Posted on 01/09/2022 5:15:24 PM PST by Captain Peter Blood
J. Kim Murphy Sun, January 9, 2022, 11:53 AM
Dwayne Bernard Hickman, an actor, producer and television director best known for his starring role in the 1950s and ’60s sitcom “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis,” died of complications related to Parkinson’s disease on Sunday. He was 87 years old.
Hickman’s death was confirmed to Variety by the actor’s public relations head Harlan Boll.
Born on May 18, 1934 in Los Angeles, Calif., Hickman began screen acting at a young age with appearances in “The Boy With the Green Hair” and 1940’s “The Grapes of Wrath.” As a teenager, he starred as Chuck MacDonald in “The Bob Cummings Show,” acting alongside the titular comedian across the sitcom’s four-year run.
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
We are certainly feeling the effects of "Zelda" to this day in California - the odious Sheila Kuehl.
The book, by Max Shulman, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, was on my daughter's high school reading list - I couldn't find it anywhere except on the secondary market - and it wasn't cheap. The teacher was really impressed. I read it myself and LOVED it. Looks like it's been reprinted now and is available for $7.99 on Amazon.
My copy looked like this:
And has since disappeared....
Thanks
Too good.
Introduced so many future stars
Thanks
Too good.
Introduced so many future stars
“Who can forget Zelda?”
Wish I could. She is now an ultra-left politicians in Sacramento.
Zelda was played by Sheila Kuehl who started her acting career long before Dobie Gillis she was only Four foot ten. Years later she went to Harvard Law got into politics an got into Calif assembly and Senate...she was hard core leftist an feminist she was openly out on gay issues an kinda focused on that in Santa Monica area. I think shes still alive at 80.
LEX
😩
Another unattractive lesbian and man hater who could not ever get a date.
No doubt she strapped it on and hard.
Zelda is Gay....
Just looking at that Princess Phone she’s using tells me this was sometime before 1995.
The Compleat ‘Rat....
Dobie Gillis is significant as the first American television program produced for a major network to feature teenagers as leading characters.
Dobie Gillis is significant as the first American television program produced for a major network to feature teenagers as leading characters.
“Ohhhhhh I gotta kill that boy, someday.”
Actually she had a fairly long career in TV and film and was an accomplished actor.
Weld's performance in Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys! impressed executives at Fox, who signed her to a long-term contract.] They put her in the CBS television series The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, being paid $35,000 for one year. Weld played Thalia Menninger, the love interest of Dobie Gillis (played by Dwayne Hickman), whose rivals for Thalia's affection included Milton Armitage (played by Warren Beatty). Although Weld was a cast member for only one season, the show created considerable national publicity for her, and she was named a co-winner of a "Most Promising Newcomer" award at the Golden Globe Awards.
Weld appeared in 1965 in the successful Norman Jewison film The Cincinnati Kid, opposite Steve McQueen.
Weld got a star role in Lord Love a Duck (1966), with Roddy McDowall, Ruth Gordon, and Harvey Korman. Weld received excellent reviews, but the film was a box office disappointment.
She followed it playing Abigail in a TV adaptation of The Crucible (1967), opposite George C. Scott and Colleen Dewhurst. After guest starring on Cimarron Strip (1967), Weld had the starring role in Pretty Poison (1968), co-starring Anthony Perkins. The film became a cult success.
Weld began to work again in television, starring in Reflections of Murder (1974) and F. Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood (1975) in which she played Zelda Fitzgerald.
Weld attracted attention as the favored, out-of-control Katherine in Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977) – packing into her short screen time an orgy, a divorce, a lot of alcohol, and two abortions – and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress; later she appeared in Who'll Stop the Rain (1978) opposite Nick Nolte; and the comedy Serial (1980).
Around this time, Weld became famous for turning down roles in films that succeeded at the box office, such as Bonnie and Clyde, Rosemary's Baby, True Grit, Cactus Flower, and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. In a 1971 interview with the New York Times, Weld explained that she had chosen to reject these roles precisely because she believed they would be commercial successes: "Do you think I want a success? I refused 'Bonnie and Clyde' because I was nursing at the time, but also because deep down I knew it was going to be a huge success. The same was true of 'Bob and Carol and Fred and Sue' or whatever it was called. It reeked of success".
The films Weld did make included I Walk the Line (1970), opposite Gregory Peck; A Safe Place (1971), co-starring Jack Nicholson and Orson Welles and directed by Henry Jaglom, and Play It as It Lays (1972), again with Perkins, for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award.
Weld has been married three times. She was married to screenwriter Claude Harz from October 23, 1965 until their divorce on February 18, 1971. They had a daughter, Natasha, born on August 26, 1966. Weld was awarded custody of Natasha in the divorce and $100 a month in child support payments. Weld told Guy Flatley of The New York Times in 1971:
Mama hated my husband—she's a jealous lover, you know. She's hated all the men I've ever been involved with. But I really felt that what I had been doing up to that time with my life was probably wrong, that maybe what I should be was a housewife. Our marriage lasted 5 years. It was just another one of my mistakes.
She married British actor, musician and comedian Dudley Moore on September 20, 1975. On February 26, 1976 they had a son, Patrick. The couple divorced in 1980, with Weld receiving a $200,000 settlement plus $3,000 monthly alimony for the next 4 years and an additional $2,500 a month in child support.
On October 18, 1985, she married Israeli concert violinist and conductor Pinchas Zukerman, becoming stepmother to his daughters Arianna and Natalia. The couple divorced in 1998. In court papers, Zukerman quoted Weld as saying, "Why do I need to go to another concert when I’ve heard the piece before?" and "I can’t stand the backstage scene. I don’t want to hear another note."
Between marriages, Weld dated Al Pacino, David Steinberg, Mikhail Baryshnikov (whose previous girlfriend, Jessica Lange, had been Weld's best friend), Omar Sharif, Richard Gere and Ryan O'Neal.
Weld sold her beach house in Montauk, New York in the late 2000s and moved to Carbondale, Colorado. In 2018, she left Colorado and bought a $1.8 million home in the Hollywood Hills
The film was released in early 1993.
Just a couple of years ago I re-watched the entire series. The astonishing bit to me was how mature and composed Hickman seemed for a 17-year-old boy.
And how truly funny it was, despite the lack of profanity, violence, boobies and special effects (except the 12-foot-tall chicken).
Think I remember Zelda was going to get a show of her own but she came out and it killed the chance for it.
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