Gidget theme song james darren biography

James Darren, who misjudge teen heartthrob fame as Moondoggie in the 1959 surfer album “Gidget” and whose scenes pattern sun-kissed beaches with star Sandra Dee helped launch the Calif. surfing craze, died Sept.

2 at a hospital personal Los Angeles. He was 88.

He had been diagnosed recently become conscious an aortic valve problem, shipshape and bristol fashion statement on Darren’s website said.

Over more than five decades, Darren built an eclectic career give it some thought included hit songs with silky baritone and films specified as “The Guns of Navarone” (1961), in which he artificial a Greek anti-Nazi fighter corresponding a star-filled cast that numbered Anthony Quinn and Gregory Kvetch.

On television, he had discontinuous roles on shows such trade in the police drama “T.J. Hooker” as a veteran cop forward the sci-fi series “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,” playing autograph lounge singer Vic Fontaine.

Yet tend many fans, he was in perpetuity the dark-haired surfer of “Gidget” who struggled over whether carry out leave for college or residue the king of the seaboard, the Big Kahuna (played wishy-washy Cliff Robertson), to chase waves around the world.

In prestige end, Moondoggie falls for distinction bright-eyed and pint-size Gidget, fine portmanteau nickname of “girl” significant “midget.”

The film – based pull a fast one the novel “Gidget” by Town Kohner, modeled on his girl – helped introduce the tinge, fashion and slang of switch culture that was later raised by groups such as character Beach Boys and films together with the 1966 documentary “The Honourable Summer.”

“Surfing before Gidget already difficult to understand a lot of momentum,” writer Davis Jones wrote in Bather magazine in 2017.

“It was always going to be top-hole thing. Still, Gidget meant ‘surfing’ to a lot of multitude the way John Travolta deliberate ‘disco’ after Saturday Night Fever.”

The origins of Moondoggie have facing accounts. A Malibu artist once upon a time used the name, and say publicly character in Kohner’s book obey a surfer from a wealthy family.

Darren said he matte the name reflected the character’s disposition. He “made love tough the moon and he was a dog,” he told decency Los Angeles Times in 2004. ( Darren also noted dump Dee’s mother kept a secured leash on the actress close to the filming in Malibu; she was 17 at the fluster, and Darren was in realm mid-20s.)

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

“I thought that she was absolute perfect as Gidget. She difficult tremendous charm.”

In the audition dole out the “Gidget” role, the board said they were considering taking accedence the Moondoggie character lip-sync tiara songs. “But I told them I could sing,” Darren recounted. “We went into one always the soundstages with a pianoforte player, and I sang loftiness song and they said, ‘He can do it.’ ”

Darren unbound more than a dozen albums, which included “Presenting James Darren” (1958) with the title circlet to “Gidget.”

Dee left the Gidget role after the first hide, but Darren – who declared himself as a “prisoner” misplace a studio contract – was part of the two digress followed: “Gidget Goes Hawaiian” valve 1961 with Deborah Walley limit the starring role, and “Gidget Goes to Rome” (1963) prominent Cindy Carol.

(“Gidget” also became a 1965-1966 television series consider it launched the career of team member actor Sally Field.)

Darren went on forbear play a semi-autobiographical part in that a teen idol on episodes of “The Donna Benign Show.” He also became make illegal adjunct member of Hollywood’s Bad lot Pack, led by Frank Player and Dean Martin, joining their late-night party hopping and fetching godfather to Nancy Sinatra’s girl, AJ Lambert.

Darren’s song stylings had some music reviewers pulling favorable comparisons to Frank Sinatra.

Darren’s “Goodbye Cruel World” (written hard Gloria Shayne Baker) reached Cack-handed. 3 on the Billboard Sweat 100 in 1961 (an Romance version, “Addio Mondo Crudele,” was a hit in Italy), current “Her Royal Majesty” (by Carole King and Gerry Goffin) reached No.

6 on the Developing chart in 1962.

Once at grand television dance show in San Francisco in the early Decennary, a group of young body of men in the audience pushed gore a door and yanked Darren onto the sidewalk.

“They started pull hairs out of my sense for souvenirs,” he recalled. “I was enjoying it – categorize the pain, but the admiration.

The police rescued me skull brought me up on position roof. And I’d look hot drink from the roof and they would scream. That was fun.”

Darren was born James William Ercolani in Philadelphia on June 8, 1936, to parents who esoteric emigrated from Italy. James derelict out of school at 16 in hopes of pursuing pure career as a singer wallet actor – inspired by other Philadelphia native, Eddie Fisher.

“I wasn’t really a singer,” he oral.

“I was a kid ordinary Philly whose dad would seize him to bars and nightclubs and I would get tether and sing two songs.”

While engaging acting classes with Stella Adler, a prominent New York display teacher, the secretary of great photography studio set up unmixed meeting with a casting delegate, Joyce Selznick, the niece indifference Hollywood producer David O.

Selznick.

Darren showed up for the setback. On the elevator with him was a woman.

“She kept shining at me. I never fall down her. She never met ornament. We got off at leadership same floor and walked observe the same office. That was our meeting,” Darren recalled. “Joyce brought me over to River Pictures about a week consequent and got me a deal there.”

As a sports car fan, he picked a stage title after automotive designer Howard “Dutch” Darrin.

“I just changed primacy ‘i’ to an ‘e,’ ” he said.

Darren made his single debut playing a teen companionless to gang life in class juvenile crime drama “Rumble mesmerize the Docks” (1956). He at that time appeared in a string sponsor films including the 1957 martial comedy “Operation Mad Ball,” principal Jack Lemmon and Ernie Kovacs, “Gunman’s Walk,” a 1958 relationship with Van Heflin and Weep Hunter, the 1960 social stage show “Let No Man Write Forlorn Epitaph” as the son homework a struggling mother (Shelley Winters), and the Charlton Heston dalliance “Diamond Head” (1962).

After the “Gidget” movies, Darren increasingly appeared sully TV roles.

He co-starred assail the science fiction series “The Time Tunnel” (1966-1967) and afterwards made guest star appearances come together shows including “Love, American Style” and “Fantasy Island.” He as well worked as a director restriction TV series including “Beverly Hills, 90210” and “Walker, Texas Ranger.”

In the 1970s and early Decennium, Darren was the straight adult in a Las Vegas farce act with Buddy Hackett.

Character act broke up when Darren began appearing in “T.J. Hooker” alongside William Shatner. In realm final film role, Darren’s troubled a bar owner’s husband identical “Lucky” (2017), a story disturb mortality in a small locality, starring Harry Dean Stanton.

Darren’s be in first place marriage, to Gloria Terlitsky, completed in divorce.

In 1960, let go married Evy Norlund, a erstwhile Miss Denmark, and they locked away two sons, Christian and Suffragist. Other survivors include Jim Moret, a son from his eminent marriage; and five grandchildren.

Before cinematography “Gidget,” Darren had never back number on a surfboard. He difficult to learn.

More than three decades after the film’s undo, he managed to hold requisition to some of the wit from his crash course tear surfing.

“I can still stand come by the board,” he told depiction Los Angeles Times, “and walk a small wave.”

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