angeles, the son of
silent-film-era extra Louise Lang, who pushed both him and his older brother
Darryl into films as children. In his autobiography Hickman tells the tale of
how his father, then an insurance salesman, made a deal to sell a policy to Ethel
Meglin, who ran a school teaching children to dance and sing, if he would agree
to enroll his boys in her school. The more extroverted Darryl was an immediate
success, landing a role in Bing Crosby's 1939 feature The Star Maker. As Darryl's film career blossomed, Mrs. Hickman
would bring Dwayne along with her to Darryl's film sessions, and the shy,
introverted Dwayne would wind up being used as an extra in many of Darryl's
films. Both boys appeared in 1940's Grapes
of Wrath, but their first credited co-appearance was in the 1945 Eddie
Rickenbacker biopic Captain Eddie. Though
he says he enjoyed meeting or running into big movie stars like Cary Grant, he
was never terribly interested in acting. So despite steady work throughout the
1940s, including a series of Lassie-like films about a dog named Rusty, Hickman
walked away from acting when he enrolled in Loyola University, where he first
met Bob Denver. However, as he was about to accept a job with the California
Department of Water and Power, his agent got him an audition for The Bob Cummings Show, and even though
he was not particularly excited about the opportunity, he was cast for the role
of Cummings' girl-crazy nephew Chuck McFarland. Hickman says Cummings took him
under his wing and told him that working on the show would be like going to
comedic acting school, receiving instruction not only from Cummings but also
executive producer George Burns, who was actively involved with the show on a
daily basis. Hickman's character made him a teen star, so much so that ABC-Paramount
recruited him to cut a teen record that was a complete flop, and, with the
backing of Cummings, Burns, and Jack Benny, he was given a chance for his own spin-off
show called Chuck Goes to College.
But none of the networks picked up the series. Just after the start of the
fifth and final season of The Bob
Cummings Show, Hickman's manager Ted Wick landed him an audition for the
casting of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis
and without even having to do a screen test, he was selected for the title
role.
Dobie ran for four
seasons, proving to be popular though it never ranked above 21st in viewership.
After the series ended, Hickman found himself typecast into youth roles though
he was approaching 30 and garnered only a few TV guest spots but found more
work in teenage exploitation films such as How
to Stuff a Wild Bikini, Ski Party,
and Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine.
The exception to this trend was his appearance as Jed in the 1965 Academy Award
winner Cat Ballou opposite Jane Fonda
and Lee Marvin. Frustrated in not finding steady acting work, Hickman in 1970
took a job as Entertainment Director at Howard Hughes' Landmark Hotel. In 1977 he
moved back into television as a programming executive for CBS, during which he
supervised shows such as M*A*S*H, Maude, and Designing Women. He also appeared in the Dobie Gillis reunion shows
Whatever Happened to Dobie Gillis? in
1977 and Bring Me the Head of Dobie
Gillis in 1988, which depicted Dobie married to Zelda with a son named
Georgie. In the 1990s he had a recurring role in the UPN series Clueless and in 2001 appeared in the Gilligan's Island TV movie Surviving Gilligan's Island, playing the
part of a network executive. Though he has retired from acting, today he has
become a successful painter, concentrating on depictions of houses and
landscapes, which can be seen at his web site dwaynehickman.com. He and his
third wife, former actress Joan Roberts, live in Los Angeles with their son
Albert.
Frank Faylen
Frank
Ruf was born in St, Louis, Missouri, the son of the vaudeville team of Ruf
& Cusik, with whom he toured as an infant. After attending St. Joseph's
Prepatory College in Kirkwood, MO, he returned to the theater, first as a
pantomimist and then as a clown and singer-dancer, a skill he exhibited on The
Many Loves of Dobie Gillis in the episode "That's Show Biz."
While touring the country, he was given a screen test during a Los Angeles tour
stop and began appearing in small roles for Warner Brothers. His reume of
nearly 200 films includes memorable roles in several film classics, such as
Bim, the male nurse in The Lost Weekend and cab driver Ernie Bishop in It's
a Wonderful Life. Other memorable films he appeared in include The Pride
of the Yankees, Yankee Doodle Dandy, The Blue Dahlia, Detective
Story, and Red Garters. His television career did not begin until
1958 when he was cast in individual episodes of shows like Wanted: Dead or Alive, Man With a Camera, and The Ann Sothern Show before
landing his most famous roles as the beleagured father of Dobie Gillis.
