Original title
The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis
Released
9/29/1959
Origin country
US
Genre
Comedy
Production companies
20th Century Fox Television, Martin Manulis Productions
Status
Ended
Number of seasons
4
Number of episodes
147
The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis is an American sitcom that aired on CBS from 1959 to 1963. The series and several episode scripts were adapted from a 1951 collection of short stories of the same name, written by Max Shulman, who had also written a feature film adaptation of his short stories for MGM in 1953, The Affairs of Dobie Gillis. The series revolved around the life of teenager/young adult Dobie Gillis, who, along with his best friend, beatnik Maynard G. Krebs, struggles against the forces of his life - high school, the military, college, and his parents - as he aspires to attain both wealth and dates with girls. The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis was produced by Martin Manulis Productions in association with 20th Century Fox Television. Creator Shulman also wrote the theme song in collaboration with Lionel Newman.
This pilot episode was trimmed down and run as the first episode of season 1.
Dobie and Maynard conspire to rig the raffle at the local movie theatre so that Dobie can win enough money to take Thalia to the prom.
Dobie competes with Milton Armitage to see whose wardrobe can impress Thalia the most.
Thalia urges Dobie to become a doctor, but he meets Zelda Gilroy and learns about the scientific concept of propinquity, the psychological tendency for people to form relationships with those whom they encounter often.
Dobie's older brother Davey convinces him to invent an affair with a married woman to impress a new girl in school.
Maynard gets drafted.
After a throat operation, Dobie can sing better than Milton, thus attracting Thalia.
Dobie tries to earn $6 to take Thalia to the Junior Prom.
Before the big football game, Dobie hatches a scheme for winning by stealing the opposing mascot.
Dobie is up against Milton to be leading man in a school play.
Dobie falls for Poppy Herming but has to win her father's approval too.
Dobie thinks everyone has forgotten his birthday.
Mr. Gillis is driven crazy by all the Christian celebrations, and almost spends the holidays in jail.
Herbert seeks free advice from a child psychiologist.
Mr. and Mrs. Gillis take in a young and handsome border from South America.
Dobie runs against Milton for junior class president. Thalia is Dobie's campaign manager.
Dobie becomes Top Fist by knocking out the legendary Moose. Milton tries to gain the title and Thaila's affections by challenging Dobie.
Dobie goes on a hunger strike until Thalia agrees to be his.
Dobie falls for trapeze artist Aphrodite Millican,.
Thalia talks Dobie's parents into sending him to Willoughby prep school.
In order to win Thaila from Chatsworth, Dobie reads a book on mental power so he can be the dominating man Thalia wants.
Dobie and Maynard are puzzled when a rumor they spread about Zelda inheriting a fortune seems to become reality.
Thalia tries to educate Dobie in logical thinking.
Maynard gives a chicken an overdose of growth hormones as a biology class project .
Dobie and a girl friend take a baby-sitting job. However, the Gillies suspect Dobie is secretly a father.
Dobie, Maynard, and Thalia capture a crooked dry-cleaner who had almost conned them before.
Dobie and most of his friends reluctantly participate in a talent show.
Doblie's dad wants him to romance a banker's daughter so he can get a loan.
Dobie wants to prove he's grownup, so he moves into a small apartment with Maynard.
Thalia hatches a scheme for Dobie to sell sandwiches at the school picnic.
Dobie, Maynard, and Chatsworth must all share the same tuxedo to get in to a black-tie party at the Armitage mansion.
Herbert worries about what will happen to the store after he's gone.
Dobie and Chatsworth complete for the attention of a shoe store owner's daughter in order to get a job at the store.
Dobie's newest girlfriend's father happens to be opening a new grocery store. Mr. Gillis tries to spy under the name Fred C. Dobbs.
Maynard falls for a French girl and shaves off his goatee.
Dobie falls for an older nurse and feigns a disease so he can be near her.
Dobie's new date's father turns out to be a cop with whom he had a disagreement about picking flowers in the park.
A discouraged Dobie finally gives up on finding his dream girl and agrees to marry Zelda.
Dobie finds a girl who doesn't care about money, until her younger sister starts going on finance dates with a richer boy.
Dobie lies about joining the navy to impress a girl's sea-mined father.
Dobie joins the school band solely to be close to piccolo player Esme Lauterbach, who is interested in Maynard.
Maynard enters Dobie's old school essay My Dog in a newspaper Father's Day contest, but changes it to My Dad.
Maynard finds an abandoned baby in the park.
Thelonius Monk comes to town and invites Maynard to sit in on bongos. But Herbert needs a favor which will require Dobie and Maynard to switch identities.
Maynard has temporary ESP, which will allow him to predict the winner of the Kennedy-Nixon presidential election.
Maynard takes a job selling clock-statues at an army surplus store.
Maynard finds a purse full of cash.
Dobie and Maynard help a classmate to not drop out of school.
Zelda helps Dobie build a hot rod so that he can impress a girl by beating Chatsworth in a car race.
