Betty White, Bob Saget, Sidney Poitier, . . . A lot of famous people have died recently and we will be losing a lot more. TV was a sensation in the 1950s. That is when it really took over radio. And then film. And a lot of people who became famous with programs in the 50s and 60s are entering the later years.
Dwayne Hickman.
The name means something if you were watching TV back during the sixties. He went from being on THE BOB CUMMINGS SHOW to starring THE MANY LOVES OF DOBIE GILLIS.
He was quite the heart throb at one point.
Today, his show, DOBIE GILLIS, is mainly known for trivia. Tuesday Weld was on the show as was Warren Beatty. That is the main trivia point. Second would be Sheila Kuehl playing Zelda on the show. Zelda was hilarious and CBS was prepping her spin off when they axed it. Years later, we would learn why (Ms. Kuehl knew in real time). CBS did not want to do a Zelda spin off because Ms. Kuehl was a lesbian.
I had originally typed "remembered for trivia." That is not true and I am glad I caught that before I posted it. DOBIE GILLIS was a really innovative sitcom for its time and if you have seen it, you remember it as a very funny one as well. But for those who have come up without having seen the series, it is mainly known for the trivia I noted in the pargraph above.
Fifty years ago, Sheila James was a young actress, best known for her portrayal of the zany, lovesick Zelda on the classic sitcom Dobie Gillis. Surprisingly wry and hip for its time, the series brought James to the brink of TV stardom.
It wasn't meant to be. A proposed spinoff series starring James as Zelda never happened, and her acting career slowly petered out. According to IMDB, her last acting role to date was in the 1988 reunion movie Bring Me the Head of Dobie Gillis, in which she played Zelda one final time. It was her first on-camera role in a dozen years. The film was made a decade after her graduation from Harvard Law School, and she was already established as a political activist to be reckoned with.
Today, Sheila James Kuehl is an out lesbian with a long history of public service. She has served eight years in the California State Senate and six years in the state assembly. The first openly LGBT person to be elected to the California legislature, she authored 171 bills that were signed into law.
Currently a professor at UCLA, Kuehl is now running for Los Angeles County supervisor. Although she is far more interested in social issues than show business, Kuehl was more than willing to discuss her days as a sitcom star.
"I was too butch" she said in a phone interview with Windy City Times.
It was the 1960s, the third year of Dobie Gillis, and the director had asked her to take a walk so they could discuss why nothing had happened regarding her spinoff series. "I was sensitive because I was closeted at the time," she said. She had nothing but the highest praise for Dwayne Hickman, her TV co-star. "He was very supportive of me," she said. "I never found Dwayne to be homophobic."
We begin TV week with a show devoted to sitcoms. Many people will remember Sheila James Kuehl as Zelda Gilroy on the old TV show The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. Her TV career ended when rumors began to circulate that she was a lesbian — and those rumors were true. She became a prominent lesbian activist and women's rights lawyer in Los Angeles. In November 1994, she became the first openly gay or lesbian person to be elected to the California State Assembly.
And here she is speaking to THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE in 1996:
Q: Could you talk about what happened when they were thinking about doing a spin-off starring the Zelda character?
A: In the third year of "Dobie Gillis," we made a pilot for a spin- off. The news was that CBS was really interested in it.
At that time, I was attending UCLA and was in a sorority. And while we were gone over the summer, some of the sorority members found some letters from a woman I was involved with, that had fallen out of the back of the dresser or whatever. And when I came back in the fall of that year, I was kicked out of my sorority. That was really a nightmare. I had no one to talk to, and I was terrified.
Not very long after that, when the pilot came up to be sold, all of a sudden it just sank like a stone. I mean, nothing happened. And several weeks later, the director of "Dobie Gillis" took me out for a talk and said, "I think you deserve to know what happened. The president of CBS looked at the pilot and said, 'I think she's just a little too butch.' "
At that moment, I thought, "I've been found out. They know." And putting it together with having been found out at school and kicked out of my sorority, I just thought, "This has got to be out there in the air, there's got to be some information out there."
She went into politics. Her last acting roles were in the two DOBIE GILLIS TV movies (the first in 1997 and the second in 1988).
Dwayne Hickman was born in 1934 -- three years before Jack Nicholson and Jane Fonda. He and Ms. Fonda made the comedy classic CAT BALLOU along with Lee Marvin (who won an Academy Award for his performances in the film -- he plays twins). He was only a year older than Michael Callan -- Mr. Hickman plays Mr. Callan's uncle in the film.
Another film I have to note is DR. GOLDFOOT AND THE BIKINI MACHINE. This 1965 film is one of my favorites. It is also one of the first films HULU ever streamed. It features a theme song performed by Diana Ross & the Supremes. Mr. Hickman stars with Vincent Price and Frankie Avalon.
This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" for today:
A petition to strip former British prime minister Tony Blair of his knighthood due to his role in the Iraq War has gained more than 1 million signatures and the backing of at least one Labour MP.
The petition, posted on Change.org a week ago, accuses Blair of causing “irreparable damage to both the constitution of the United Kingdom and to the very fabric of the nation’s society.”
Blair “was personally responsible for causing the death of countless innocent, civilian lives and servicemen in various conflicts,” the petition claims. “For this alone he should be held accountable for war crimes. Tony Blair is the least deserving person of any public honor, particularly anything awarded by Her Majesty the Queen.”
On January 1, Buckingham Palace announced that Blair had been made a Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, the oldest and most senior British order of chivalry. The knighthood given to Blair, who served as prime minister from 1997 to 2007, was decided by the queen and made without government advice.
In the statement, the embassy highlighted the role and significance of the parliament, calling it an integral and inseparable component of Iraq’s democratic process and its national sovereignty.
Several roadside bomb attacks have targeted convoys carrying logistical equipment belonging to the US military south of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad and in the country’s southern province of Muthanna, amid strong public opposition to the prolonged presence of American occupation forces on Iraqi soil.
Sabereen News, a Telegram news channel associated with Iraqi anti-terror Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) or Hashd al-Sha’abi, reported that an explosion hit trucks belonging to US forces in Baghdad’s southern Hur Rajab area at 7:30 a.m. local time (04:30 GMT) on Tuesday.
There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.
Shortly afterward, a bomb attack targeted a logistics convoy of US forces in the town of Adwaniyah.
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