James Darren, the actor who ignited the 1960s surfing craze through his role as a charismatic beach boy in the hit film Gidget, has died aged 88, his family have confirmed.
Darren died peacefully in his sleep at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, where he was being treated at the cardiac unit for heart problems.
His son, Jim Moret, told The Hollywood Reporter that the actor first went to hospital to have an aortic valve replacement but was deemed too weak for the surgery. Although Darren was discharged and sent home, he was later taken back to hospital as health concerns grew.
“I always thought he would pull through,” Moret told reporters. “Because he was so cool. He was always cool.”
Throughout his long career, Darren acted, sang and built up a successful behind-the-scenes career as a television director, helming episodes of well-known series including Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place. In the 1980s, he was Officer Jim Corrigan on the television cop show T.J. Hooker.
But to young movie fans of the late 1950s, Darren would be remembered best as Moondoggie, the dark-haired surfer boy in the smash 1959 release Gidget. Sandra Dee starred as the title character, a Southern Californian who hits the beach and eventually falls in love with Moondoggie.
“I was in love with Sandra,” Darren later recalled. “I thought that she was absolutely perfect as Gidget. She had tremendous charm.”
The film was based on a novel that a California man, Frederick Kohner, had written about his own teenage daughter and helped spur interest in surfing — one that influenced pop music, slang and even fashion.
For Darren, his success with teen fans led to a recording contract. Two of the star’s singles, “Goodbye Cruel World” and “Her Royal Majesty,” reached the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart, with “Goodbye Cruel World” also appearing in Steven Spielberg‘s 2022 semi-autobiographical film, The Fabelmans.
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Darren was the only Gidget cast member who appeared in both its sequels, 1961’s Gidget Goes Hawaiian and 1963’s Gidget Goes to Rome. Dee was replaced by Deborah Walley in the second film and Cindy Carol in the third.
“They had me under contract; I was a prisoner,” Darren told Entertainment Weekly in 2004. “But with those lovely young ladies, it was the best prison I think I’ll ever be in.”
As a contract player at Columbia Studios, Darren appeared in adult marketed films, too, including Phil Karlson’s noir The Brothers Rico, Richard Guine’s military comedy Operation Madball, and J. Lee Thompson’s war action film The Guns of Navarone.
By the Sixties, when Darren appeared in For Those Who Think Young and The Lively Set, his big screen acting career was almost over. He appeared in just a handful of movies after the 1960s ended, last appearing in 2017’s comedy drama Lucky, directed by John Carroll Lynch.
But Darren remained active on television, appearing as a lead on the sci-fi show The Time Tunnel in the late 1960s, and doing guest spots and small recurring roles in TV shows such as The Love Boat, Hawaii Five-O and Fantasy Island.
Darren was a series regular for four seasons of the William Shatner-starrer T.J. Hooker in the 1980s. which became one of his best-known shows. While appearing on the show, he noticed that no director was listed for an upcoming sequence and asked if he could try out for it.
“When it was shown, I got several offers to direct,” he told the New York Daily News. “Soon I was getting so many offers to direct, I kind of gave up acting and singing.”
For almost two years, Darren directed episodes of Walker, Texas Ranger, Hunter, Melrose Place, Beverly Hills 90210 amongst other series. He returned to acting in the 1990s with small roles in Melrose Place and Star Trek, Deep Space Nine.
Darren was born James Ercolani in 1936 and grew up in South Philadelphia. He was a naturally gifted singer and at 14 was performing at local nightclubs.
“From the age of five or six I knew I wanted to be an entertainer, or famous maybe,” he said in an interview in 2003, noting that such luminaries as Eddie Fisher and Al Martino had lived in the same area as he did,. “[It was] a real neighborhood,” he said. “It made you feel you could be successful, too.”
Darren caught a break when he went to New York for headshots and the photographer’s office put him in touch with a talent scout, according to his profile in the Los Angeles Times in 1958.
He was soon signed by Columbia Pictures, and after a few small role, his fan mail at the studio was second only to the Vertigo star Kim Novak’s. “The studio now feels that the young man is ready to hit the jackpot,” Colombia said.
Darren married his first wife, Gloria Terlitsky, in 1955. The couple welcomed a son, James Jr, and were divorced by 1958. James was later adopted by Terlitsky’s third husband and is now known as the US news anchor Jim Moret.
Two years after his divorce from Terlitsky, Darren married the Danish entry in the Miss Universe contest, Evy Norland. They had two sons, Christian and Anthony.
The Gidget star was also godfather to Nancy Sinatra‘s daughter A.J. Lambert, having starred alongside Sinatra in Leslie H. Martinson 1964 comedy, For Those Who Think Young.
Additional reporting by Agencies