The Many Incarnations of Dobie Gillis (Part 2)

As we showed yesterday...

Dobie received his own title from DC Comics in 1960, six months after the show debuted.

Written by DC's hippest writer, Arnold Drake, and illustrated by their best caricaturist, Bob Oksner, the mag reflected the mindset and attitude of the tv series pretty closely.

But, perhaps for licensing reasons, only Dobie, Maynard, Dobie's parents, and original girlfriend Thalia (played by Tuesday Weld) appeared in the comics!

(When Tuesday Weld left the show, Thalia also disappeared from the comic!)

No Zelda!

No Milton Armitage! (played by Warren Beatty in his first steady gig)

No Chatsworth (who replaced Milton as Dobie's nemesis)

None of the colorful supporting cast from the series!

Running for 26 issues (and outlasting the show by almost a year), you'd think the comics would go the way of most tv/movie comic adaptations and disappear from sight, never to be seen again.
That's not quite how it went.

Five years later, DC wanted to go head-to-head with Archie Comics with teen-themed titles and felt the Dobie stories could work if they were "updated" with current hairstyles and fashions.

The idea had proven successful with romance comics, where they (and Marvel, and other companies) had been doing that to fill out the books with a new story up front with older (and cheaper, since they weren't paying reprint fees) stories in back as shown HERE!

But, DC had let the license for the Dobie Gillis characters expire since the show was cancelled.
Since they were modifying the art anyway, the editors just renamed the characters!
In addition, "beatniks" became "hippies", and other cultural references were also updated.

With new covers based on the earlier cover jokes (like the Dobie original and Windy re-do covers above), DC launched Windy and Willy in their own book.
Note: "Windy" is the revised Maynard,  so he finally gets top billing over Dobie aka Willy!

Many Loves of Dobie Gillis #20

Windy & Willy #3

Despite the economical updating, Windy and Willy lasted only four issues.

You'd think that would have been the last attempt to recycle the Dobie Gillis concept.

Hoo boy, would you be wrong!

Tomorrow, see how Dobie and his friends were reincarnated into one of the most successful pop culture franchises in history!

This post is part of...

 Click HERE for a complete list of links to other retro-kool entries!

The Many Incarnations of Dobie Gillis

What do Dobie Gillis and M*A*S*H's Hawkeye Pierce have in common...

...besides being the lead characters in 1950s-set series currently running on MeTV?

They both began life as characters in prose tales, then appeared in movies based on that prose, and finally on long-running TV series based, not on the movies, but the original stories!

Noted humor writer Max Shulman conceived a college-age Dobie Gillis for a series of short stories in Cosmopolitan and The Saturday Evening Post which were gathered into a best-selling anthology called (suprise!) The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.

A couple of tales were adapted into a 1953 movie starring singer Bobby Van as Dobie, Debbie Reynolds as girlfriend Pansy Hammer, and dancer/choreographer Bob Fosse as Dobie's best friend, Charlie Trask.

If you're not familar with the flick, it's understandable.

It didn't do well in theatres, didn't do well on VHS, and is currently available only as a limited-run dvd.

George Burns (of Burns and Allen and Oh, God! fame) optioned Dobie for TV, hoping to produce a star vehicle for his son, Ronnie.

Shulman, less than impressed with Ronnie Allen's talent (or lack thereof), stalled until the option expired, then took the idea to NBC, making the characters high-schoolers instead of college students, and with a kid in the lead who had recently made an impression on teenage audiences on Love That Bob aka The Bob Cummings Show..

The astute among you will note the article above lists CBS, not NBC.

That's because NBC turned the show down, then CBS bought it!

(Thought I'd made a typo, eh?)

The show also introduced a brand-new character to replace dull Charlie Trask as Dobie's best friend...

...Bob Denver as Maynard G Krebs, TV's first ongoing beatnik!

Maynard, like Fonzie on Happy Days and Kramer on Seinfeld, quickly became the show's "breakout" character, with his catch phrases entering the pop culture lexicon and episodes written to showcase him instead of Dobie!

BTW, contrary to popular belief, this was not Denver's first professional acting gig...

As hard as it is to believe in an era when half of scripted tv shows feature tweens/teens/young adults (under 25s) as series leads or title characters, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis was the first network prime-time TV series with a high schooler (and his friends) as the primary characters!

The show was told from the teen/young adult point of view, and the sarcastic (even snarky) dialogue usually gave the kids the final word with the adults.

Creator/producer Shulman also decided to let the characters age at a normal rate, instead of keeping them high schoolers forever.

The first season showed Dobie and friends as seniors in high school

The second had them graduating and Dobie and Maynard being drafted into the Army.

The third season featured Dobie and Maynard receiving their military discharges and entering college.

The fourth and final season continued their college careers (such as they were) as well as introducing surreal storylines that wouldn't have been out of place several years later on The Monkees.

After the show was cancelled, there were several attempts at sequels and spinoffs, but none of them sold.

MeTV is running the show Sunday mornings at 5 and 5:30 am Eastern.

