Before Bob Denver got stranded on Gilligan's Island, he played Maynard G. Krebs, the beatnik buddy of Dobie Gillis on the TV comedy "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis" that aired from 1959 to 1963. As part of the marketing campaign for the show, 20th Century Fox Television and ad agency Selby-Lake Inc created a delightful booklet to help squares understand Maynard's hipster rap. Take a sip below. (It's a nice complement to the classic 1992 "grunge speak" prank Sub Pop Records' Megan Jasper pulled on the New York Times.)
From Indiana University's Lilly Library:
"Denver wrote, in Gilligan, Maynard, and Me (1993), that 'This was the late fifties and beatniks were the funkiest things around.' To prepare for his role, he went 'to coffeehouses in L.A. where beatniks hung out' and 'listened to their beat poetry and jargon.' This was early television, and Denver thought that 'not too many of the writers knew what a beatnik was like,' so he was allowed to invent his character.
Dig it:
(via Weird Universe)
