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"The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis" (1959)

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16 comments in total

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28 out of 28 people found the following comment useful :-
Top-notch Comedy, Ahead of it's Time, 3 April 2004
Author: laffinsal from California

It's a grand shame that very few people these days remember this fine sitcom about teenage life in the early 60s. Dwayne Hickman is endearing as simple-minded Dobie Gillis, the typical American teenager, who just wants a girl. Bob Denver is brilliant as his buddy, Maynard Krebs. Who needs Gilligan? Sheila James is fantastic as Zelda...always chasing after Dobie. Frank Faylen and Florida Friebus as Dobie's parents are too-oft forgotten for their parts on this show...they couldn't have gotten a better pair of actors.

There was some really sharp, funny writing on this series, and that, mixed with the snappy editing, jazzy soundtrack and over-the-top situations, made for some very funny episodes. Plenty of hip, jazzy lingo to go around. Lovely Tuesday Weld was also around for a number of episodes during the first season (and a couple later on) as Dobie's object of affection, Thalia Menninger. It's too bad that they couldn't keep her on for more sporadic appearances, because it is the episodes that she appears in, which I consider to be the zenith of the series. The show started to get a little too silly during its last season, when the focus went towards Maynard and Dobie's cousin, Dunkie, but it was still unique.

Without question, one of the high points of 1960s TV, and one of the most winning sitcoms of all time. It's a shame that it hasn't gotten the same kind of exposure in recent years as some of the other shows of the time. Hopefully it gets picked up and restored for a full DVD release sometime soon. It's just waiting to be rediscovered.

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20 out of 20 people found the following comment useful :-
This needs to be widely available !!, 2 January 2005
Author: RondoHatton from Limehouse E14

This is a classic, classic show. Nick At Nite used to show it 15 years ago, but I guess it is too intelligent for the types who run TVLand and Nick now, & who refuse to show any comedies unless they got big Neilsen's. Hey, TVLand, I've got your Big Neilsen right here!!

Bob Denver is far better in this than in the hideously over-rated "Gilligan's Island". This may have been Dwyane Hickman's last really good role. I seem to remember him in a Civil War series with his brother, Daryl. Frank Faylen and Florida Friebus were wonderful as Mr & Mrs Howard T Gillis. Who'd have thought watching Warren Beatty(as Milton Armitage) that he'd give us a masterpiece like "Bulworth"? Tuesday Weld as Thalia Meninger in her best work until "Falling Down".

DVD's & VHS tapes of Dobie Gillis are available, but for $20 for a 2-episode, 1 hour disc or tape, it ain't worth it. We need someone to bring out some season sets.

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17 out of 17 people found the following comment useful :-
Who was the coolest? Maynard or Gilligan?, 15 June 2000

Author: raysond from Chapel Hill,North Carolina

After looking up this lost series from the late 50's,its repeats ran for a good number of years on CBN back in the 1980's and also recently on TV Land,but Dobie Gillis was the coolest show I ever had the pleasure of watching. Dwayne Hickman was the all- American boy next door who was always competing for the hand of Thalia Menninger(Tuesday Weld)from either Milton Armitage or the annoying Chatsworth Osbourne, Jr.(who was the rich kid that had everything)with the help of his good friend and sometimes wacky Maynard G. Krebbs(played by Bob Denver) who may have been lazy and sloppy,but he was really cool and down with the beat... in other words,the essential beatnick....... who was into Dizzy Gillespie and would go berserk if someone mention "work",around him. My friend and I were comparing Bob Denver's Maynard to his role as Gilligan years later,and in my opinion,MAYNARD RULES!!!!! Maynard was the coolest and hippest cat ever devised for a TV series,but also wasn't very bright,but still had his props to back up Dobie when needed(especially in a couple of episodes where Dobie and Maynard enlist in the Army). The series ran for four seasons on CBS-TV from September of 1959 to the final episode of the series in August of 1963.

