The classic TV show, “Dobie Gillis” started out as a book!
Given that TV & Hollywood mess up any & all attempts to translate books to the screen, & given that the TV show was screamingly funny (IMHO), the the book should be great.
Anybody read The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis by Max Shulman?
Opinions?
Anybody got a copy they’d like to sell?
. . . a popular best-seller, too. I read it years ago (I think the NYPL has a copy), and have read some of Shulman’s other books (not to be confused with the evil Irving Shulman!). It was a big enough book that your local library might have a copy.
I read it years ago. It’s actually a series of short stories that Shulman wrote (for the Saturday Evening Post, IIRC) – his intro apologizes for the fact that Dobie has so many majors in college, since he took what would work for the story and had no plan for continuity.
It’s amusing, but I don’t think it was a good as the series.
Not only a book book, but also a comic book. In the issue featured here, Maynard is turned into a jive-talking race horse, which may indicate the teensy-weensy differences between the tv show and the comic book.
Not only a book and a comic book, but a movie as well:
I was never a big Bobby Van fan but any movie with Hans Conried and Charles Lane can’t be all bad.
And Kathleen Freeman as “Happy Stella” Kowalski?!?! I’m assuming this is a take on A Streetcar Named Desire.
Two books, actually. The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis collected his 1940s stories and came out in 1951. Shulman turned the stories into a 1953 movie, The Affairs of Dobie Gillis.
The movie wasn’t wildly successful but did okay, and Shulman had huge popularity as a writer of light comedies. Rally 'Round the Flag was made into a movie and The Tender Trap had success on Broadway before it too became a movie.
He returned to Dobie with a second collection of short stories, I Was a Teenage Dwarf, published in 1959. It’s Dobie’s life story, starting with him aged 13 and in junior high. Dobie does eventually go to college, where he meets - and dumps - one Zelda Gilroy. The last story is by Dobie, aged 30, who has finally married his sweet Chloe, and has a son, Pete, and is living happily ever after.
Is it too much of a stretch to call Shulman the American Wodehouse? Only a bit. Dobie Gillis is the American middle-class version of Bertie Wooster, and the tone and plotting of the stories are very similar.
The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis also starts in 1959, so the powers that were probably summoned Shulman on the basis of the second book. In 1959, of course, teens still meant high school and that moronic rock and roll music audience, so while Shulman originally wanted to put Dobie in college, he was sent to high school instead. Shulman was what today we would call the show runner. He either wrote or rewrote most if not all of the scripts and imposed his vision on every episode.
And what a vision. I could go on and on about how totally original the series was, but you probably all already know that.
BookFinder has a page with some cheap copies of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.
If we’re going to start an homage to Max Shulman, let me heartily recommend Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys. The movie takes great liberties with the book, but it also stars Paul Newman, JoAnne Woodward, Joan Collins and features people like Tuesday Weld, Gale Gordon and Jack Carson, and is worth watching for them, if nothing else.
Yaaay!
My library has at least2 of his books, & I put in an Interlibrary Loan request for the others.
Like Eve and Chuck, I read it years ago. I found it pleasant and fun. I imagine, it will seem extremely dated and innocent these days, but that being said, that may not be that bad.
Regarding the comic book, movie, etc. I vaguely remember it being a stage production also. I believe that Shulman was the playwright, too. I never saw it, but I seem to remember seeing a review where it was panned terribly.
TV
The amazing thing about the Internet is that there is a database for everything.
Including an Internet Broadway Database. And its entry for Mal Shulman mentions no Dobie Gillis play.
It could have been something that never reached Broadway, of course. I don’t know how tight the guidelines are for inclusion.
My Dad was a huge Max Shulman fan and we had a few paperback copies of his books. I must have read them when I was in my young teens and I enjoyed them. I haven’t thought about that in years. I bet my Mom still has them.
Haj
When I used to teach Freshman Comp, I had one of the Dobie Gillis stories on my syllabus, wherein Dobie taught his dopey but gorgeous girlfriend a series of formal logical fallacies, most with Latin names, that she then used on him to justify breaking up with him. It was kind of clever, though it didn’t date well.
I actually own a falling-apart paperback copy of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, along with several other of Shulman’s books. I got them in the late 60s at a used bookstore, and I read them many times. They were dated even then, but still fun.
My copy of DG is illustrated with a full-page line drawing in each chapter of Dobie and the girl of the chapter. Dobie is a goofy-faced short guy. I’m pretty sure he is meant to be Jewish, although I don’t remember this as ever being part of the stories. The girls that Dobie lusts for are all built like Anna Nicole Smith. They are often ruthless and always smarter than him.
The paperback originally cost 50 cents.
Yes, yes - I read that book and it was very funny, tho the references got dated quickly and you had to allow for that. It was one of my old favorites - lent it to a college buddy and never got it back. Drat.