James Darren, crooning teen idol in surfing film Gidget and later in The Guns of Navarone
James Darren, who has died aged 88, was a toothsome and tanned American actor who became a teen idol in his early twenties as singing surfer Jeff “Moondoggie” Matthews in Gidget (1959), a film that did much to launch the youth craze for surf culture that would reach its apotheosis in The Beach Boys.
Based on Frederick Kohner’s book about an unworldly Malibu teenager nicknamed “Girl Midget” (hence “Gidget”) and played on screen by Sandra Dee, it was a beach-set coming-of-age comedy for youngsters who hadn’t seen themselves in the angst of The Wild One (1953) or Rebel Without a Cause (1955). At the time, its leads’ seaside skylarking proved vastly more popular with audiences than critics.
The Daily Telegraph’s Campbell Dixon, for one, wondered why Ingmar Bergman’s Journey into Autumn (also known as Dreams, 1955) had been handed an X certificate, whereas “Gidget, a moronic story for teenagers about a girl suffering from sex in the head, is [rated] U, presumably because she is only 16 and, if she does succeed in getting herself seduced after long and patient effort, it will be all in girlish fun.”
The studio, Columbia, had its eye on Elvis Presley for the role of “Moondoggie”, but shooting coincided with Presley’s military service; instead, they settled on Darren who was, in many ways, unlikely casting.
He could not surf and was a poor swimmer, but he could carry a tune, which was enough to sway the execs. “They were thinking about having someone do the vocal and I would lip sync,” he recalled. “I told them I could do it, so we went into one of the sound stages and I sang Gidget. They said, ‘He sings fine’, then I did all the other songs.”
That theme song made it to No 41 on the US Billboard chart, launching a secondary singing career, even if Darren’s subsequent singles – including 1959’s Teenage Tears and Goodbye Cruel World, a US top three hit in 1961 – sounded less like prime pop than coded cries for help. The attentions of screaming fans provided some consolation, but Darren admitted that “at times, it was Chinese torture”. Goodbye Cruel World was later used by Steven Spielberg to conjure up the period in his autobiographical film The Fabelmans (2022).
More mature roles followed for Darren – as a trumpet-playing best pal in The Gene Krupa Story (1959), opposite Sidney Poitier in the Korean War drama All the Young Men (1960), as Grecian scrapper Spyros Pappadimos in The Guns of Navarone (1961) – yet he struggled to make the leap to fully-fledged leading man status. As he diplomatically phrased it, “the people handling my career at that point didn’t really take advantage”.
Instead, he found himself pitched into Gidget sequels – Gidget Goes Hawaiian (1961), Gidget Goes to Rome (1963) – and providing Yogi Bear’s singing voice in the feature-length Hey There, Yogi Bear (1964). Under contract to Columbia, Darren was, in his words, “a prisoner. But with those lovely young ladies, it was the best prison I think I’ve ever been in.”
He was born James William Ercolani in Philadelphia on June 8 1936, one of two sons to Catholic parents. A mildly troublesome child (“a Dennis the Menace sort, not a bad kid”), he dropped out of school aged 16 and began commuting to New York to study acting under the influential Stella Adler. Moving to LA in 1954, he was signed by Columbia and underwent a name change inspired by the Kaiser Darrin sports car.
He was launched in Rumble on the Docks (1956), a knock-off of On the Waterfront (1954) with the tagline “Out of Their Teens… Into Big Time Crime!” He proved an instant hit with young cinemagoers, reportedly inspiring 400 to 500 fan letters per month to the studio, second only to Kim Novak.
Once liberated from studio servitude, he scuffed up his clean-cut screen persona with Jesus Franco’s Eurosleaze thriller Venus in Furs (1969), then settled into regular, remunerative nightclub gigs and TV work. Playing the adventurous Dr Tony Newman on Irwin Allen’s fondly remembered The Time Tunnel (1966-67) kept him in the public eye; a Vegas residency with comedian Buddy Hackett exercised the vocal cords.
Guest spots followed on Police Woman (1976), Charlie’s Angels (1977) and Hawaii Five-O (1978-79), and Darren eventually became a series regular on two primetime hits: as the genial Jim Corrigan on William Shatner vehicle TJ Hooker (1982-86) and as the crooning hologram Vic Fontaine on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1998-99).
Modelled on his old pal Frank Sinatra, the role led to a revival of interest in Darren’s singing career. He rerecorded the songs he had sung on Star Trek in a big-band style for his 1999 album This One’s from the Heart, while the 2001 follow-up Because of You featured arrangements Sinatra himself had turned down.
Interviewed in 1983, Darren reflected that “every career has its hills and valleys. The most important thing is that you are happy with you… and have bread on the table.”
He is survived by his second wife Evy Norland, a former Miss Denmark whom he married in 1960, and three sons, two by Norland and one, the CNN anchorman Jim Moret, by an earlier marriage to Gloria Terlitzsky.
James Darren, born June 8 1936, died September 2 2024
