My friend Eric Brotherton was recently in Buzzy’s Country Store and made a reference to Dobie Gillis. It made me think of Dobie’s sidekick Maynard G. Krebs and I immediately turned to look for the following figurines stashed on a shelf behind the counter. (I discussed these guys in a Buzzyblog post back in 2014 (click here.) )
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| Polock/Maynard and Capt. Jonas “The Skipper” Grumby/Buzzy |
Seeing the figurines, I then realized that I had Bob Denver as Gilligan confused with him in his role as Maynard G. Krebs in Dobie Gillis. In my fogged up memory bank, I have Maynard and Gilligan co-located in the same bin.
However in my defense, when you think about those two roles that Bob is famous for, they were not all that different: both Maynard and Gilligan were affable, funny and well meaning kinda guys, who obviously didn’t mind playing second banana to someone else. (Quick aside here – as popular as they were, both shows were very short lived – the Dobie Gillis show ran from 59-63 and Gilligan only did 3 seasons 64-67. That Bob made his mark in two very different shows while playing basically the same character is a pretty cool accomplishment when you think about it.
Following his show business career, Bob retired with his wife Dreama to her hometown in Princeton, West Virginia where the two of them hosted a local radio show. Click here for a video of Dreama discussing their post-Gilligan lives.