Interesting point about this show: two of the stars of this series went on to greater glory(in feature films) after their run on Dobie Gillis: Tuesday Weld and Warren Beatty(who got his start here before he became box office draw in movieland circles as Mister Hollywood)Who would have thought that Warren Beatty in the first season of this series would played pretty boy Milton Armitage and make that transition to be one of the top box office superstars of all time?

Recently,20th Century-Fox,which produced the series just released the complete first two seasons of "Dobie Gillis" on DVD that were broadcast between 1959 through 1961.

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14 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
Classic Comedic Elements, 12 October 1999
Author: rosa-2 (rhea_worrell@prodigy.net) from Durham, NC

Dobie Gillis may not be groundbreaking, but it is a well-crafted comic gem of a TV series. Direction is crisp, acting is excellent and the comic characters are perfection: Maynard, the clueless but lovable loser (who has been widely copied but never surpassed), Thalia, the sexy, cute gold-digger, who is smarter than anyone expects, Milton, the insufferable preppie, Zelda, the nerd, etc. And here sits Dobie--ridiculously average, being tossed between them all like a beachball, and trying to make sense of it all. Character actors Wm. Schallert and Frank Faylen shine; Beatty gives an eerily prescient glimpse into his future roles; and Dobie is the personification of the likeable schlemiel.

Enchanting!

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13 out of 13 people found the following comment useful :-
A great, great, TV show., 21 August 2000
Author: lartronic from Akron, Ohio

I used to watch this all the time on the local independent channel when they'd run in the afternoons at 4:00 pm, and from the first episode, I was hooked. The acting was top-notch, the scripts were good, and the jokes were funny. Bob Denver was THE first beatnik on TV, and probably the best (except for local legend "Ghoulardi", who was a beatnik horror host) and Dwayne Hickman was the only one who could portray Dobie like he did. I hope this is released on video soon, because nobody plays it anymore. Fact: TV Land played this show when the channel was just beginning, and only recently showed some more episodes.

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13 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
Dobie Gillis--An American Bertie Wooster, 1 May 2004
Author: berylgray from Whidbey Island, Washington, USA

Now all you Wodehouse fans don't have a cow...

Dobie is not a copy of Bertie. Bertie comes from money, Dobie's parent run a Mom-an-Pop grocery store. Bertie has a continental charm, Dobie has a corn-fed earnestness. Bertie spends all of his time running from women, Dobie spends all of his time chasing girls. Bertie has Jeeves, Dobie has Maynard G. Krebs, and I think that says it all.

Though I enjoyed the series when I saw it as a kid (first run), I didn't really get much of the sweet heartache of the show until I was in high school and trying to catch the attention of my own Thalia.

Thing that I loved: Episodes opening with Rodin's "The Thinker" and Dobie trying to think his way out of his current situation...Dobie addressing the camera...Maynard's reaction to the word, "Work!"

Let me encourage anyone who can to get the short story collection by Max Schulman. It is a complete delight and gave me a real appreciation for how well the TV show adapted the tone and snap of the book.

Shulman also wrote "Rally Round the Flag, Boys" and "The Tender Trap" both made into enjoyable movies.

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13 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
What a funny show!, 10 October 1999
Author: Eistren from New York

After looking up Dobie Gillis in the IMDB, I'm surprised to see no comments left about it. I recently saw this show for the first time on TV Land in a "Dobie Gillis" marathon and it was one of the funniest, most intelligently written comedies I've ever had the pleasure of watching. It's all great: Dwayne Hickman's all American boy-next-door portrayl of Dobbie Gillis, his constantly competing with wealthy and arrogant Milton, Thalia's obsession with superficiality, Dobbie's father and his squabbles with his son for being lazy, his wacky friend Maynard, Milton's mother's constant use of the word "nasty" to desribe things.

Overall, this is a very fun show and is not to be missed!

