Gidget and TJ Hooker teen idol James Darren dies aged 88

James Darren, a teen idol who helped ignite the 1960s surfing craze as a charismatic beach boy paired with Sandra Dee in the hit film Gidget, has died at age 88.

Darren died in his sleep at a Los Angeles hospital, his son Jim Moret said.

Moret said Darren was supposed to have had an aortic valve replacement but was too weak for the surgery.

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“I always thought he would pull through because he was so cool. He was always cool,” his son told The Hollywood Reporter.

In his long career, Darren acted, sang and built up a successful behind-the-scenes career as a television director, helming episodes of Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place. In the 1980s, he was Officer Jim Corrigan on the television cop show TJ Hooker.

But to young movie fans of the late 1950s, he would be remembered best as Moondoggie, the dark-haired surfer boy in the smash 1959 release Gidget.

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 which Californian 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, as it did with many young actors at the time, among them Tab Hunter and Annette Funicello.

Two of Darren’s singles, Goodbye Cruel World and Her Royal Majesty, reached the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

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.

Gidget later became a television show, launching the career of Sally Field.

Darren appeared in grown-up films, too, including The Brothers Rico, Operation Meatball and The Guns Of Navarone.

By the mid-’60s, 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 Lucky, directed by John Carroll Lynch.

But he 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 TJ Hooker in the 1980s. 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.

For almost two years, Darren directed episodes of Walker, Texas Ranger, Hunter, Melrose Place, Beverly Hills 90210 and 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, not far from such fellow teen idols of the 1950s and ‘60s as Fabian and Frankie Avalon. Singing came easy to him, and at 14 he was appearing in local nightclubs.

According to a 1958 Los Angeles Times profile, he got a break when he went to New York to get some pictures taken and the photographer’s office put him in touch with a talent scout.

He was soon signed by Columbia Pictures and the newspaper said, after a few appearances, his fan mail at the studio was running “second only to Kim Novak’s. … The studio now feels that the young man is ready to hit the jackpot”.

Darren married his first wife, Gloria, in 1955 and together they had Moret.

After a divorce he married Evy Norlund, who came to the US as the Danish entry in the Miss Universe contest. They had two sons, Christian and Anthony.

He was also the godfather of Nancy Sinatra’s daughter AJ Lambert. Sinatra, his For Those Who Think Young co-star, posted The Hollywood Reporter obituary on her X page, with a broken heart emoji.