James Darren: Actor and singer of ‘Gidget’ teen idol fame dies at 88

James Darren, who founded teen heartthrob fame as Moondoggie in the 1959 surfer film “Gidget” and whose scenes of sun-kissed beaches with star Sandra Dee helped launch the California surfing craze has died.

He passed away on September 2, 2024, at a hospital in Los Angeles. He was 88.

He had been diagnosed recently with an aortic valve problem, a statement on Mr. Darren’s website said.

Over more than five decades, Mr. Darren built an eclectic career that included hit songs with his silky baritone and films such as “The Guns of Navarone” (1961), in which he played a Greek anti-Nazi fighter alongside a star-filled cast that included Anthony Quinn and Gregory Peck. 

On television, he had recurring roles on shows such as the police drama “T.J. Hooker” as a veteran cop and the sci-fi series “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,” playing a holographic lounge singer Vic Fontaine.

Yet for many fans, he was forever the dark-haired surfer of “Gidget” who struggled over whether to leave for college or follow the king of the beach, the Big Kahuna (played by Cliff Robertson), to chase waves around the world. In the end, Moondoggie falls for the bright-eyed and pint-size Gidget, a portmanteau nickname of “girl” and “midget.”

The film — based on the novel “Gidget” by Frederick Kohner, modeled on his daughter — helped introduce the vibes, fashion and slang of surf culture that was later elevated by groups such as the Beach Boys and films including the 1966 documentary “The Endless Summer.”

“Surfing before Gidget already had a lot of momentum,” essayist Davis Jones wrote in Surfer magazine in 2017. “It was always going to be a thing. Still, Gidget meant ‘surfing’ to a lot of people the way John Travolta meant ‘disco’ after Saturday Night Fever.”

The origins of Moondoggie have conflicting accounts. A Malibu artist once used the name, and the character in Kohner’s book is a surfer from a rich family. Mr. Darren said he felt the name reflected the character’s disposition. 

He “made love by the moon and he was a dog,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 2004. (Mr. Darren also noted that Dee’s mother kept a tight leash on the actress during the filming in Malibu; she was 17 at the time, and Mr. Darren was in his mid-20s.)

“I was in love with Sandra,” Mr. Darren once said. “I thought that she was absolutely perfect as Gidget. She had tremendous charm.”

In the audition for the “Gidget” role, the directors said they were considering having the Moondoggie character lip-sync his songs. 
“But I told them I could sing,” Mr. Darren recounted. “We went into one of the soundstages with a piano player, and I sang the song and they said, ‘He can do it.’”

Mr. Darren released more than a dozen albums, which included “Presenting James Darren” (1958) with the title track to “Gidget.”

Dee left the Gidget role after the first film, but Mr. Darren — who described himself as a “prisoner” of a studio contract — was part of the two that followed: “Gidget Goes Hawaiian” in 1961 with Deborah Walley in the starring role, and “Gidget Goes to Rome” (1963) starring Cindy Carol. (“Gidget” became a 1965-1966 television series that launched the career of actress Sally Field.)

Source: Washington Post