James Darren, ‘Gidget’ teen idol, singer and director, dies at 88

LOS ANGELES — James Darren, a teen idol who helped ignite the Sixties browsing craze as a charismatic seashore boy paired off with Sandra Dee within the hit movie “Gidget,” died Monday at 88.

Darren died in his sleep at a Los Angeles hospital, his son Jim Moret instructed information retailers.

Moret instructed The Hollywood Reporter that Darren was supposed have had an aortic valve substitute however was too weak for the surgical procedure. “I at all times thought he would pull by,” his son instructed the leisure commerce, “as a result of he was so cool. He was at all times cool.”

In his lengthy profession, Darren acted, sang and constructed up a profitable behind-the-scenes profession as a tv director, helming episodes of such well-known sequence as “Beverly Hills 90210” and “Melrose Place.” Within the Eighties, he was Officer Jim Corrigan on the tv cop present “T.J. Hooker.”

However to younger film followers of the late Fifties, he can be remembered finest as Moondoggie, the dark-haired surfer boy within the smash 1959 launch “Gidget.” Dee starred because the title character, a spunky Southern Californian who hits the seashore and ultimately falls in love with Moondoggie.

“I used to be in love with Sandra,” Darren later recalled. “I believed that she was completely excellent as Gidget. She had great appeal.”

The movie was primarily based on a novel {that a} California man, Frederick Kohner, had written about his personal teenage daughter and helped spur curiosity in browsing — one which influenced pop music, slang and even trend.

For Darren, his success with teen followers led to a recording contract, because it did with many younger actors on the time, amongst them Tab Hunter and Annette Funicello. Two of Darren’s singles, “Goodbye Merciless World” and “Her Royal Majesty,” reached the High 10 of the Billboard Scorching 100 chart. (“Goodbye Merciless World” additionally appeared in Steven Spielberg’s 2022 semi-autobiographical movie, “The Fabelmans.” ) Different singles included “Gidget” and “Angel Face.”

Darren was the one “Gidget” forged member who appeared in each its sequels, 1961’s “Gidget Goes Hawaiian” and 1963’s “Gidget Goes to Rome.” Dee was changed by Deborah Walley within the second movie and Cindy Carol within the third. (“Gidget” later grew to become a tv present, launching the profession of Sally Area.)

“They’d me underneath contract; I used to be a prisoner,” Darren instructed Leisure Weekly in 2004. “However with these beautiful younger women, it was the perfect jail I feel I’ll ever be in.”

As a contract participant at Columbia Studios, Darren appeared in grown-up movies, too, together with “The Brothers Rico,” “Operation Meatball” and “The Guns of Navarone.”

By the mid-‘60s, when Darren appeared in “For These Who Assume Younger” and “The Energetic Set,” his big-screen appearing profession was virtually over. He appeared in only a handful of flicks after the Sixties ended, final showing in 2017’s “Lucky,” directed by John Carroll Lynch.

However he remained energetic on tv, showing as a lead on the sci-fi present “The Time Tunnel” within the late Sixties, and doing visitor spots and small recurring roles in TV exhibits corresponding to “The Love Boat,” “Hawaii 5-O” and “Fantasy Island.”

Darren was a sequence common for 4 seasons of the William Shatner-starrer “T.J. Hooker” within the Eighties. Whereas showing on the present, he seen that no director was listed for an upcoming sequence and requested if he may check out for it.

“When it was proven, I acquired a number of gives to direct,” he instructed the New York Day by day Information. “Quickly I used to be getting so many gives to direct, I sort of gave up appearing and singing.”

For nearly two years, Darren directed episodes of “Walker, Texas Ranger,” “Hunter,” “Melrose Place,” “Beverly Hills 90210” and different sequence. He returned to appearing within the Nineties with small roles in “Melrose Place” and “Star Trek, Deep House 9.”

Darren was born James Ercolani in 1936 and grew up in South Philadelphia, not removed from such fellow teen idols of the Fifties and ’60s as Fabian and Frankie Avalon. Singing got here simple to him, and at 14 he was showing in native nightclubs.

“From the age of 5 or 6 I knew I wished to be an entertainer, or well-known perhaps,” he mentioned in a 2003 interview with the Information-Press of Fort Myers, Florida. He famous that such luminaries as Eddie Fisher and Al Martino had lived in the identical space as he did, “an actual neighborhood. It made you are feeling you could possibly achieve success, too.”

In line with a 1958 Los Angeles Instances profile, he acquired a break when he went to New York to get some photos taken and the photographer’s workplace put him in contact with a expertise scout.

He was quickly signed by Columbia Photos, and the newspaper mentioned that after a number of appearances, his fan mail on the studio was working “second solely to Kim Novak’s. … The studio now feels that the younger man is able to hit the jackpot.”

Darren married his first spouse, Gloria, in 1955 and collectively had Moret, an “Inside Version” correspondent and former CNN anchorman. After a divorce he married Evy Norlund, who got here to the U.S. because the Danish entry within the Miss Universe contest. They’d two sons, Christian and Anthony.

He was additionally the godfather of Nancy Sinatra’s daughter A.J. Lambert. Sinatra, his “For These Who Assume Younger” co-star, posted The Hollywood Reporter obituary on her X web page, with a damaged coronary heart emoji.