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10 out of 10 people found the following comment useful :-
Bob Denver R.I.P., 8 September 2005
Author: mcvouty78 from United States

Generations will remember him as Gilligan, and that one-gag show did have some funny moments, but Bob Denver better deserves recognition for playing Maynard G. Krebs in this little gem of a series. Although the show never did precisely represent the Zeitgeist of the times it portrays, and, in this post-modern age of irony, more than a little of it seems dated, it really was memorably funny.

It's remarkable to realize that Dobie – the quintessential pre-hippie teenager – is working awfully hard to convince girls to do something that's really pretty innocent. This is a guy looking for love, first and foremost – in the form of affection and caring. It's not as if he were trying to talk the beautiful Thalia into bed, mind you. "Dobie," in the words of the show's theme song, "wants a girl to call his own. Is she short, is she tall, is she fat, is she small, is she any kind of dreamboat at all? No matter – he's hers and hers alone; 'cause Dobie has to have a girl to call his own." How sweetly corny! And chaste, too! Not a hint of sex!

A good cast helped this show succeed. Tuesday Weld was more than just a pretty face; she was a surprisingly good actress. The young Warren Beatty was good, too. Dwayne Hickman created Dobie as a likable cipher, and Frank Faylen and Florida Friebus (her real name, not a Max Schulman creation) were convincing and comical as the 1950s parents from hell. Perhaps Sheila James' take on Zelda as Miss Walking Encyclopedia was a little over-the-top, and that nose-wrinkling shtick got a little old, but it worked. The superb character actor William Schallart shone as the English teacher Mr. Pomfritt (recalling the European nomenclature for French fries, "pommes-frites"), who never got to lecture about his favorite poet, William Wordsworth, because the end-of class bell would ring.

And then there was Maynard.

Dobie: "Zelda, I don't think that will work." Maynard: "Work!?!" Dobie: "Maynard!" This oft-repeated exchange became something of a catch phrase in certain circles (mine included), as the beatnik Krebs made America realize that it's much more important to play the bongos in a coffee house than hold down a job of any sort. Without Maynard, there would have been no Fonzie, no Bob Dylan, no Allen Ginsburg, no Beatles – well, maybe that's an overstatement. But Bob Denver was the one of the first actors to show the TV audience that people can be hip and likable at the same time. And what a natural he was in the role.

Of course, none of these characters existed in real life. Real beatniks, like Jack Kerouac's Dean Moriarty, were far less likable and wholesome than Maynard. Tuesday Weld's troubled private life was much closer to a real-life situation than her portrayal of the gold-digging beautiful blonde. And nobody could be as non-libidinous as Dobie. These characters are of the same generation as the lusty characters portrayed in the movie "Animal House," after all. But this show was a fine, amusing and memorable little TV confection.

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6 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
this is a really funny send-up of high school dating in the late 50s/early 60s., 11 October 1999
Author: mlee-3 from minneapolis, mn usa

i enjoyed this show in middle school and junior high (first runs)and it's still funny now. the writing is clever (max shulman is brilliant), the actors are good comedians, and the issues of looking for love but being too shy are still pertinent. (it's an idealized version. this is about the 50's. but the goofiness is deliberate, and it works.)

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
"Dobie" was a fine show, 15 September 2006

Author: rlquall from Middle Tennessee

This show is consistently underrated in my opinion. Created and largely written (even the theme song) by the talented Max Schulman, who later brought us such gems as the movie "House Calls", the program gave us such classic characters as the boy-crazy Zelda (ironically portrayed by a Lesbian, Shelia James), Maynard, the closest thing to a "beatnik" most of Middle America ever saw, and Dobie's dad Herbert (played by the great character actor Frank Faylen), the grocer who needed very little prompting to remind whoever was listening, "I was in The Big One, W W 2!" but who was deep down a fine guy (he reminded me a lot of one of my uncles). Dobie's pining for Thalia, and his soliloquies in front of the copy of Rodin's "The Thinker" in the local park, were close to priceless. I think that the fact that this show was filmed in black and white has hurt its chances for being rerun in recent years, even on "TV Land" or "Nick at Nite".

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