Set your DVR and recapture the fun of the show that paved the way for teen-oriented series like The Facts of Life and (shudder) Reign.

But don't hold that against Dobie...

This post is part of...

 Click HERE for a complete list of links to other retro-kool entries!

And be here tomorrow for a pair of rare Dobie Gillis treats, including...

...as Maynard would say, "it's kool, dad!"

Captain's Library THE AVENGERS "Drug Pedlar"

Despite only running one season (or "series" as the Brits call them), the original concept for The Avengers was popular enough to inspire this one-shot comic strip that combined illustrations with photos.
Note: May be NSFW due to racial stereotypes common to the era.

Neither the writer nor artist for this strip from World Distributors' hardcover TV Crimebusters Annual (1962) were identified.
The story has never been published in the US, which makes sense since the show didn't air in America until the first Mrs. Peel season in 1965.
Also in this hardcover book were strips and illustrated text stories for British shows Danger Man (Secret Agent in America), Dixon of Dock Green, Interpol Calling and The Pursuers along with American series airing in Britain Hawaiian Eye, Roaring 20's, 77 Sunset Strip, and Charlie Chan.
These "annuals" based on tv shows, movies, and literary & comic strip characters would be sold from autumn through Christmas, often being used as presents and stocking stuffers.
Many shows including Dr Who, Star Trek, the various Gerry Anderson series (Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, Space: 1999, etc), and later series of The Avengers, had their own titles.
Popular characters like Thunderbirds' Lady Penelope and Dr Who's Daleks also had their own Annuals.
These books are very HTF and wildly-expensive in America, but if you're a collector of those show's merchandise, they are must-haves.

And for more kool tv crimefighters, click on the banner to go to the...

...for info on other video sleuths, gumshoes, spies, and cops!

THE AVENGERS: Before Steed & Peel...there was Steed and KEEL!

The original premise of the long-running tv series The Avengers in 1961 was quite different from what American audiences saw from 1965 onward:

In the pilot episode "Hot Snow", Dr. David Keel's fiancée/receptionist Peggy is murdered by a ruthless drug dealers after a consignment of heroin arrives at the doctor's office.

Contacted by government special agent John Steed who has been tracking the drug-dealing criminals, Keel agrees to help bring the murderers to justice.

They infiltrate both the gang and a rival mob, and avenge Peggy's death in the follow-up episode, "Brought to Book".

Keel decides to work with Steed against other criminals on a part-time basis while still practicing medicine.

The duo do so, in hard-boiled detective style.
Officially listed as written by Ray Rigby, the two-part opener was extensively-rewritten by script editor Brian Clemens, who would soon place his personal stamp on the series', defining the style that would make it a TV icon both in England and "across the pond" in America.
BTW, the producer/creator of the show was Sydney Newman, who would go on to co-create an even more iconic British fantasy series a couple of years later...Dr Who!

Starring up-and-coming star Ian Hendry as Dr Keel, the show was more in the vein of hard-edged "film noir" thrillers than typical genteel British mysteries...or even the later, light-hearted stories The Avengers became famous for.

Keel's reputation, medical knowledge, and relatively-easy access to people at various strata of society proved invaluable in fighting crime ranging from drug running to Communist mad scientists!

You'll note that Patrick Macnee's John Steed is the supporting character here.

He's a much harsher, more traditional, spy, not the elegant "toff" we're used to seeing, even using a gun and killing opponents!

While he wears a bowler and natty suits in some episodes, he's often clad in a traditional trenchcoat, and even "dresses down" when the situation calls for it, like going undercover.

Except for the first two episodes, which had numerous location shots on film as well as videotaped studio scenes, the series was shot and broadcast live from a studio which a huge back lot for street scenes.
Between the first and second seasons, there was a TV studio worker strike, during which Ian Hendry landed a couple of movie roles.
By the time the strike ended, Hendry was committed to film work and couldn't back out, so the second season scripts were rewritten to emphasize Steed as the lead with three new aides appearing in rotation, along with a lighter, more fantasy-oriented tone.
One of the aides, Honor Blackman's Mrs Cathy Gale, became a breakout star, setting the pattern of Steed and a female partner for the remainder of the series.

As to why you've probably never seen the Dr Keel episodes; master videotapes of most of the first-season episodes were either erased (to be reused for other shows), or lost, and only two full episodes, along with the first half of "Hot Snow", are known to exist!

Though the original TV episodes have been lost to the mists of time, the scripts remained, and now, Big Finish Audio, noted for their Dr Who, and Sarah Jane Smith, audio dramas, are now adapting the "lost episodes" into audio form...

While Macnee is not participating in these state-of-the-art recreations, the duo handling the roles, Anthony Howell and Julian Wadham, are quite good.

And for those who would like to see Hendry and Macnee as Keel and Steed, we have a very special treat that'll be revealed to you...tomorrow!

And for other kool tv crimefighters, click HERE to go to the...

...for info on many other video sleuths, gumshoes, spies, and cops!