James Darren, a legendary actor who played the main role TJ Hooker and Star Trekdied Monday at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, via The Hollywood Reporter. He was 88 years old.
Darren was born in Philadelphia in 1936 and studied with Stella Adler in New York before becoming a pop idol as a teenager. This led to surfer roles opposite Sandra Dee in the original Gidget (1959) and a young soldier in the classic Weapons of Navarone (1961).
Darren's son, Jim Moret, said his father went to Cedars-Sinai for an aortic valve replacement, but doctors deemed him too weak for the surgery. Darren was sent home over the weekend but quickly returned when his condition worsened. However, Moret did not believe that his father's time had come. She was surprised to learn that he died in his sleep on Monday.
“I always thought she would make it,” Moret said, “because she was so cool. It was always cool.”
Darren continued to cultivate his teen idol image Gidget is going to Hawaii (1961) and Gidget goes to Rome (1963) and as the voice of Yogi Bear in the animated character's 1964 film Hi, this is Yogi Bear! He was the headliner of the short-lived but memorable ABC adventure series The Time Tunnel (1967), but when his Hollywood career stalled briefly, Darren followed many of his contemporaries into Italian exploitation cinema and starred in Franco's 1969 erotic thriller Jesus. Venus in a fur coat.
In the 1980s, Darren returned to Hollywood as Heather Locklear's ill-prepared partner. TJ Hooker. He also took on directing duties in many popular shows of the era, among others Hunter, Silk Stalkingsand Melrose Place. From 1998 to '99, Darren appeared in eight episodes Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
The actor's last film role, the first in 39 years, was in John Carroll Lynch's 2017 film. Luckyan existential drama starring Harry Dean Stanton and David Lynch. Darren played one of Stanton's bar buddies, who records the film's central sequence.
Moret said that in her later years, her father took great pleasure in interacting with fans of Gidget's character and pop music career. “He was a good person. He was very talented,” Moret said. “He was forever young.”
Darren is survived by his wife, Evy; sons Jim Moret, Christian Darren and Tony Darren; and five grandchildren.