After
Dobie finished its 4-year run iun 1963, he had occasional film roles,
most notably in Barbara Streisand's Funny Girl in 1968 and an occasional
guest appearance on TV shows like The Beverly Hillbillies, My Mother
the Car, and That Girl. He was married to actress Carol Hughes from
1936 until his death from pneumonia at the age of 79 on August 2, 1985.
Their daughter Catherine "Kay" Faylen was the first wife of Regis
Philbin.
Florida Friebus
Florida
Friebus was born in Auburndale, Massachusetts, the daughter of silent film
actor Theodore Friebus. Her acting career began on the stage at age 21 with the
Civic Repertory Theater in New York. A few years later she and Eva Le Galliane
adapted Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland for the stage, where it was
performed on Broadway and years later on television, both in 1955 and 1983. She
married British actor Richard Waring in 1934 and they had one child who died in
infancy. They divorced in 1952. Her career in television began in 1948 on The
Ford Theatre Hour and she made several appearances on other drama anthologies
throughout the 1950s as well as occasional guest spots on comedies such as The
Goldbergs, Bachelor Father, and The Donna Reed Show before
landing the role of Winifred Gillis on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.
For 16 years she served on the council of the Actors Equity Association and two
years before her death received the Phil Loeb Award for service to her
profession. While acting on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, she also
hosted a children's reading show titled Look and Listen on the Los Angeles
CBS affiliate. She had hosted a similar program on radio for 10 years in New
York during the 1940s.
After
Dobie's demise, she had a smattering of TV appearances before
playing the role of Maggie Riggs during the 1968-69 season of Peyton Place. More
occasional TV work continued into the 1970s, when she played therapy group
member Mrs. Lillian Bakerman on The Bob Newhart Show from 1972-78. She
retired from acting in 1979 after suffering a series of strokes. She died in a
retirement home in Laguna Niguel, California at the age of 78 on May 27, 1988.
Bob Denver
Robert Osbourne Denver was born in New Rochelle, New York,
the great-great grandson of James William Denver, the territorial governor of
Kansas and the man after whom the city of Denver, Colorado was named. He
attended high school in Brownwood, Texas before his family moved to California,
where he graduated from Loyola University with a degree in political science. It
was while attending Loyola that Denver first became interested in acting as a career
and where he first met co-star Dwayne Hickman. He made his stage debut in a
production of The Caine Mutiny Court
Martial in the late 1950s and appeared in his first film in A Private's Affair in 1959, the same
year he auditioned for and was surprised to win the role of Maynard G. Krebs on
The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.
After the series ended he had a few TV guest spots in 1963
on shows like Dr. Kildare, The Farmer's Daughter, and The Andy Griffith Show, the last a
planned placement by the network to make him more recognizable just before the
launch of Gilligan's Island. Needless
to say, the latter series made him a TV comedy icon and gave him a role he
would reprise in many TV movies, animated series, and TV guest spots for the
rest of his career, even into the late 1980s and early 1990s on shows like ALF and Baywatch. He later landed a regular role as Rufus Butterworth on
the late 1960s series The Good Guys,
which ran for two seasons and played the title character in the Gilligan
concept goes west series Dusty's Trail
in 1973-74. Denver, who married four times, eventually retired to Princeton,
West Virginia, where he and his fourth wife hosted a radio program as well as
attending numerous events dressed as Gilligan. In 1998 he was arrested for
having a box of marijuana delivered to his house, which he first claimed was
sent by Gilligan co-star Dawn Wells
but later recanted. During Gilligan's
original run, Denver had insisted that Wells and Russell Johnson be given equal
billing during the show's opening sequence. In 2005 he underwent quadruple
bypass surgery, during which it was discovered that he had throat cancer. He
passed away while undergoing treatment for the cancer in Winston-Salem, North
Carolina on September 2 of that year at the age of 70.
Tuesday Weld
Susan
Ker Weld was born in New York City. Her father died when she was only 3, at
which time his family offered to take her from her mother, Yosene Balfour Ker,
and raise her, provided that her mother agree to never see her again. Her
mother refused but put Tuesday, who adopted her unusual first name from her
cousin's mispronunciation of "Susan," to work as a child model.
