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Post by intrepid37 on Aug 14, 2023 4:51:19 GMT
I'm guessing Warren would've turned it down too. 😆
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Post by marysara1 on Aug 14, 2023 17:32:14 GMT
I saw Bring Me the Head of Dobie Gillis. One of Eddie Fisher's and Connie Stevens daughter was in it.
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Post by I Love Melvin on Aug 14, 2023 23:04:52 GMT
TCM has shown The Affairs of Dobie Gillis, which MGM did as a musical in 1953 with Bobby Van (Dobie), Debbie Reynolds and Bob Fosse. It's not much fun and apparently MGM thought so too because they filmed it in black and white, almost unheard of for an MGM musical after WW II. Pretty standard college highjinks and none of the cast had any kind of edge to them, but part of the Dobie legacy nonetheless.
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Post by jinsinna13 on Aug 15, 2023 13:55:48 GMT
I was a big fan of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. Has anyone seen the bizarre 1988 TV movie Bring Me the Head of Dobie Gillis? It's set 25 years after the series and is based (!) on Friedrich Durrenmatt's 1956 play The Visit. The English-language premiere of the play was directed by Peter Brook and featured the Lunts, so this work has some serious provenance. A 1964 film (which changed the ending) featured Ingrid Bergman and Anthony Quinn. There was even a Kander/Ebb musical adaptation, starring Chita Rivera. There have been countless other adaptions, in Senegal, Iran, and elsewhere; and an opera. In the Dobie Gillis film, Dobie is married to Zelda. Suddenly, Maynard G. Krebs appears with a message from an old acquaintance: Thalia Menninger, played by Connie Stevens. Thalia has become super rich and has bought up most of the businesses and properties in town. She wants Dobie and, when he rejects her, she will only save the town if the people kill Dobie Gillis. I find it totally surreal that an enjoyable and innocuous classic sitcom should be turned into a movie based on a play by a Swiss avant-garde dramatist which is basically an indictment of capitalism. It's fun to watch, and very odd, and features many actors from the sitcom: Hickman, Denver, Steve Franken, and others. Wow. I haven't seen the TV movie and I had no idea about the connection to The Visit. Tuesday Weld was still active at the time so I wonder if she was approached, though I guess she was kind of known for turning down projects which didn't interest her. She'd already gone to the dark side in Pretty Poison (1968), in which she played a killer cheerleader opposite Anthony Perkins, so it wouldn't have been too much of a stretch to do a psycho Thalia. Dwayne Hickman confirmed in his book Tuesday Weld turned it down.
Hickman took a leave of absence from his programming job at CBS to do Bring Me The Head of Dobie Gillis. During production, he realized he missed acting too much. Hickman quit his CBS job not long after it was finished.
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Post by Swithin on Aug 15, 2023 17:52:17 GMT
Hickman is very good in a major supporting role in Cat Ballou (1965).
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Post by intrepid37 on Aug 15, 2023 18:02:59 GMT
Hickman is very good in a major supporting role in Cat Ballou (1965). "I'm as drunk as a skunk"
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Post by jinsinna13 on Nov 19, 2023 15:32:45 GMT
Resurrecting this thread because I'm currently watching the fourth and final season on The Roku Channel. The final season is a mess.
Dwayne Hickman said in his book the producers felt he was too mature at 28 to lead the show, so Bobby Diamond was brought in to play Dobie's cousin, Dunky. There were some episodes (mainly the Dunky and Maynard episodes) where Dobie was barely around. (That stunk because Dobie is one of my favorites.) Zelda and Chatsworth were also barely around. There were a few episodes devoted to Dobie's cousin, Virgil (played by Ray Hemphill). Virgil was a terrible person who manipulated everyone and stole Dobie's girlfriends. Maynard was the only one who saw Virgil for what he really was, and Maynard was 100% right.
There are some episodes I liked, but it's pretty easy to see why it got cancelled.
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