LOS ANGELES (AP) — James Darren, the teen idol who starred with Sandra Dee in the hit film “Gidget” and helped spark the surfing boom of the 1960s as a charismatic Beach Boy, died Monday at age 88.
Darren died in his sleep at a Los Angeles hospital, his son, Jim Mullet, told news outlets.
Moretto told The Hollywood Reporter that Darren was supposed to have aortic valve replacement surgery, but was too weak for the procedure. “I was sure he was going to make it,” his son told Entertainment Tonight. “He was super cool. He always was cool.”
During his long career, Darren has worked as an actor, singer and has had a successful behind-the-scenes career as a television director.Beverly Hills 90210and Melrose Place. In the 1980s, he played Officer Jim Corrigan on the TV detective drama T.J. Hooker.
But to young moviegoers of the late 1950s, he's probably best remembered for his role as Moondoggie, the dark-haired surfer boy in the 1959 smash hit “Gidget.” Dee played the title character, a plucky Southern Californian who arrives at the beach and eventually falls in love with Moondoggie.
“I fell in love with Sandra,” Darren later recalled, “and I thought she was perfect for the role of Gidget. She was incredibly magnetic.”
American actor James Darren plays Moondoggie in the film Gidget Goes Hawaiian, 1961. (Silver Screen Collection/Getty)
The film is based on a novel written by Californian Frederick Kohner about his life. Teenage DaughterThe growing interest in surfing influenced pop music, slang and even fashion.
In Darren's case, success among his teenage fans led to a recording contract, as it did for many young actors at the time, including Tab Hunter and Annette Funicello. Two of Darren's singles, “Goodbye Cruel World” and “Her Royal Majesty,” reached the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart. (“Goodbye Cruel World” also appeared in Steven Spielberg's semi-autobiographical 2022 film, “The Fabelmans.”) Other singles include “Gidget” and “Angel Face.”
Darren was the only “Gidget” cast member to appear in both sequels, 1961's “Gidget's Hawaiian Adventure” and 1963's “Gidget Goes to Rome.” Dee was replaced by Deborah Walley in the second film and Cindy Carroll in the third (“Gidget” later became a TV show and launched the career of Sally Field).
“They put me on a contract. I was a prisoner,” Darren told Entertainment Weekly in 2004. “But I was with all these beautiful young women, so it was the best prison I've ever been in.”
As a contract actor for Columbia Studios, Darren also appeared in adult films such as The Brothers Rico, Game of Thrones, and The Guns of Navarone.
By the mid-1960s, when Darren starred in films like Lucky and Good Girls, his film career was all but over. After the 1960s he appeared in just a handful of films, his last being Lucky, directed by John Carroll Lynch in 2017.
But he remained active on television, starring in a leading role in the sci-fi show “The Time Tunnel” in the late 1960s and having guest appearances and small recurring roles on such TV shows as “The Love Boat,” “Hawaii Five-O” and “Fantasy Island.”
Darren was a series regular on four seasons of “TJ Hooker” starring William Shatner in the 1980s. While on the show, he noticed that his next scene didn't have a director lined up, so he asked if he could audition.
“Once it was screened, I got a few offers to direct,” he said. New York Daily News“Soon I started getting a lot of directing offers and I felt like I had given up acting and singing.”
For nearly two years, Darren directed episodes of series such as “Walker, Texas Ranger,” “The Hunter,” “Melrose Place,” and “Beverly Hills 90210.” He returned to acting in the 1990s with small roles in “Melrose Place” and “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.”
Singer and actor James Darren (right) is interviewed by host Dick Clark on American Bandstand in 1977. (ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images)
Darren was born James Ercolani in 1936 and grew up in South Philadelphia, not far from the teen idols of the 1950s and 60s such as Fabian and Frankie Avalon. Singing came easily to him, and by the age of 14 he was performing in local nightclubs.
“Ever since I was five or six years old, I wanted to be an entertainer or a celebrity,” he said in a 2003 interview. News Press He hails from Fort Myers, Florida, and points out that famous people like Eddie Fisher and Al Martino lived in the same area as him. “It's a real neighborhood. It makes you feel like you can be successful, too.”
According to a 1958 Los Angeles Times profile, he got his break when he went to New York to take photos, and a photographer's office introduced him to a talent scout.
He was soon signed by Columbia Pictures, and after a few appearances, his fan mail to the studio was “second only to Kim Novak,” the newspaper reported. “The studio now felt that this young man was poised to hit the big time.”
Darren married his first wife, Gloria, in 1955, and they had one child, Molette, an Inside Edition correspondent and former CNN anchor. After their divorce, he married Evi Norlund, who came to the United States to represent Denmark in the Miss Universe contest. The couple had two sons, Christian and Anthony.
He was also godfather to Nancy Sinatra's daughter, AJ Lambert, whose co-star in The Young Man posted the Hollywood Reporter's obituary on her X-Page along with a broken heart emoji.
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Bob Thomas, a longtime Associated Press journalist who died in 2014, was the lead author of the obituary.