Forced into the role of family provider at such a young age, Weld had a nervous
breakdown at age 9, began drinking heavily at age 10, and attempted suicide
from pills and gin at age 12, the same age at which she made her screen debut
in Alfred Hitchcock's The Wrong Man and in the Alan Freed teen rock 'n'
roll exploitation flick Rock, Rock, Rock. Her breakout role came in the
1958 feature Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys and the following year she was
cast as Thalia Menninger on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, which earned
her a Golden Globe Award as Most Promising Newcomer of 1960 along with Angie
Dickinson and Stella Stevens. Besides her drinking, she caused a sensation by
dating much older men, starting at age 12. In 1959, at age 16, she had a
scandalous affair with actor John Ireland and was later linked with everyone
from Elvis Presley to Frank Sinatra. She also turned down many roles that would
have made her a much bigger success, such as the leads in Lolita, Bonnie
and Clyde, Rosemary's Baby, True Grit, and Bob & Carol
& Ted & Alice, later remarking that she deliberately passed on many
of these roles because she did not want to become a big star.
After
she was cut from Dobie Gillis after the first season, she had the role
of Cherie on the short-lived TV series Bus Stop but found more work in
film--opposite Steve McQueen and Jackie Gleason in Soldier in the Rain,
with one-time lover Richard Beymer in Return to Peyton Place, with
McQueen again in The Cincinnati Kid, and with Roddy McDowell in Lord
Love a Duck, She married scriptwriter and McDowell secretary Claude Harz,
with McDowell serving as best man, in 1965, had a daughter Natasha with him in
1966, but divorced him in 1971. In 1975 she married actor Dudley Moore,
had a son Patrick, and divorced in 1980. Her third and last marriage was
to Israeli violinist Pinchas Zukerman in 1985, which also ended in divorce in
1998. She received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for
her role in the 1977 feature Looking for Mr. Goodbar and was nominated
for an Emmy for her role in the 1983 TV movie The Winter of Our Discontent.
Her last appearance on a TV series was a 1990 episode of Mistress of
Suspense, and her last film role was in the 2002 feature Intimate
Affairs. She now lives in the Aspen, Colorado area.
Sheila James
Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Sheila James Kuehl began her acting
career at age 10 when she was cast as Stu Erwin's tomboy daughter Jackie on The Stu Erwin Show, which ran from
1950-55. During this time she also had a couple of uncredited film appearances,
most notably in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,
and on TV shows like My Little Margie.
Appearing in a 1955 episode of The Bob Cummings Show
provided the link to her next recurring role as Zelda Gilroy on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis as Cummings was produced by Rod
Amateau and included Dwayne Hickman in the cast. Originally the role of Zelda
was intended to be a one-time appearance, but Max Shulman liked Kuehl enough to
sign her to a contract as a semi-regular character on the show. The character
was so popular that the producers even planned a spin-off and filmed a pilot TV
movie Zelda, which aired in 1962, but
rumors of Kuehl's homosexuality began to spread and the show was never picked
up.
After Dobie finished
its 4-year run in 1963, she landed the role of Selma Kowalski opposite former Real McCoys star Kathy Nolan on the
one-season female version of McHale's Navy, Broadside.
But other than the occasional guest appearance on shows like The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction, and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,
the roles stopped coming for Kuehl and she turned her attention to first
serving as campus adviser and then associate dean of students at her alma mater
UCLA. Then in the mid-1970s at age 34, she entered Harvard Law School and was
elected president of the student council. After completing her degree, she went
to work for a couple of law firms in southern California and in 1994 was
elected to the California State Assembly as the first openly gay member of the
California legislature. After serving 6 years in the Assembly and being the
first female Speaker pro tempore, she was elected to the State Senate in 2000
and served 8 years, finally forced out by term limits. She authored several
bills for LGBT rights and even passed two bills for universal healthcare in
California only to have them vetoed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. She has
remained active in politics and advocacy since leaving the Senate in 2008 and
is currently running for Los Angeles County Supervisor and hosting a West
Hollywood-base program Get Used to It on
LGBT issues. Her work-related web site can be found at sheilakuehl.org.
Steve Franken
Doris Packer
Hailing from Menominee, Michagan, Doris Packer moved with
family to California at a young age and became interested in acting while
attending high school. She attended UCLA, then moved to New York and studied
under noted acting teacher Evelyn Thomas, followed by appearances on Broadway.
There she met and married stage director Rowland G. Edwards in 1928. Upon his
death 25 years later, she relocated back to California to try her hand at film
and television work, landing her first role in 1953 in Meet Me at the Fair. The following year she had the first of many
TV guest appearances and scored a recurring role as Mrs. Millicent Sohmers on The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show.
