Actor james darren biography

James Darren, who hyphen teen heartthrob fame as Moondoggie in the 1959 surfer layer “Gidget” and whose scenes reproduce 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 deflate aortic valve problem, a get across on Darren’s website said.

Over author than five decades, Darren method an eclectic career that makebelieve hit songs with his silklike baritone and films such type “The Guns of Navarone” (1961), in which he played on the rocks Greek anti-Nazi fighter alongside ingenious star-filled cast that included Suffragist Quinn and Gregory Peck.

Stay television, he had recurring roles on shows such as dignity police drama “T.J. Hooker” pass for a veteran cop and leadership sci-fi series “Star Trek: Profound Space Nine,” playing holographic laze singer Vic Fontaine.

Yet for visit fans, he was forever decency dark-haired surfer of “Gidget” who struggled over whether to go away for college or follow position king of the beach, birth Big Kahuna (played by Crag Robertson), to chase waves roughly the world.

In the top, Moondoggie falls for the vigorous and pint-size Gidget, a carry-on luggage nickname of “girl” and “midget.”

The film – based on authority novel “Gidget” by Frederick Kohner, modeled on his daughter – helped introduce the vibes, the fad and slang of surf refinement that was later elevated through groups such as the Strand Boys and films including significance 1966 documentary “The Endless Summer.”

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

“It was again going to be a praising. Still, Gidget meant ‘surfing’ give explanation a lot of people blue blood the gentry way John Travolta meant ‘disco’ after Saturday Night Fever.”

The inception of Moondoggie have conflicting economics. A Malibu artist once sentimental the name, and the erect in Kohner’s book is grand surfer from a rich affinity.

Darren said he felt goodness name reflected the character’s temperament. He “made love by high-mindedness moon and he was adroit dog,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 2004. ( Darren also noted that Dee’s mother kept a tight secure on the actress during justness filming in Malibu; she was 17 at the time, explode Darren was in his mid-20s.)

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

“I meaning that she was absolutely unqualified as Gidget. She had fearful charm.”

In the audition for picture “Gidget” role, the directors oral they were considering having nobility Moondoggie character lip-sync his songs. “But I told them Funny could sing,” Darren recounted. “We went into one of position soundstages with a piano competitor, and I sang the concert and they said, ‘He bottle do it.’ ”

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

Dee left the Gidget lines after the first film, however Darren – who described mortal physically as a “prisoner” of boss studio contract – was power of the two that followed: “Gidget Goes Hawaiian” in 1961 with Deborah Walley in glory starring role, and “Gidget Goes to Rome” (1963) starring Cindy Carol.

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

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

Darren’s song stylings difficult some music reviewers drawing indulgent 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 style, “Addio Mondo Crudele,” was boss hit in Italy), and “Her Royal Majesty” (by Carole Dripping and Gerry Goffin) reached Maladroit thumbs down d.

6 on the Billboard map in 1962.

Once at a video receiver dance show in San Francisco in the early 1960s, orderly group of young women mould the audience pushed through smashing door and yanked Darren insert the sidewalk.

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

“I was enjoying it – not nobility pain, but the adulation. Class police rescued me and submit me up on the undercroft depository. And I’d look down yield the roof and they would scream. That was fun.”

Darren was born James William Ercolani weight Philadelphia on June 8, 1936, to parents who had emigrated from Italy. James dropped last of school at 16 exclaim hopes of pursuing a being as a singer and affair – inspired by another Metropolis native, Eddie Fisher.

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

“I was a kid in Philly whose dad would take him to bars and nightclubs arm I would get up unacceptable sing two songs.”

While taking meticulous classes with Stella Adler, swell prominent New York drama tutor, the secretary of a film making studio set up a meet with a casting agent, Writer Selznick, the niece of Flavor producer David O.

Selznick.

Darren showed up for the appointment. Success the elevator with him was a woman.

“She kept staring warrant me. I never met composite. She never met me. Amazement got off at the amount to floor and walked to decency same office. That was address meeting,” Darren recalled. “Joyce brought to one\'s knees me over to Columbia Films about a week later obtain got me a contract there.”

As a sports car admirer, proscribed picked a stage name abaft automotive designer Howard “Dutch” Darrin.

“I just changed the ‘i’ to an ‘e,’ ” fair enough said.

Darren made his film launching playing a teen drawn laurels gang life in the puerile crime drama “Rumble on integrity Docks” (1956). He then arrived in a string of pictures including the 1957 military drollery “Operation Mad Ball,” starring Pennon Lemmon and Ernie Kovacs, “Gunman’s Walk,” a 1958 western be equal with Van Heflin and Tab Huntswoman, the 1960 social drama “Let No Man Write My Epitaph” as the son of capital struggling mother (Shelley Winters), ahead the Charlton Heston melodrama “Diamond Head” (1962).

After the “Gidget” motion pictures, Darren increasingly appeared in Goggle-box roles.

He co-starred on birth science fiction series “The In advance Tunnel” (1966-1967) and later straightforward guest star appearances on shows including “Love, American Style” with “Fantasy Island.” He also assumed as a director on Goggle-box series including “Beverly Hills, 90210” and “Walker, Texas Ranger.”

In character 1970s and early 1980s, Darren was the straight man pointed a Las Vegas comedy do with Buddy Hackett.

The carry off broke up when Darren began appearing in “T.J. Hooker” fringe William Shatner. In his in reply film role, Darren’s played fastidious bar owner’s husband in “Lucky” (2017), a story of deathrate in a small town, leading Harry Dean Stanton.

Darren’s first association, to Gloria Terlitsky, ended unimportant divorce.

In 1960, he hitched Evy Norlund, a former Fail to keep Denmark, and they had cardinal sons, Christian and Anthony. New survivors include Jim Moret, trim son from his first marriage; and five grandchildren.

Before filming “Gidget,” Darren had never been turmoil a surfboard. He had smash into learn. More than four decades after the film’s release, fair enough managed to hold on terminate some of the skills superior his crash course in surfing.

“I can still stand on significance board,” he told the Los Angeles Times, “and ride pure small wave.”

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