"Like, I'm Getting All Misty"

With all the things going on, it's important to pause and note the passing of Maynard G. Krebs.

Forget Gilligan. Maynard was Bob Denver's Picasso, a prime-time, bongo-banging beatnik who said the word, "work?," as if he feared it would send him back to his home planet. Denver passed Friday at age 70.

For my unbeat generation, "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis" was something  your older brother got to watch while you were supposed to be brushing your teeth. It was 1959, four years after Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" saw the best minds of his generation destroyed by madness, when Middle America got a peek. Until 1963 we welcomed the camera-ready beatnik into our living rooms, that goateed hepster in a sweatshirt, whose name that sounded like it went with a slide rule and pocket protector.

On Bob Denver.com, this story is told about the character's birth: Max Shulman created Maynard for the show; it was not in either of the books that featured Dobie. The writers had no idea how to sketch a beatnik, so Denver took over.

Bob researched Maynard by hanging out at college coffee houses, studying the beatniks there. He had also played a beatnik in a college production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience. (You might wonder how beatniks got into Gilbert and Sullivan. They had changed the two opposing factions to advertising men in suits against the beatniks.) He has been accused many times of starting the whole hippy movement in the '60's. Maynard lived in his own world with its own twisted logic. His name was also illogical, the "G" stood for Walter. According to the show's creator, Maynard was named after his Aunt Walter who was married to his Uncle Edith. His speech was full of colorful phrases such as "You rang?" and "Like, I'm getting all misty". But Maynard G. Krebs will always be best remembered for his response whenever anyone mentioned the subject of work. He would instantaneously shudder, and let out a plaintiff cry of "WORK!?!?"

Take five, friend.

Growing up in a small town in western Oklahoma, in the '70's, there were no after school programs - just TV. From the time we got home from school until my parents got home after work, our "enrichment" came from Gilligan's Island, The Brady Bunch, and Star Trek (that's right, the real Star Trek). 

Gilligan & Co. were like comfort food. No matter how many times I saw that episode with the lost Japanese submariner, or Wrong Way Feldman, or Harold Hecuba, I always enjoyed "dis, dat, and the other ting!"

For the record: Maryanne.

Over 'Lovie?'

Ok, Dan, you are just a tad bit older (smile) than I am because I don't recall "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis"; I haven't even laid eyes on it anywhere in the vastness of ComcastLand (not saying it's not there, I just haven't come across it).  It sounds cool, though..I'll try to find it. NV

Like you, Bob Denver will always be Maynard G. Krebs to me. Though I watched Gilligan as a kid, I never related Denver to any other character but Maynard. Loved saying "work!". Still do.
"Dobie" was a great show, giving starts to the likes of Warren Beatty and Tuesday Weld. 
Oh well, see ya, Maynard. Keep the bongos goin'.