As Burns was a co-producer on The Bob
Cummings Show, she appeared in a couple of episodes for that show in 1956,
which was then being produced by Rod Amateau, who would become producer for The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.
Initially on Dobie Packer played
Clarice Armitage, mother of Warren Beatty's Milton Armitage, but when he left
the show and was replaced by Steve Franken as Chatsworth Osborne, Jr., Packer
was retained and renamed Clarice Osborne, also keeping her catchphrase about
her son being "such a nasty boy." At the same time she was playing
Clarice Armitage/Osborne, she also had a recurring role as Beaver Cleaver's
principal on Leave It to Beaver. And
during 1960 she appeared five times as Clara Mason on the comedy Happy. Her work on Beaver and Dobie
continued until both series ended in 1963, at which point she appeared three
times as wealthy Mrs. Fenwick on The
Beverly Hillbillies as well as single appearances on shows like Green Acres, My Favorite Martian, and The Andy Griffith Show. She also had an occasional role in feature films like Paradise Hawaiian Style and The Perils of Pauline, her last such
appearance being a minor role in Beatty's 1975 film Shampoo. She died of natural causes at the age of 74 on March 31,
1979.
William Schallert
Born in Los Angeles the son of famous Los Angeles Times drama critic Edwin Schallert and magazine writer
and radio host Elza Schallert, William Joseph Schallert took up acting while
attending college (one source says USC, another UCLA) and co-founded the Circle
Theatre with Charlie Chaplin's son Sydney and some other classmates in 1946.
Though he says on his web site www.william-schallert.com that his first film
appearance was as a gas station attendant in the 1949 giant ape thriller Mighty Joe Young, he had actually broken
in two years earlier with an uncredited role in The Foxes of Harrow and as George Brant in Doctor Jim. From that point up to the present, he has appeared in
over 350 film and television productions, the most recent being a 2014 uncredited
turn as an elevator operator on Two Broke
Girls. Many of those early roles were uncredited, including in classics
like Singin' in the Rain, M, and Them! He appeared in his share of sci-fi and exploitation fare,
such as The Man From Planet X, Captive Women, and The Girls of Pleasure Island. His television work began in 1951 on
anthologies Family Theatre and Fireside Theatre and remained sporadic
until three appearances as Ted Richards on Commando
Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe in 1955. In 1957 he began appearing as
Justinian Tebbs on The Adventures of Jim
Bowie, logging 8 appearances in the role through 1958. He also had a
handful of appearances in the late 1950s as Herbert on Hey, Jeannie!, as Major Karl Richmond on Steve Canyon, and as Lt. Mahhy Harris on Philip Marlowe before being cast as Dobie's teacher Leander
Pomfritt, which resulted in 24 appearances running into 1962.
Schallert left Dobie
at the end of Season 3 to take perhaps his best-remembered role as Patty Duke's
father Martin Lane on The Patty Duke Show,
which ran through spring 1966. The following year he appeared on the memorable Star Trek episode "The Trouble With
Tribbles" as well as appearing in the original film version of In the Heat of the Night (he would later
appear in an episode of the TV version). Schallert was never at a loss for
work: he appeared in Elvis' 1968 feature Speedway,
in the Disney kid classic The Computer
Wore Tennis Shoes, four times as Admiral Hargrade on Get Smart, and in four episodes of The Wild, Wild West, all in the later 1960s. In the mid-1970s he
played the role of Teddy Futterman on The
Nancy Walker Show and Carson Drew on The
Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries. In the 1980s he appeared four times as
Stanley Perkins on The Waltons,
played Robert E. Lee in the mini-series North
and South, Book II, and had recurring roles on The New Gidget and The New
Leave It to Beaver. In the 1990s he played Wesley Hodges on The Torkelsons and Judith's father on Dream On, and in the 2000s played Mayor
Hawkins on True Blood and appeared in
a couple of episodes of Desperate
Housewives. Besides his many appearances on screen, he has also done
extensive voicework, perhaps most memorably as the voice of Milton the Toaster
in 1970s commercials for Pop Tarts. He served as president of the Screen Actors
Guild from 1979-1981, during which time he founded the Committee for Performers
With Disabilities (Schallert himself wears prosthetic legs) and has remained
actively involved as a trustee of the SAG Pension and Health Plans. He has been
married to actress Leah Waggner since 1949 and says he has no intention of
retiring from acting.
