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As a kid growing up on an Air Force base in Del Rio, Texas, one of my favorite times of the week was Friday night. School had been successfully maneuvered for another week, the weekend had arrived and – most importantly – we had a television station that every Friday evening, rain or shine, would feature classic TV sitcoms from Days Past: Bachelor Father, Life of Riley, I Married Joan, Burns and Allen, Jack Benny, My Little Margie…and The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. That last one in particular caught my youthful attention because, like me, the titular character Dobie was stuck in school all week and dreamed of nothing more than busting out and getting into adventures. As played by actor Dwayne Hickman, the character of Dobie Gillis was a breath of fresh air. Years before Matthew Broderick played hooky from school and made tracks for the Windy City as Ferris Bueller, there was his pioneering forefather Dobie Gillis doing some of the exact same things; it was grand.
Dwayne Hickman, the actor who helped in bringing Dobie Gillis to life to the delight of this former Del Rio latchkey kid, passed away on January 9 due to complications from Parkinson’s disease, according to The Hollywood Reporter. He was 87.
Born in Los Angeles, California on May 18, 1934 to Milton and Katherine Louise, Hickman had an early foothold in the entertainment industry thanks to his older brother Darryl who was a child actor. When he entered into that colorful landscape of Hollywood as an actor himself, he set the bar very high, indeed: The Grapes of Wrath was his first feature film and he followed that up a couple of years later in 1941 with a part in Men of Boys Town. This sophomore film allowed Hickman the opportunity to act alongside his older brother and before long he was booking out steadily with projects such as Our Gang (1942), The Hoodlum Saint (1946) and Mighty Joe Young (1948). In 1950 he made a big impact on television with a Lone Ranger episode. Television was a-calling and, in 1958, Hickman landed the role of Dobie Gillis in The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. The part was clever, slightly subversive for its time and – more importantly – it made Dwayne Hickman a global star.
After Dobie, Hickman made the television circuit with shows like The Mod Squad and The Flying Nun before settling into a life devoted to painting and working on his memoir (which he published in 1994). This writer recalls vividly a TV movie in the early 80s called High School USA which introduced Hickman as a high school teacher. Somewhere the character of Dobie Gillis, perennial school skipper extraordinaire, was laughing at the delicious irony, we’re sure.
Our condolences go out to Dwayne Hickman’s family, friends and fans. He was a one-of-a-kind.