Dobie choses going to a huge Christmas party with Chatsworth rather than a small one with Maynard and feels guilty enough to have a Scrooge-like dream.
Dobie meets a pretty fatalistically morose French girl who savors the negative things in life. She thinks Dobie is an oaf and Dobie hates her bleak attitude. Yet, she keeps coming around.
All the teachers come down with the flu and parents have to take over the classes.
A lion escapes from a zoo and becomes attached to Maynard.
In order to graduate, Dobie and Maynard must write an essay on the subject of Whither Are We Drifting?
Dobie tries to get his father to spend more time with Mrs. Gillis.
Maynard is convinced that he is dragging Dobie down in life so he tries to antagonize Dobie into ending their friendship.
Zelda decides she's tired of being rejected by Dobie and turns her attentions to Chatsworth.
Dobie, Maynard and Zelda think an old Central High star athlete is a bum, while he is actually a big executive.
Winnie wins a date with Hollywood starlet Merilee Maribou and gives the prize to Dobie.
It's Dobie's graduation and Herbert, feeling embrassed that he never graduated, goes to night school to earn his diploma.
Dobie and Maynard, out of high school, don't know what to do with themselves and seek professional help. In the end they decide to enlist in the army.
Herbert, Winifred and Zelda reminisce as Dobie and Maynard prepare to leave for the army.
Maynard misses the bus on his first day in the Army, but Chatsworth fills him in for him.
Being put in charge of his squad's barracks goes to Dobie's head and his friendship with Maynard suffers.
Despite opposition from his mother, Chatsworth decides to join Dobie and Maynard in the Army.
The Army orders Maynard to shave off his beard.
Maynard and a chimp get launched into space.
Dobie's mother becomes jealous when she learns that the attractive widowed mother of Dobie's latest girlfriend is an old flame of Mr. Gillis.
Dobie tries to improve Maynard's confidence with girls.
Dobie gets cast in the army play and while in costume, leads an army officer's daughter to believe he is an army official.
Dobie and Maynard get weekend passes, but Zelda has been telling all the girls back home that she and Dobie are engaged.
Dobie exaggerates his dad's war record to impress a girl from a long military family.
Zelda invents a secret engagement to try and impress some sorority girls.
Dobie and Maynard organize a tribute to Mr. Pomfritt, hoping to convince him not to leave Central High.
Dobie, Maynard, and Zelda believe that the store's beautiful blonde next patron is secretly an alien.
Offended by what he sees a laxity in today's army, ex-sergeant Herbert Gillis puts his son's squad through some rugged training exercises before they graduate.
Dobie and Maynard get their honorable discharges from the army and decides to go to college.
Zelda competes with a beautifull college girl for Dobie's affections.
Maynard sues after getting his hand struck in the store's gumball machine.
Dobie and Zelda worry they are genetically inferior and thus doomed to failure like the loser rat in their biology class experiments.
Maynard becomes the most sought-after date because no girl's boyfriend would be jealous of him.
Dobie wants to study Egyptology, but Mr. Gillis thinks Dobie only has a crush on the teacher.
Maynard predicts the end of the world.
A larcenous rodent is stealing from Mr. Pomfritt's desk, but Maynard and Dobie get blamed.
Dobie finds he has to share his new date, a tender-hearted girl, with another boy on each date he takes her on.
Inspired by Robert Browning's assertion that a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Dobie goes after an unattainable girl, putting his relationship with Zelda at risk.
Maynard gives the class's Christmas funds to a poor Mexican family.
Dobie and his girlfriend have to babysit for a college football player's kids and he ends up having to fill in for him during the game.
Dobie runs against Chatsworth for student council.
Herbert is running for mayor and Dobie falls in love with his opponent's daughter.
Chatsworth wants Mr. Gillis to teach him to be more responsible.
Mr. Gillis decides to sell the store.
Doibie and Maynard stow away on a boat headed for South America. Dobie wants to get away from Zelda, but she follows them.
Maynard goes out with a female version of himself. Dobie thinks she should act more feminine. When she realizes it's fun to be feminine, Maynard gets scared away.
When Dobie's psychology class teaches him about the many benefits of marriage, he decides it's time to marry Zelda.
To impress a girl, Dobie invests more than he should in his economics class project. He buys stock in an egg company and ends up with a room full of eggs.
When Dobie wants to join an exclusive fraternity, Mr. Gillis bribes members to accept him.
Dobie and Maynard help Dr. Burkhart establish a center for disadvantaged kids. Maynard wins over the little delinquents by talking to them at their own level.
Dobie tries to convince Maynard that he is not going to fall for any more money-mad girls, but then a successful college dropout shows up on campus and asks Dobie and Mr. Pomfritt to come work for her as salesmen.
When his latest girlfriend tells him to change his silly name, Dobie learns that he is named after a Noble Prize winner.
In order to get good enough grades to follow his latest heartthrob to Harvard, Dobie must cheat on an exam to pass his poetry class.
Maynard decides to always speak the truth, upsetting all his friends in the process.