Marjorie Bennett
A native of York, Australia, the one-time bathing beauty
broke into films in 1917, but after only four credits in two years she left the
film world until resurfacing again in 1946. After a string of mostly uncredited
supporting roles in films such as Dressed
to Kill, June Bride, and Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris
Karloff, she began making appearances on TV in the early 1950s on shows
like Adventures of Wild Bill Hickock,
Rebound, and Racket Squad. Though her career from that point forward would
concentrate mostly on TV guest spots, she did appear in such film classics as
Charlie Chaplin's landlady in 1952's Limelight,
the cook Margaret in Billy Wilder's Sabrina,
Mrs. Allenby in the original Ocean's
Eleven, the voice of Duchess in 101
Dalmatians, Dehlia Flagg in Whatever
Happened to Baby Jane?, Miss Lark in Mary
Poppins, and Miss Pickering in The
Love God? On television she had a
recurring role as Birdie Brockway on Lassie
from 1954-57, then played Mrs. Neimeyer in 6 episodes of The Bob Cummings Show, thereby being introduced to Dobie producer Rod Amateau. On Dobie she played ever-complaining
grocery customer Mrs. Kenney, always a thorn in Herbert T. Gillis' side during
the show's first two seasons. This was to be her last recurring TV role, though
she continued making numerous appearances through the 1970s, including three
turns as Mrs. Downey on CHiPs and her
final appearance in a 1980 episode of Barney
Miller. She passed away at the age of 86 on June 14, 1982.
Notable Guest Stars
Season 1, Episode 14, "The Gaucho":
Albert Morin (appeared in The Buccaneer,
Two Mules for Sister Sara, Chisum, and The Milagro Beanfield War) plays visiting Spanish Generalissimo
Sebastien Romero.
Season 1, Episode 15, "The Smoke-Filled
Room": Warren Beatty (shown on the right, starred in Splendor
in the Grass, All Fall Down, Bonnie and Clyde, Shampoo, Heaven Can Wait,
Reds, and Dick Tracy) plays Dobie's rich rival Milton Armitage.
Season 1, Episode 16, "The
Fist Fighter": Warren Beatty (see "The Smoke-Filled Room" above)
returns as Milton Armitage. James Westmoreland (Ruel Jaxon on The Monroes and Teddy Holmes on General Hospital) plays malt shop
customer Paisan.
Season 1, Episode 17, "The
Hunger Strike": Ryan O'Neal (starred in Love Story, What's Up, Doc?,
Barry Lyndon, Paper Moon, A Bridge Too Far,
and The Main Event and played Tal
Garrett on Empire, Rodney Harrington
on Peyton Place, Bobby Tannen on Good Sports, Robert Roberts, Jr. on Bull, Jerry Fox on Miss Match, and Max Keenen on Bones)
plays high school student Herm. Les Brown, Jr. (son of bandleader Les Brown,
played Jim Bailey on The Baileys of
Balboa) plays fellow student Frank. Marlo Thomas (shown on the left, played Stella Barnes on The Joey Bishop Show and Ann Marie on That Girl) plays Frank's girlfriend.
Season 1, Episode 18, "The
Flying Millicans": Yvonne Craig (starred in Gidget, High Time, Kissin' Cousins, Ski Party, and One Spy Too Many
and played Barbara Gordon, aka Batgirl, on Batman
and Grandma on Olivia) plays teenage
trapeze performer Aphrodite Millican. Francis X. Bushman (starred in Romeo and Juliet (1916), Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, Dick Tracy (1937), Sabrina, and The Phantom
Planet) plays her father.
Season 1, Episode 19, "Room
at the Bottom": Jean Byron (Minnie on Mayor
of the Town, Dr. Imogene Burkhart later on The
Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, and Natalie Lane on The Patty Duke Show) plays Dobie's math teacher Mrs. Adams. John
Bryant (Dr. Carl Spaulding on The
Virginian) plays her husband Esmond. Ron Howard (Opie Taylor on The Andy Griffith Show, Bob Smith on The Smith Family, Richie Cunningham on Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley, and the narrator on Arrested Development) plays their son Dan.
Season 1, Episode 20, "The
Power of Positive Thinking": John Abbott (appeared in The Woman in White, Madame
Bovary, The Merry Widow, and Gigi) plays con man Professor Dobkin.
