Description
Several years before he was marooned on an “uncharted desert isle” with six other “stranded castaways” bound on a fateful “three hour tour,” Bob Denver (1935–2005) portrayed Maynard G. Krebs, the preeminent TV beatnik. Krebs was a patch-bearded, jazz-loving, bongo-playing, work-averse hepcat who counterbalanced the clean-cut, hopelessly romantic title character (portrayed by Dwayne Hickman) in the sitcom The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, which aired on CBS from 1959 to 1963.
Denver’s character was a playful, unthreatening caricature of rebellious societal dropouts—a Kerouac for prime time. Krebs and other fictional Hollywood beats served to normalize and commodify beat culture (which would soon be passé, supplanted by hippies and psychedelia). TV viewers embraced Krebs, whose popularity and durability eclipsed every other character on the show, including Gillis, who never achieved the iconic stature of his “non-conformist” sidekick.
A question sometimes asked is what did “G” stand for? The Trivial Pursuit answer is “Walter”— Maynard’s aunt. As Krebs explained, his mother “didn’t spell too good.”