US actor James Darren, who starred in US sci-series The Time Tunnel and the 1959 surf movie Gidget which ignited the surfing craze of the 1960s, has died aged 88.
He died in his sleep at a Los Angeles hospital on Monday, his son Jim Moret confirmed.
Moret customs The Hollywood Reporter his father had scheduled surgery for an aortic valve replacement, but doctors decided he was too weak.
“I always thought he would pull through because he was so cool. He was always cool,” his son said.
Darren would be best known to an Irish audience for starring in The Time Tunnela 1960s sci-fi TV series from Irwin Allen, where he co-starred alongside Robert Colbert as they played two scientists stuck travelling through time.
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The show only lasted a season in the US but it was a big hit in Ireland when it was screened on RTÉ as it featured the scientists landing at key moments in history, ranging from the sinking of The Titanic to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in WWII.
Singer Nancy Sinatra – daughter of Frank – paid tribute by sharing a selection of photos from over the years of her and Darren, who was godfather to her daughter AJ Lambert.
“One of my dearest, closest friends in all the world, of all my life has passed away”, the singer and actress, who is the eldest daughter of Frank Sinatra, wrote alongside the post on X, formerly Twitter.
“Godfather to my daughter, AJ. Wishing him a fast & beautiful journey through the Universe & beyond.
“Godspeed, sweet Jimmy. My heart is torn but full of love for Evy, Christian, Anthony & Jimmy Jr.”
Throughout a career spanning six decades, Darren also appeared in TV shows such as Melrose Place, Star Trek, Deep Space Nine, The Love Boat, Hawaii Five-O, Fantasy Island and alongside William Shatner in TJ Hooker in the 1980s.
While appearing on the latter show, Darren noticed no director was listed for an upcoming sequence and asked if he could try out for it.
“When it was shown, I got several offers to direct,” he told the New York Daily News. “Soon I was getting so many offers to direct, I kind of gave up acting and singing.”
He went on to direct episodes for shows including Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place.
But to movie fans of the 1950s, Gidget was his masterpiece in the role of Moondoggie, the dark-haired surfer boy in the smash film that made surfing mainstream.
He was also the only cast member who appeared in both its sequels, 1961’s Gidget Goes Hawaiian and 1963’s Gidget Goes to Rome.
By the mid-1960s, his career on the silver screen was over except for a handful of movies in the decades that followed, last appearing in 2017’s Lucky directed by John Carroll Lynch.
Born James Ercolani in 1936, he grew up in South Philadelphia. Singing came easy to him, and at 14 he was appearing in local nightclubs.
“From the age of five or six I knew I wanted to be an entertainer, or famous maybe,” he said in a 2003 interview with News-Press.
He noted that such luminaries as Eddie Fisher and Al Martino had lived in the same area as he did, “a real neighbourhood. It made you feel you could be successful, too”.
According to a 1958 Los Angeles Times profile, he got a break when he went to New York to get some pictures taken and the photographer’s office put him in touch with a talent scout.
He was soon signed by Columbia Pictures and the newspaper said that after a few appearances, his fan mail at the studio was running “second only to Kim Novak’s. … The studio now feels that the young man is ready to hit the jackpot.”
He stayed on at the studio as a contract player.
Darren married his first wife Gloria in 1955 and had a son, Moret, an Inside Edition correspondent and former CNN anchorman.
They divorced in 1959, after which he married Evy Norlund, who came to the US as the Danish entry in the Miss Universe contest.
They had two sons, Christian and Anthony.
He was also the godfather of Nancy Sinatra’s daughter AJ Lambert.
Sinatra, daughter of Frank Sinatra and Nancy Barbato, shared Darren’s obituary on her X account, with a broken heart emoji as a tribute.
Source: Press Association
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