Season 1, Episode 21, "Dobie
Spreads a Rumor": Dabbs Greer (shown on the right, see the biography section of the 1960 post
on Gunsmoke) plays Zelda's father Mr.
Gilroy. Sherry Alberoni (Debbie Potter on The
Tom Ewell Show and Sharon James on Family
Affair) plays a Gilroy daughter. Ahna Capri (Mary Rose on Room for One More) plays a Gilroy
daughter. Cynthia Pepper (Margie Clayton on Margie
and Jean Pearson on My Three Sons)
plays a girl in Charlie Wong's malt shop.
Season 1, Episode 22, "Love
Is a Fallacy": Jason Wingreen (Dr. Aaron Clark on The Long, Hot Summer, Harry Snowden on All in the Family and Archie
Bunker's Place, and Judge Arthur Beaumont on Matlock) plays teacher Mr. Magruder.
Season 1, Episode 23, "The
Chicken From Outer Space": Jody Warner (Penny Cooper on One Happy Family) plays Dobie's desire
Imogene Burkhart.
Season 1, Episode 24,
"Dobie's Navy Blues": Yvonne Craig (shown on the left, see "The Flying
Millicans" above) plays Dobie's steady girl Myrna Lomax. Harry von Zell
(the announcer on The George Burns and
Gracie Allen Show and The George Burns
Show and played Frank Curtis on Bachelor Father) plays her father John. 
Season 1, Episode 25, "Taken
to the Cleaners": Dick Elliott (shown on the right, played Officer Murphy on Dick Tracy and Mayor Pike on The Andy Griffith Show) plays shady clothes cleaner Mr. Edwards. Joey Faye
(Myer in Mack and Myer for Hire)
plays his partner Gunnison. Alan Carney (Mike Strager in a series of RKO
comedies in the 1940s and appeared in The
Absent-Minded Professor, Son of
Flubber, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad
World, and Herbie Rides Again)
plays policeman Officer Mulcahey.
Season 1, Episode 26, "That's
Show Biz": Roberta Shore (Laura Rogan on Walt Disney Presents: Annette, Henrietta Gogerty on The Bob Cummings Show, and Betsy Garth
on The Virginian) plays Dobie's
steady girl Clothidle Ellingboe. Richard Deacon (Sherman Hall on The Charles Farrell Show, Roger Finley
on Date With the Angels, Uncle Archie
on Walt Disney Presents: Annette,
Fred Rutherford on Leave It to Beaver,
Mel Cooley on The Dick Van Dyke Show,
and Roger Buell on The Mothers in Law)
plays her father. Reta Shaw (Flora McCauley on The Ann Sothern Show, Thelma on The
Tab Hunter Show, Mrs. Stanfield on Oh,
Those Bells, and Martha Grant on The
Ghost and Mrs. Muir) plays her mother. Joey D. Vieira (Hollis Bridwell on The Pride of the Family, Porky Brockway
on Lassie, and Norman Zelinko on Hank) plays her brother Arthur. Jean
Byron (see "Room at the Bottom" above) returns as teacher Mrs. Adams.
Burt Mustin (Foley on The Great
Gildersleeve, Mr. Finley on Date With
the Angels, Gus the fireman on Leave It to Beaver, Jud Fletcher on The Andy Griffith Show, and Justin Quigley on All in the Family) plays the head of the Board of Education.
Season 1, Episode 27, "The
Prettiest Collateral in Town": Yvonne Fedderson (Dotty Snow on Father Knows Best and Sally Day on Happy) plays Dobie's new girlfriend
Melissa Frome. Rose Marie (shown on the right, played Martha Randolph on The Bob Cummings Show, Bertha on My Sister Eileen, Sally Rogers on The Dick Van Dyke Show, Myrna Gibbons on The Doris Day Show, Hilda on S.W.A.T.,
and Mitzi Balzer on Hardball) plays waitress
Mrs. Tarantino. Hugh Sanders (starred in That's
My Boy, The Pride of St. Louis, The Winning Team, and The Wild One) plays bank officer Mr. McCurdy. Sherry Jackson
(Terry Williams on Make Room for Daddy)
plays his daughter Mignonne.
Season 1, Episode 28, "Live
Alone and Like It": Esther Dale (starred in The Awful Truth, The Egg and
I, Ma and Pa Kettle, and Holiday Affair) plays landlady Mrs.
Finch.