Maynard writes an article for the school newspaper about a primitive dance demonstration in his anthropology class, but takes his cue from tabloid writing and makes it sound like an orgy.
When their biology professor discovers that Maynard can track missing objects by their smell, Maynard becomes a Private Nose.
Maynard moves away and Dobie misses him greatly.
Dobie and Maynard take jobs as waiters at a soronity house party.
Maynard discovers a prehistoric throwback living in a cave and decides to move in with him
Chatsworth's cousin Edwina is tired of society life. She wants Maynard to show her how to live the simple life.
When Dobie tries to impress a girl who expects complete honesty, he as well as his dad and Maynard get arrested for trying to reverse a fixed parking ticket.
Winnie goes to visit her sister in Cleveland, leaving Herbert and Dobie to enjoy the bliss of bachelorhood for a week on their own.
Dobie's old nemesis Butch Baumgartner, now the army's heavyweight boxing champ, is coming home and the word is that he is coming to knock Dobie's brains out.
Dobie gets a job at a lumber company and dates the boss's daughter, although he already has a girlfriend.
Maynard saves a suicidal jumper but falls from the ledge himself and is taken to a psycho ward.
Dobie names Thaila as his beneficiary on a life insurance policy, then becomes paranoid that she and Maynard are trying to kill him.
Mrs. Gillis's cousin Virgil visits and gets the Gillises to supply him with all he needs for a singing engagement.
On a class trip to an African jungle, Dobie is captured by a tribe of cannibals.
Dobie's teenage cousin Duncan moves in with the Gillises and tells Dobie's girlfriend that Dobie needs help for a drinking problem.
Dobie joins the football squad to impress a girl, but only succeeds in making her big bruiser boyfriend jealous.
Duncan and Maynard don't realize they loaded up the Gillis Grocery delivery truck with a case of nitroglycerin.
Dobie pretends to be terminaly ill to gain a girl's sympathy. However, due to a mixup, Dobie is led to believe he's really in poor health.
An older woman teaches Duncan how to be rotten to succeed in the world so he'll be able to provide for her younger sister. But meanwhile the younger sister is falling for nice, honest Dobie.
Dobie and Maynard train a mynah bird to help them with their history exam.
Maynard and Duncan accidentally lock Mr. Gillis in the meat freezer, and think they've killed him.
To avoid failing an upcoming test that will cause him to flunk out of school, Maynard drinks a potion that is supposed to turn him into a genius, but ends up transforming him into a monster.
To cure Maynard of his childish belief in Santa Claus, Mr. Gillis climbs down the chimney on Christmas Eve and gets stuck.
Duncan gets a role in a visiting production of William Tell and falls for a young opera star, unaware she has a jealous boyfriend.
Dobie falls for a kitchenware heiress and wants to impress her by selling one of the man's Quickie-Cookers.
Performing at Pryor College, the Lettermen hire Dobie as an emergency replacement singer.
A fugitive criminal and his girlfriend hold up the Gillises in the store. Maynard arrives and complicates the situation.
Dobie is the new DJ on the college radio station. A mobster tries to give him payola to make his country-singer girlfriend a star.
Chatsworth pays Dobie to take his place at a fancy dinner with old friends of the family, whose daughter he remembers as being particularly ugly.
Dobie falls for brainy a Russian ballerina and solicits Zelda's aid to improve his grades. When that fails, he ends up dancing outside her window.
Maynard and Herbert get struck in one of those finger toys just as Mr. Gillis is about to leave for a grocer's convention.
When a foreign student likes Dobie because he is simple-minded, Zelda decides to teach him how to improve his memory
When Chatsworth's family goes broke, he gets Maynard and Duncan to help him raise money claiming it is charity for a needy family.
The song-analyzing qualities of a computer are transfered to Maynard, and cousin Virgil uses his ability to predict hit songs to become a singing star.
A test chimpanzee is doomed unless Maynard can show that he is more talented than he seems.
Thrown out by his mother, Chatsworth moves in with the Gillises for a while.
Maynard doubles for a Latin American general while on vacation.
Staying overnight at the Osbourne mansion with Dobie and his new girlfriend, Maynard is suspected of stealing jewelry from their safe when he is found sleepwalking.
A teenage celebrity's dog is lost and Dobie tries to find it.
Zelda is tired of being rejected by Dobie, while Maynard realizes that no other woman would put up with him.
Maynard temporarily gains super-strength. Mr. Gillis becomes his prize fighting manager.
On a trip to Washington DC with the Gillises, Maynard gets mistaken for a rocket scientist and sought by foreign spies for his secret fuel formula.
Maynard guides a fellow student to become a singing sensation, then ponders if he should step aside when a big-time agent wants to take her on.
Dobie falls in love with a girl at school, but family tradition prevents her from marrying until a match can be found for her older sister.
A chemical concoction makes Maynard irresistible to women.
Desperate for date money, Dobie figuratively sells his soul to Chatsworth and agrees to fix the outcome of a $5,000 charity raffle.
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