Columbia PicturesJames Darren stars Sandra Dee in Gidget
NOS Nieuws•vandaag, 09:56
American actor, singer and director James Darren has died at the age of 88. His role in the film Gidget As a teen idol in the mid-twentieth century, he contributed to the surfing craze in American pop culture.
The 1959 film tells the story of a teenage girl who discovers the casual lifestyle of seven beach friends. Columbia Film Studio hailed the romcom as “the story of the Beach Generation,” proving that “teenagers can be delightfully immature without being delinquent.” The film positioned itself as a more tame film than the rebellious The Wild One met Marlon Brando in Rebel Without a Cause by James Dean.
Darren played Moondoggie in the film, the antagonist of the main character Gidget, played by Sandra Dee. Although he is initially skeptical about her desire to become a surfer, he eventually falls head over heels for her.
The chemistry between the two was not fake for Darren. “I was in love with her, who wouldn’t be?”, he said when she died in 2005. According to him, it didn’t work out because 17-year-old Dee was always accompanied by her mother. “You couldn’t spend any time alone with her. Her mother always kept us apart.”
Watch the trailer for Gidget here:
The film was a huge success. At a time when the baby boomer generation was just entering its teenage years, moviegoers dreamed of lounging around in sunny California for days on end without any obligations. Being able to watch scantily clad actors with sun-blond hair and tanned bodies must have helped.
Of course, the film did take into account American moral standards. Columbia liked to call Gidget America’s response to Brigitte (Bardot), albeit more chaste. The French film star, known for her bikini shoot in Cannes, was mainly intended “for slightly older men”, the trailer warned.
Elements from the film such as fast sports cars, luau parties and words like kahuna seeped into American teenage culture. Malibu, then a sleepy suburb of LA, became a surfing Mecca. Other beach movies piggybacked on its success, and the Beach Boys found an audience ready for their surfing USA songs when they formed two years later.
For Darren, that translated into roles in two Gidget sequels, with different co-stars. He also had two minor hits in the US thanks to a song from the film. The TV series Gidgetwhich marked the breakthrough of actress Sally Field, he no longer cooperated.
Career change
Darren went on to act in films including The Guns of Navarone and guest roles in TV series such as The Love Boat, Hawaii Five-O in Fantasy Island. A recurring role in the police series T.J. Hooker with William Shatner led to a career behind the scenes when he asked if he could direct an episode.
“I got more offers after that and eventually there were so many that I gave up acting and singing,” Darren described the development. In the 80s he directed episodes of The A-Team, Walker, Texas Ranger, Melrose Place in Beverly Hills 90210.
Darren died in his sleep in a Los Angeles hospital. He was on the waiting list for heart surgery but was actually too weak for the procedure, his son Jim Moret said.
“I kept believing he would make it,” Moret said in the obituary. “Because he was so cool. He was always cool.”