Season 1, Episode 29, "The
Big Sandwich": Gordon Jones (shown on the left, appeared in The Green Hornet, Flying
Tigers, My Sister Eileen, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, and McLintock! and played Mike Kelley on The Abbott and Costello Show, Pete
Thompson on The Ray Milland Show,
Hubie Dodd on So This Is Hollywood,
and Butch Barton on The Adventures of
Ozzie and Harriet) plays Winifred's brother Wilfred.
Season 1, Episode 30, "Soup
and Fish": Clinton Sundberg (appeared in Easter Parade, The Kissing
Bandit, Annie Get Your Gun, and The Belle of New York) plays the
Armitage butler Trembley.
Season 1, Episode 31, "Where
There's a Will": Darryl Hickman (Dwayne's older brother, who appeared in The Grapes of Wrath, The Way of All Flesh, The Human Comedy, Captain Eddie, Rhapsody in
Blue, and The Tingler and played
Cpl. Ben Canfield on The Americans)
plays Dobie's older brother Dave. Ron Howard (shown on the right, see "Room at the
Bottom" above) plays a boy who underpays for candy. Blanche Sweet (silent
film star who appeared in The Secret
Orchard, Anna Christie, and Tess of the D'urbervilles) plays grocery
customer Mrs. Dowell.
Season 1, Episode 32, "Put
Your Feet in Our Hands": Diana Millay (Laura Collins on Dark Shadows) plays Dobie's desire
Daphne Root. Cheerio Meredith (Love Hackett on One Happy Family and Emma Brand on The Andy Griffith Show) plays a shoe store customer. Virginia Sale
(Selma Plout on Petticoat Junction
and Green Acres) plays her friend.
Season 1, Episode 33,
"Competition Is the Life of Trade": Jack Albertson (shown on the left, starred in Days of Wine and Roses, Kissin' Cousins, The Flim-Flam Man, and Willie
Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and played Lt. Harry Evans on The Thin Man, Walter Burton on Room for One More, Lt. Cmdr. Virgil
Stoner on Ensign O'Toole, Paul Fenton
on Mister Ed, and Ed Brown on Chico and the Man) plays grocer Mr.
Quimby.
Season 1, Episode 34, "The
French, They Are a Funny Race": Tommy Farrell (Chet Holliday on This Is Alice, Cpl. Thad Carson on The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, Jay
O'Hanlon on Bourbon Street Beat, and
Fred on Room for One More) plays record
shop proprietor Riff Ryan. Joey Faye (see "Taken to the Cleaners"
above) plays barber Mr. Sneed.
Season 1, Episode 35, "The
Unregistered Nurse": Nancy Hadley (shown on the left, played Marilee Dorf on The Brothers and Barbara Simpson on The Joey Bishop Show) plays nurse Valerie Brown. John Stephenson
(shown on the right, played Roger Crutcher on The People's Choice,
was the narrator on Dragnet 1967, and
did the voices for Mr. Slate on The Flintstones, Fancy-Fancy on Top Cat,
Dr. Benton C. Quest on Jonny Quest
and Luke and Blubber Bear on Wacky Races,
to name but a few) plays her employer Dr. Simpson. Tommy Ivo (Herbie Bailey on The Donna Reed Show and Haywood Botts on
Margie) plays delivery boy Elden.
Jack Orrison (Sgt. Brady on The
Plainclothesman) plays a health department official. Herb Vigran (Judge
Brooker on Gunsmoke) plays a police
officer.
Season 1, Episode 36, "The
Long Arm of the Law": Richard Reeves (shown on the left, played Mr. Murphy on Date With the Angels) plays police officer Sam Parmalee.
Season 1, Episode 37, "Here
Comes the Groom": Dabbs Greer (see "Dobie Spreads a Rumor"
above) returns as Zelda's father Walter Gilroy. Joan Banks (Sylvia Platt on Private Secretary and Helen Hadley on National Velvet) plays his wife Edna.
Burt Mustin (see "That's Show Biz" above) plays Justice of the Peace
Jethro R. Wiggins.
Season 1, Episode 38, "A
Taste for Lobster": Michael Burns (Macauley on It's a Man's World and Barnaby West on Wagon Train) plays child tycoon Chrissie Tyler. Gina Gillespie
(Tess on Law of the Plainsman and
Mimi Scott on Karen) plays
11-year-old temptress Hermione Kraumeyer. Joey D. Vieira (see "That's Show
Biz" above) plays Tyler's employee Wilkins. Billy Booth (see the biography
section of the 1960 post on Dennis the Menace) plays another Tyler employee.
