Dwayne Hickman, who played the title role in classic teen sitcom The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, dies at 87

The New York Times

Hickman, who died of complications of Parkinson’s disease on Sunday, was 25 in 1959 when he took on the role of 17-year-old Dobie Gillis on the CBS sitcom, the first American television program produced for a major network to feature teenagers as leading characters. "Broadcast on CBS from 1959 to 1963, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis was an essential ingredient of adolescence for the postwar generation and remained popular in syndication for years," Margalit Fox writes in his New York Times obituary. "Mr. Hickman became one of TV’s first teenage idols for his portrayal of its lovelorn hero, and he remained indelibly identified with the character ever after, a fate he bore with genial resignation. “Dobie Gillis followed the fortunes of its hero, his friends and family in Central City, a community whose precise location was never specified but that in all its wholesomeness seemed eminently Midwestern. Dobie, 17 when the show begins, is Everyteen.  (Early in the series, Mr. Hickman’s brown hair was bleached blond to make him look as cornfed as possible, until the peroxide treatments began to make his hair fall out.)  He pines ardently, in the words of the show’s jazzy theme song, for “a girl to call his own,” and just as ardently for the financial wherewithal to squire that girl around. For all its well-scrubbed chastity, the series marked a quietly subversive departure from the standard television fare of the day. It was among the first to place the topical subject of teenagerhood front and center by recounting the story from a teenager’s point of view. It broke the fourth wall weekly, opening with a monologue in which Mr. Hickman, seated in front of a replica of Rodin’s 'Thinker,' gave viewers a guided tour of his gently angst-ridden soul." Dobie Gillis featured well-known actors in early roles, such as Warren Beatty and Hickman's co-star Bob Denver, who would go on to play the title role in classic sitcom Gilligan's Island.