Bob Denver's First Television Role

1. What was the character's name and what was the show about?

Bob Denver played Maynard G. Krebs on "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis" starring Dwayne Hickman. Dobie was the quintessential cleancut all-American teenager of small town America, but always in some predicament or another with his two girlfriends, Zelda (Sheila James Kuehl) or Thalia (Tuesday Weld). Maynard was Dobie's beatnik buddy.

The shows typically began with Dobie sitting in the town park next to a copy of and assuming the pose of Rodin's "The Thinker". He would then give a brief introduction to the problems he had and the story would begin. One of the openings that got the biggest laughs was when Maynard was sitting next to the statue and HE gave the introduction. Usually the only thing Maynard worried about was how to avoid work.

The show aired from 1959 to 1963. At that time the Beatniks - or more properly, the Beat Generation - was one of the two youth counterculture movements in America. The other was the "Rebel Without a Cause" / "Wild One" hot-rod crowd of James Dean and Marlon Brando. Maynard's character was crafted on beatnik stereotypes - goatee, sweatshirt, bongos - and avoided any hint of the drugs and cross-gender acceptance of the real Beats, topics that remained totally verboten as television comedy until the mid-1970's rolled in.

With Maynard's counterculture philosophy and lifestyle and the frequent clashes between Dobie and his dad, the show was oddly - and possibly profoundly - prescient given that in a few years the hippie movement would roll in and leave its effects (both good and bad things) that still shake people up today.

 

2. What did the middle initial stand for?

As Maynard himself explained, "The 'G' stands for 'Walter'."