Actor-singer James Darren, known for Gidget and T.J. Hooker, died on Monday, September 2, 2024. His son, Jim Moret, announced that Darren needed an aortic valve replacement and passed before the surgery could be done. He was 88 years old.

Darren was a former teen idol and pop singer who played surfer Moondoggie in Gidget movies and starred in T.J. Hooker as officer James Corrigan.

Darren was born James William Ercolani on June 8, 1936, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He studied acting with Stella Adler in New York and made his acting debut in Rumble on the Docks as a high school aged gang member. Some of his early roles included Operation Mad Ball, The Brothers Rico, The Tijuana Story, and Gunman’s Walk.

The Gidget movies – 1959’s Gidget, 1961’s Gidget Goes Hawaiian, and 1963’s Gidget Goes to Rome – turned him into a teen idol. Darren made audiences swoon by singing in those movies, which became a trend in his early films like All the Young Men, Diamond Head, Under the Yum Yum Tree, and For Those Who Think Young.

As a singer, Darren’s “Goodbye Cruel World” reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 list in ’61, then a year later, he had another Top 10 song with “Her Royal Majesty.” In the early ‘70s, he sang and was the straight man in a lounge show act with comedian Buddy Hackett. He sang again in the late ‘90s during a multi-episode stint on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as a holographic lounge singer.

Darren starred in The Gene Krupa Story, Let No Man Write My Epitaph, The Guns of Navarone, The Lively Set, Venus in Furs, and he played doctor and electronics whiz Tony Newman in The Time Tunnel TV series.

In 1986, he made his directorial debut on T.J. Hooker, then went on to direct episodes of Hunter, Silk Stalkings, Melrose Place, Werewolf, The A-Team, and Beverly Hills, 90210.

He was on Melrose Place (reuniting with T.J. Hooker costar Heather Locklear), and following many years out of show business, he returned in 2017 to star in Lucky.