James Darren

I've always had a fantasy about James Darren.  No, not that...!  I fantasized that he was really the genuinely nice guy I suspected he was.  I have probably always had that fantasy about movie stars in general.  Of course, fantasy is the right word here because nice is not often the case.  

And just for a sec consider that nice sometimes keeps folks from realizing the big dream.  Maybe they're not tough enough or ambitious enough or perhaps they won't do absolutely anything to make it big.  While Darren is an accomplished actor, singer and director, I suspect his acting career, at least, didn't reach the dizzying heights he might have wished for.  Or hey, maybe he didn't want to look down from Mt. Olympus.  

Before we move off nice, I'll tell you I saw him once at Farmer's Market in L.A.  I watched him in the open market and a couple of times he caught me watching him.  Frankly, I couldn't believe how handsome he was.  The third time or so that he caught me, he said do I know you?  Um, er, gurgle, stammer, no, I said, I'm just a rude fan.  We laughed and he engaged me in some idle chit chat and then he and his beautiful wife were on their way.

He was born James Ercolani in 1936 in Philadelphia of Italian heritage.  He would pave the path from there to Hollywood as fellow Italian singer-actors Fabian and Frankie Avalon would a few years later.  Those facts and perhaps the one that they all wound up as teen heartthrobs who made silly beach movies might have kept some filmgoers a little confused for awhile.  Unlike the other two, when the movie career faded, Darren went on to television and added directing to his résumé.

He had thoughts of performing as his life's work when he was a teenager.  He had done some singing when he followed his father around in nightclubs or bars but it was his grandmother who encouraged his earliest acting ambitions.  By 18 he was traveling to New York to study with acting guru Stella Adler.

Then a woman who worked in a photography shop where he'd had some professional photos taken asked him if he was interested in a career in films and he said yes.  She then introduced him to talent agent and casting director Joyce Selznick who thought he'd be a good fit at Columbia Pictures and a long-term contract sealed the deal.  

In 1955, at age 19, Darren married his childhood sweetheart and they had a son and divorced in 1959.  

Columbia immediately gave him top billing in a B-minus teen-thug flick, Rumble on the Docks (1956), with a cast of unknowns (although Robert Blake is there) and the teenage idol thing began.  It would take three years to reach its crescendo.

Next up was Operation Mad Ball (1957), a bigger picture but a smaller role.  Jack Lemmon and Ernie Kovacs are a private and captain, respectively, trying to outmaneuver one another in every way imaginable in this military comedy.  Darren has a small role as a private.  

He, Richard Conte and Paul Picerni have the title roles in The Brothers Rico (1957), a good film noir about a mob family.  Conte, who has forsaken his mob days, gets pulled back in when his brothers get in trouble and one (Darren) goes missing.  In the same vein and released the same year, The Tijuana Story (1957) was made on the cheap and disappeared as quickly as it arrived.  Mexican character actor Rodolfo Acosta stars as a newsman on a crusade to clean up the title city.

Gunman's Walk (1958) is the first movie in which I saw Darren and believe it or not I did not flip out over his looks or teenage idol thing because Tab Hunter was in it and commanded all my attention.  Van Heflin stars as a tough rancher with two sons, one handsome, dark-haired and good and one handsome, blond and bad.  Of course I liked it a lot and I may be the only one.  Darren's part was barely noticeable.  It was his third and final feature to costar him with Kathryn Grant, future wife of Bing Crosby.

Then came Gidget (1959) and the heavens opened.   It's hard to believe that teenagers flipped over this insipid, cornball story of an awkward teen (Sandra Dee) who becomes a mascot for a group of totally gnarly surfer dudes.  She, of course, is goo-goo-eyed over the different one, the handsome one, Moondoggie (Darren).  Oh like, for real.  But bash it though I might, of course I saw it.  I wasn't excited to be seeing it at all but I was excited afterwards.  (I'm trying to handle this part in a semi-elegant way.)

Darren almost didn't get the part because they wanted an actor who could sing.  So at his own expense he made a recording and was signed on.   His recording of the title tune became a giant hit and his singing career was cemented forever more.  His other song from the film is The Next Best Thing to Love and seeing it and hearing it was the precise moment I went overboard.  See what you think... it's at the end here.

Pairing him with Sandra Dee in 1959 was nothing short of inspirational.  The public adored them and I've never understood why someone didn't put them in more films together.  Some folks thought they really were a couple and were happy when they married a couple of years later.  Oh wait, damn, that was Bobby Darin... wrong singer-actor.

The movie turned Darren into a living dream for hordes of screaming teenage girls and some others.  Even my mother--- my mother!!!--- liked him, especially his smooth voice and matinee idol looks.  But Dee, too, did her part.  Sensational to look at in her teenage sort of way, she had just completed Imitation of Life for grownups and now Gidget for the teens and next A Summer Place for the whole damned family.  Thank you, Gidget, to one and all.

