Baby Boomers still follow the pop icons of their era

Milwaukee Journal, The, Jan 12, 1995 by ROGER MILLER

LIKE A pig through a python, the Baby Boom generation goes through life creating ever-smaller bulges of existence as it comes closer and closer to the tail end.

Down this Slide for Life, it is preceded by its older pop-culture icons and heroes. These entertainers, part of the Boomers' pubescent-adolescent bulge, increasingly are not only being celebrated by the Boomers (all those 1950s and '60s television programs made into movies), but being celebrities are beginning to celebrate themselves.

Thus last year we had the surprisingly well-received autobiography of the Favorite Mouseketeer, Annette Funicello. And recently there has been a bulge of books by and about these icons that probably will be repeated in similar bulges until even Boomers grow too old for nostalgia.

Not the most popular, but perhaps the most representative, icon of the Boomers is Dobie Gillis, because he is They.

"The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis" first went on the air in 1959, when the oldest Boomers (born in 1946) were 13, and went off the air four years later, when they were 17. Dobie was a teenager and the sitcom was the first to attempt, albeit in a wacky way, to look at life from the teenager's point of view.

Dobie Gillis was played by Dwayne Hickman, who with his wife, Joan Roberts Hickman, has written a slight but charming memoir, "Forever Dobie: The Many Lives of Dwayne Hickman" (Birch Lane Press, 301 pages, $19.95). It takes him from his birth on May 18, 1934, (Dobie is 60!), through his days as a child actor in movies (when he was out of work he collected unemployment), to his recent status as CBS executive, but the most interesting sections deal with "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis."

Here you will learn that Hickman considered Tuesday Weld, who played Thalia Menninger, "a petulant pain in the neck." That Warren Beatty, even as an obscure bit player, was aloof and snobbish, and to this day denies his role as Milton Armitage on the sitcom.

You will also learn why, in the first season, naturally dark- haired Hickman was a blond (to distance him from his role on "The Bob Cummings Show," which he had just left). And why "Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing" was used as background music so often (Twentieth Century-Fox, which produced the program, owned the rights to the song and thus wouldn't have to pay royalties).

And, you will be happy to know, after all those years of chasing after "a girl he could call his own," he finally got one. Or three, actually. Hickman has been married three times, divorced twice. As Maynard G. Krebs, Dobie's beatnik friend, might say, "Like excessive, good buddy."

Some other books:

Dream Lovers: The Magnificent Shattered Lives of Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee. By Dodd Darin, with Maxine Paetro. Warner Books. 371 pages. $22.95.

Did every Boomer girl dream of being Sandra Dee, if she couldn't be Annette? Dodd Darin, the son of Bobby (Walden Robert Cassotto) and Sandra (Alexandra Zuck), reveals much about his parents. His mother was sexually abused by her stepfather. His father learned at age 32 that the woman he thought was his sister was really his mother a situation exactly like that of Jack Nicholson as disclosed by Milwaukee writer Pat McGilligan last year.

Love, Alice: My Life as a Honeymooner.

By Audrey Meadows, with Joe Daley. Crown. 248 pages. $22.

The woman who played Alice Kramden to Jackie Gleason's Ralph tells of the frequently zany days filming "The Honeymooners," and defends Gleason as a man and as a performer.

The Official Dick Van Dyke Show Book: The Definitive History and Ultimate Viewer's Guide to Television's Most Enduring Comedy.

By Vince Waldron. Hyperion. 401 pages. $14.95 paperback.

(Actually, "The Honeymooners" and "I Love Lucy" probably will endure at least as long.) The book is packed with anecdotes and facts, including synopses and production details of each episode.

Cry: The Johnnie Ray Story.

By Jonny Whiteside. Barricade Books. 445 pages. $22.99.

Maybe a bit too early for even the oldest Boomers, Johnnie Ray and his emotional, often hiccupy singing style nevertheless strongly influenced one of their favorites, Elvis Presley, a debt Elvis acknowledged.

Good Rockin' Tonight: Twenty Years on the Road and on the Town With Elvis. By Joe Esposito and Elena Oumano. Simon & Schuster. 266 pages. $23. Speaking of Elvis, here's another in the roll call of reminiscencs of him. You would think that Esposito, the "unofficial don of the Memphis Mafia," would know enough about the man he spent almost 20 years with to spell his middle name correctly in the dedication (Aron, not Aaron), but presumably the memories are authentic.