Season 1, Episode 39,
"Rock-a-Bye Dobie": Denise Alexander (Susan Hunter Martin on Days of Our Lives, Mary McKinnon on Another World, Sister Beatrice on Sunset Beach, Louise Fitzpatrick on Pretty the Series, Lola on The Inn, and Dr. Lesley Webber on General Hospital) plays Dobie's new
girlfriend Jenny Metzger. Don Knotts (shown on the right, starred in No Time for Sergeants, The
Incredible Mr. Limpet, The Reluctant
Astronaut, The Ghost and Mr. Chicken,
The Love God?, The Shakiest Gun in the West, The
Apple Dumpling Gang, Gus, How to Frame a Figg, and Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo and played
Barney Fife on The Andy Griffith Show,
Ralph Furley on Three's Company, and
Les Calhoun on Matlock) plays her
father Simon. Kathleen Freeman (Katie on Topper,
Marilly on Mayor of the Town, Bertha
Krause on The Bob Cummings Show, Flo
Shafer on The Beverly Hillbillies,
Kate Harwell on Funny Face, and Iris
Belmont on Lotas Luck) plays her
mother Alicia.
Season 2, Episode 1, "Who
Needs Elvis?": Kathe Green (daughter of composer Johnny Green who sang all
of Mark Lester's songs in the film Oliver!)
plays Dobie's love interest Esme Lauterbach.
Season 2, Episode 2, "You
Ain't Nuthin' But a Houn' Dog": Jack Albertson (see "Competition Is
the Life of Trade" above) plays a newspaper reporter.
Season 2, Episode 3, "Baby
Talk": Jo Anne Worley (shown on the left, a regular performer on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In) plays Mrs. Tarantino, a mother with
a small baby.
Season 2, Episode 4, "Dobie
Goes Beatnik": Richard Wessel (see the biography section for the 1960 post
on Riverboat) plays Edward J.
McKluskey, Grand Bull of the Order of the Bison. Carol Byron (Kitty Mathews on Oh, Those Bells) plays Dobie's
girlfriend Charlene. Susan Silo (Rusty on Harry's
Girls and has been a prolific voice actor on shows such as The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang, James Bond, Jr., and Where's Waldo?) plays her friend Joanne.
Season 2, Episode 5, "The
Mystic Powers of Maynard G. Krebs": John Banner (shown on the right, played Bovaro on Rocky Jones, Space Ranger, Hans on The Baileys of Balboa, Sgt. Hans Georg
Schultz on Hogan's Heroes, and Uncle
Latzi on The Chicago Teddy Bears)
plays psychologist Dr. Von Schwering.
Season 2, Episode 6, "The
Face That Stopped the Clock": Alan Carney (see "Taken to the
Cleaners" above) plays store proprietor Harry. Joey Faye (see "Taken
to the Cleaners" above) plays his partner Charlie. Richard Reeves (see
"The Long Arm of the Law" above) returns as police officer Sam
Parmalee.
Season 2, Episode 7, "
Maynard G. Krebs, Boy Millionaire": Jack Albertson (see "Competition
Is the Life of Trade" above) plays a police desk sergeant. Milton Frome
(starred in Pardners, The Delicate Delinquent, and The Swinger and played Lawrence Chapman
on The Beverly Hillbillies) plays con
man Alfred Montcalm. Joey Faye (see "Taken to the Cleaners" above)
plays his partner Willy.
Season 2, Episode 8, "Around
My Room in 80 Days": Diana Millay (shown on the left, see "Put Your Feet in Our
Hands" above) plays Dobie's classmate Linda Mayhew. Robert Biheller (Corky
on Here Come the Brides) plays a high
school dropout.
Season 2, Episode 9, "Drag Strip
Dobie": Jody Fair (appeared in High
School Confidential, Hot Rod Gang,
The Brain Eaters, and Sex Kittens Go to College) plays Dobie's
love interest Charlotte Lamarr. Alan Dexter
(Frank Ferguson on Days of Our
Lives) plays hot rod club president Mr. Sullivan.
Season 2, Episode 11, "Parlez-Vous
English?": Marcel Hillaire (appeared in Sabrina, Seven Thieves,
and Murderer's Row and played
Inspector Bouchard on Adventures in
Paradise) plays French painter Aristede le Blanc.
