The Death of Dobie
January 9, 2022 10:43 PM   Subscribe

Dwayne Hickman has died, age 87. Protagonist of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (where his bestie was Bob Denver as the beatnik Maynard G. Krebs), early co-stars also included Warren Beatty and Tuesday Weld -- here they all are in this clip.

Bonus: Many are aware that Fred Flintstone's source was Jackie Gleason in "The Honeymooners" but did you realize that Scooby-Doo was based on Dobie?
posted by Rash (26 comments total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
 
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posted by Phssthpok at 11:19 PM on January 9, 2022


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posted by armeowda at 11:20 PM on January 9, 2022


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posted by bryon at 11:58 PM on January 9, 2022


That clip with Warren Beatty and Tuesday Weld was great! "Let me refreshen your memory"; was 'refreshen' rather than 'refresh' really canonical back then?
posted by jamjam at 12:00 AM on January 10, 2022


Mostly familiar with Dobie Gillis because now-LA County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl aka Sheila James played his aspiring love interest Zelda Gilroy. I guess they were married in the later Dobie TV movies.

Hickman also played a drunk fake priest in western comedy Cat Ballou, although I watched that after driving 8 hours southwest from Reno through a snowstorm with a fever so I don't remember it too well.

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posted by JauntyFedora at 12:54 AM on January 10, 2022 [7 favorites]


Another one from the black and white only TV days of my childhood. I loved that show.
posted by y2karl at 1:01 AM on January 10, 2022 [3 favorites]


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posted by Faint of Butt at 3:40 AM on January 10, 2022


Dobie Gillis and shows of the era were staples of Nick at Night when I was in college. I worked nights in the dorms and we watched them all night: Dobie Gillis, Patty Duke, Hogan's Heroes, and so on.

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posted by jquinby at 4:21 AM on January 10, 2022 [4 favorites]


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posted by james33 at 4:40 AM on January 10, 2022


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posted by briank at 4:50 AM on January 10, 2022


My mom grew up watching Dobie, and she watched it again when it was in regular rotation on TV Land a few years back.

For a show of that era, I was surprised by how meta and fourth wall-breaking it could be.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:15 AM on January 10, 2022 [6 favorites]


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posted by kinnakeet at 5:36 AM on January 10, 2022


For a show of that era, I was surprised by how meta and fourth wall-breaking it could be.

I came in to say the same. I was probably watching it on TV Land at about the same time Gary Shandling was doing it on his show, but they both stand out in my memory on equal footing.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 6:01 AM on January 10, 2022 [2 favorites]


I got quite obsessed with this show when cable started running it back in the 80s. It was quite inventive and wonderful, and Hickman was really good at going back and forth between talking to us through the camera and being in the world of the show.

"That's Dobie with a B."
posted by JanetLand at 6:31 AM on January 10, 2022 [1 favorite]


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posted by Gadgetenvy at 7:00 AM on January 10, 2022


For a show of that era, I was surprised by how meta and fourth wall-breaking it could be.

RonButNotStupid gets it right, methinks.

Frank Faylen as Dobie's father was my favorite sit-com dad back then and
Maynard G. Krebs was not only Bob Denver's finest role as far as I am concerned but a gift to the common culture.

A teenager strives for beautiful women, fancy cars and money. sez Google -- Ha! That gives short shrift to what it was to me. The Adventures of Dobie Gillis was a revelation at the time, right up there with O.G. The Addams Family.

The Adventures of Dobie Gillis - Season 3 Full Episodes
posted by y2karl at 7:44 AM on January 10, 2022 [2 favorites]


I wanted to keep the focus on Dwayne but thanks for mentioning Zelda, JauntyFedora -- in this interview, Sheila discusses working with Bob Denver and a promotional trip they had to make through the Deep South, where they survived a violent encounter with racists in a hotel elevator.
posted by Rash at 8:42 AM on January 10, 2022 [5 favorites]


And about that 4th-wall breaking -- when Dobie addresses the audience, he stands in front of a model of The Thinker. Rodin was kind of trendy at the time, perhaps due to the best-selling biography, Naked Came I by David Weiss.
posted by Rash at 8:58 AM on January 10, 2022


The Adventures of Dobie Gillis was a revelation at the time, right up there with O.G. The Addams Family.

I just realized there’s a direct connection between Maynard G Krebs’ “You rang?” and Lurch’s.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 9:12 AM on January 10, 2022 [2 favorites]


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posted by Melismata at 10:15 AM on January 10, 2022


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posted by kitten kaboodle at 11:54 AM on January 10, 2022


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posted by detachd at 3:03 PM on January 10, 2022


Oh, wild. It looks like he died at the same time, just a couple miles away, that I was talking to my wife about how our County Supervisor had been Zelda, and we were joking about a grim dark Riverdale style reboot.
posted by klangklangston at 5:41 PM on January 10, 2022 [1 favorite]


This just in: on the West Coast update of tonight's PBS Newshour, correspondent Stephanie Sy self face-egged verbally with pronouncing '...who played Dobby Gillis on TV' when reporting Hickman's death. Oh, you sweet historically impaired millennial summer child.
posted by y2karl at 6:38 PM on January 10, 2022 [1 favorite]


"That's Dobie with a B."

Don't recall ever hearing him say that, nor did I realize until just now that kids would've made fun of him by mis-pronouncing his name. Oh, but they would have, in elementary school (it would've been intolerable), and this is why our Dobe was such a mixed-up kid in high school!
posted by Rash at 7:19 PM on January 10, 2022


Add me to the list of people who discovered the show in the late 80s and was surprised by how entertaining it was. It was a leap forward from long having outgrown Leave it to Beaver. He'd also show up every once in a while such that I'm pretty sure I knew who he was before I started watching the show.

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posted by rhizome at 9:20 PM on January 10, 2022 [2 favorites]


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