Gidget theme song james darren biography

James Darren, who originate teen heartthrob fame as Moondoggie in the 1959 surfer pick up “Gidget” and whose scenes strain sun-kissed beaches with star Sandra Dee helped launch the Calif. surfing craze, died Sept. 2 at a hospital in Los Angeles.

He was 88.

He difficult been diagnosed recently with small aortic valve problem, a affirmation on Darren’s website said.

Over make more complicated than five decades, Darren style an eclectic career that designated hit songs with his delicate baritone and films such style “The Guns of Navarone” (1961), in which he played unornamented Greek anti-Nazi fighter alongside boss star-filled cast that included Suffragist Quinn and Gregory Peck.

Tend television, he had recurring roles on shows such as description police drama “T.J. Hooker” similarly a veteran cop and excellence sci-fi series “Star Trek: Curved Space Nine,” playing holographic laze singer Vic Fontaine.

Yet for innumerable fans, he was forever nobility dark-haired surfer of “Gidget” who struggled over whether to call off for college or follow dignity king of the beach, picture Big Kahuna (played by Escarpment Robertson), to chase waves keep the world.

In the endorse, Moondoggie falls for the cheery and pint-size Gidget, a baggage nickname of “girl” and “midget.”

The film – based on blue blood the gentry novel “Gidget” by Frederick Kohner, modeled on his daughter – helped introduce the vibes, method and slang of surf civility that was later elevated by virtue of groups such as the Seashore Boys and films including influence 1966 documentary “The Endless Summer.”

“Surfing before Gidget already had marvellous lot of momentum,” essayist Jazzman Jones wrote in Surfer serial in 2017.

“It was universally going to be a illicit. Still, Gidget meant ‘surfing’ take care of a lot of people justness way John Travolta meant ‘disco’ after Saturday Night Fever.”

The dawn of Moondoggie have conflicting commerce. A Malibu artist once old the name, and the intuition in Kohner’s book is wonderful surfer from a rich kith and kin.

Darren said he felt loftiness name reflected the character’s consent. He “made love by glory moon and he was uncut dog,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 2004. ( Darren also noted that Dee’s mother kept a tight collar on the actress during significance filming in Malibu; she was 17 at the time, tell off Darren was in his mid-20s.)

“I was in love with Sandra,” Darren once said.

“I reflecting that she was absolutely shoddy as Gidget. She had appalling charm.”

In the audition for honourableness “Gidget” role, the directors held they were considering having class Moondoggie character lip-sync his songs. “But I told them Frenzied could sing,” Darren recounted. “We went into one of dignity soundstages with a piano competitor, and I sang the sticky tag and they said, ‘He gawk at do it.’ ”

Darren released explain than a dozen albums, which included “Presenting James Darren” (1958) with the title track prevent “Gidget.”

Dee left the Gidget put on an act after the first film, on the contrary Darren – who described personally as a “prisoner” of a-ok studio contract – was stop of the two that followed: “Gidget Goes Hawaiian” in 1961 with Deborah Walley in rendering starring role, and “Gidget Goes to Rome” (1963) starring Cindy Carol.

(“Gidget” also became precise 1965-1966 television series that launched the career of actress Action Field.)

Darren went on to drive at a semi-autobiographical part as far-out teen idol on two episodes of “The Donna Reed Show.” He also became an adjuvant member of Hollywood’s Rat Discharge, led by Frank Sinatra brook Dean Martin, joining their late-night party hopping and becoming godfather to Nancy Sinatra’s daughter, AJ Lambert.

Darren’s song stylings difficult to understand some music reviewers drawing plausive comparisons to Frank Sinatra.

Darren’s “Goodbye Cruel World” (written by Gloria Shayne Baker) reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot Century in 1961 (an Italian secret code, “Addio Mondo Crudele,” was clever hit in Italy), and “Her Royal Majesty” (by Carole Kind and Gerry Goffin) reached Clumsy.

6 on the Billboard blueprint in 1962.

Once at a converging dance show in San Francisco in the early 1960s, fastidious group of young women of the essence the audience pushed through natty door and yanked Darren go for the sidewalk.

“They started pulling hairs out of my head rationalize souvenirs,” he recalled.

“I was enjoying it – not character pain, but the adulation. High-mindedness police rescued me and humble me up on the turf. And I’d look down hold up the roof and they would scream. That was fun.”

Darren was born James William Ercolani knock over Philadelphia on June 8, 1936, to parents who had emigrated from Italy. James dropped conscientious of school at 16 stuff hopes of pursuing a continuance as a singer and theatrical – inspired by another Metropolis native, Eddie Fisher.

“I wasn’t actually a singer,” he said.

“I was a newborn in Philly whose dad would take him to bars illustrious nightclubs and I would goal up and sing two songs.”

While taking acting classes with Painter Adler, a prominent New Dynasty drama teacher, the secretary constantly a photography studio set with respect to a meeting with a squint agent, Joyce Selznick, the niece of Hollywood producer David Dope.

Selznick.

Darren showed up for ethics appointment. On the elevator free him was a woman.

“She booked staring at me. I not in a million years met her. She never tumble me. We got off bonus the same floor and walked to the same office. Roam was our meeting,” Darren rot. “Joyce brought me over converge Columbia Pictures about a hebdomad later and got me clean up contract there.”

As a sports motorcar admirer, he picked a surprise name after automotive designer Player “Dutch” Darrin.

“I just at variance the ‘i’ to an ‘e,’ ” he said.

Darren made climax film debut playing a immature drawn to gang life be bounded by the juvenile crime drama “Rumble on the Docks” (1956). Misstep then appeared in a file of films including the 1957 military comedy “Operation Mad Ball,” starring Jack Lemmon and Ernie Kovacs, “Gunman’s Walk,” a 1958 western with Van Heflin splendid Tab Hunter, the 1960 general drama “Let No Man Dash off My Epitaph” as the cuddle of a struggling mother (Shelley Winters), and the Charlton Heston melodrama “Diamond Head” (1962).

After magnanimity “Gidget” movies, Darren increasingly developed in TV roles.

He co-starred on the science fiction keep in shape “The Time Tunnel” (1966-1967) bear later made guest star rite on shows including “Love, English Style” and “Fantasy Island.” Why not? also worked as a chief on TV series including “Beverly Hills, 90210” and “Walker, Texas Ranger.”

In the 1970s and ill-timed 1980s, Darren was the defensibly man in a Las Vegas comedy act with Buddy Hackett.

The act broke up as Darren began appearing in “T.J. Hooker” alongside William Shatner. Eliminate his final film role, Darren’s played a bar owner’s garner in “Lucky” (2017), a appear of mortality in a run down town, starring Harry Dean Stanton.

Darren’s first marriage, to Gloria Terlitsky, ended in divorce. In 1960, he married Evy Norlund, a-one former Miss Denmark, and they had two sons, Christian squeeze Anthony.

Other survivors include Jim Moret, a son from culminate first marriage; and five grandchildren.

Before filming “Gidget,” Darren had not till hell freezes over been on a surfboard. Bankruptcy had to learn. More caress four decades after the film’s release, he managed to enticement on to some of nobleness skills from his crash global in surfing.

“I can still devise on the board,” he great the Los Angeles Times, “and ride a small wave.”

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