But not really.  Actually as far as Darren was probably concerned, it's like someone giveth and someone taketh away.  The film gave him recognition but the studios can go stupid so easily, so quickly.  If this worked so well, let's do it again and again and again.  Dee wisely turned down two Gidget sequels but Darren did not.  Obviously, both were inferior to the original but we're not done here.  Eventually it's this type of film, silly beach stuff, that sent him packing.  First... a few of Darren's films that I really liked.

The rise and fall of iconic drummer Gene Krupa is highlighted in Columbia's The Gene Krupa Story (1959) with Sal Mineo in the title role and Darren as his loyal friend.  It's probably not what it could have been but it does have some exciting musical sequences and a loyal following.  

In 1960 Darren married for the second and last time.  The lucky lady was a beautiful former Miss Denmark, Evy Norlund.  I had seen her a year earlier in a circus movie, The Flying Fontaines.  It was one of the two movies she made.  She and Darren, the parents of two sons, are still married today.

All the Young Men (1960) is a Korean War story about a black sergeant who takes over a platoon on the orders of his commander before he dies.  It comes with the usual results.  It wasn't a bad film at all but it didn't fare as well as expected.  I liked it because of its cast headed by Sidney Poitier, Alan Ladd and Darren.  It also features young up-and-comers such as Glenn Corbett, Lee Kinsolving, Richard Davalos, Joe Gallison and Swedish heavyweight boxing champ Ingemar Johansson in his only film. 

With Jean Seberg

One of my favorite Darren movies is Let No Man Write My Epitaph (1960).  It's the story of Chicago tenement residents, a tight group, that strives to keep a favorite son off the path that sent his father to the electric chair.  It wasn't hard to like this sequel to Knock on Any Door because it gave Darren a chance to shine and it costars Jean Seberg, another new watchable performer thanks to Bonjour Tristesse, as his girlfriend.  The cast also includes Burl Ives, Shelley Winters, Ricardo Montalban and Ella Fitzgerald.

With Navarone buddies David Niven & Gia Scala

There can be no doubt that the best film Darren ever made was The Guns of Navarone (1961).  I absolutely loved this exciting tale of a  British military team along with some Greek resistance fighters sent  to destroy two powerful German cannons on the top of a Greek mountain-island.  Darren turns in a good performance as a Greek assassin even if he is overshadowed by Gregory Peck, David Niven and Anthony Quinn.  Irene Papas plays his sister and Stanley Baker, Gia Scala and Anthony Quayle fill out the talented cast.

Moving those hips with Yvette Mimieux

The Hawaiian-filmed romance drama Diamond Head (1962) concerned a powerful rancher and senatorial candidate (Charlton Heston) who objects to his sister's (Yvette Mimieux) love affair with a local man (Darren) despite his own affair with a local woman (France Nuyen).  It's possible Darren never looked more handsome and his scenes with Mimieux are hot.  Too bad he's killed off early in the proceedings.

After those two ultra-silly Gidget sequels, Darren and Columbia parted ways.  He drifted into television guest roles and wound up at United Artists to costar with Pamela Tiffin in For Those Who Think Young (1964), another of those teen movies that rarely did anything for anyone's careers.

So what does a guy do when his movie career starts to slip away from him?  Well, like so many others, he signed on with Universal, a sure sign that things have turned dark.  And what does Universal do?  Why let's team him again with Tiffin (it worked so well the last time) in The Lively Set (1964), another clunker.  And for all intents and purposes, that drew his curtain on the movies.

From here on out, it was mainly television work... scores of guest shots, a couple of TV movies and roles in three popular series.  The first of them was The Time Tunnel (1966-67).  He filled out a police uniform pretty nicely indeed in T.J. Hooker (1982-86) and in 1999 played in five episodes of Melrose Place.  There seems to be much affection for his role of Vic Fontaine, a holographic singer and adviser in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1998-99).  

He wandered into directing TV episodes in 1986 and for 10 years directed 17 of them.  Singing, too, occupied a lot of his time throughout his life.  Back in the day he had top hits with Goodbye Cruel World, Her Royal Majesty, Angel Face and of course the aforementioned Gidget.  He has played supper clubs and other such venues for years and has long been a favorite in Vegas.  He was good friends with another Italian singer named Sinatra and I thought their singing styles were similar.

He's done festivals and conventions, mainly regarding his appearances on Star Trek.  He loves cooking (hey, he's Italian) and loves race cars and motorcycles.  He has said he would have liked to have become a pro race car driver.

Okay he didn't become Robert DeNiro but he kept me highly entertained for years and damn he was such fun to look at.  Super nice singing voice, too.  Above it all, I think he was that nice guy I always hoped he was.  

On a more somber note, he's had a rough relationship with his son from his first marriage, TV journalist Jim Moret, for quite a few years.  If the details interest you, they're available on the internet. 

 

Today James Darren at 86 has Covid19 but I've heard his recovery is coming along nicely.  I hope that's true.

Thanks for the memories, Moondoggie.

Here he is:

Next posting:

a western from the 40s