Landing a movie role that had been earmarked for Elvis Presley; being spoofed on The Flintstones; mobbed regularly by teenage girls – all proof that the singer and actor James Darren, who has died aged 88, was briefly a pop-culture phenomenon.
He first made his mark in a “beach party” movie – the archaic genre that showed teenagers frolicking in the sand to pop music for 90 minutes or so, with a perfunctory light-hearted or romantic narrative attached. The craze, which lasted for much of the 1960s, is generally agreed to have begun with Gidget (1959), starring Sandra Dee as Francine, a Malibu teenager who shows minimal interest in boys until she is rescued from the ocean by the surfer Moondoggie. She then falls in with his beach buddies (who nickname her “Gidget”, a combination of “girl” and “midget”) while falling in love with him.
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