See how the characters stack up:

Dobie: Archie

Maynard: Jughead

Zelda: Betty

Thalia: Veronica

Chatsworth: Reggie

What do you guys think???

I don't know about that. There was a novel, first. [ I have to post this BBC item, just in case the original article expires. It's a GOOD one: ]
http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/guide/articles/m/manylovesofdobie_7774210.shtml
The Many Loves Of Dobie Gillis
USA, CBS (Martin Manulis Productions/20th Century-Fox), Sitcom, b/w, 1959
Starring: Dwayne Hickman, Frank Faylen, Florida Friebus
One of the most discussed and influential early American sitcoms is scarcely known in Britain (see footnote). The Many Loves Of Dobie Gillis - aka simply Dobie Gillis - was the first US TV show to see the world through a teenager's eyes. It was a sitcom that depicted the lives and thoughts of teenagers at a time when, by and large, America was not yet ready to give them their voice. The characters were boldly new, it broke rules and was even surreal in places. It wasn't outstandingly funny, and it won't feature in many all-time-favourites lists, but it scored several firsts.

The show was based on a novel by the humorist and satirist Max Shulman, which in 1953 was made into a musical feature film, The Affairs Of Dobie Gillis, starring Bobby Van. At this point Dobie was a college student, but TV knocked a few years off his age so that he was about 16. (The actor who played him, Dwayne Hickman, was 25 when the show began.) In the words of the signature tune, Dobie 'wants a gal who's dreamy, wants a gal who's creamy, wants a gal to call his own' - he's girl-hungry (but still virginal, this being 1959) and he has also realised that his father, Herbert, has worked hard all his life and for what? - a grocery store. (Herbert and Dobie's mother, Winnie, run Gillis Groceries in the quiet backwater town Central City, and the family live over the shop.) Dobie's horizons are set on a wider plain: he wants a beautiful woman by his side and a wallet permanently stuffed with bank notes, although how he intends to derive such wealth he does not know.

A perpetual dreamer and romantic, Dobie drools over the ultra sexy but materialistic Thalia Menninger (played by Tuesday Weld), who wants to find him a job that will earn him 'oodles and oodles of money' in order, she says, to improve the lot of her struggling family. Unfortunately for Dobie, he is regularly frustrated by fellow schoolboy Milton Armitage, who seems to steal away all of Dobie's favourite girls from under his nose. (When Milton left the show - the actor, the as yet unknown Warren Beatty, quit, claiming that the role was absurd - he was replaced by a similar figure, Chatsworth Osborne Jr, who did likewise. Bizarrely, Doris Packer, who had played Milton's mother Clarice, was re-cast as Chatsworth's mother, Clarissa.) It is Zelda Gilroy, however, who desperately wants to be married to Dobie, and who finally (viewers learned in a pair of sequels) got her man.

While Dobie is a scrubbed, crew-cut, red-blooded, fun-loving, non-smoking, non-drinking all-American boy, his buddy Maynard (played by Bob Denver) is a beatnik, with a goatee beard and sweatshirt, who thinks fast, speaks loose ('daddy-o') and shudders when someone mentions the word 'work' in his presence. Maynard is a surrealist who abides by values and a wacky creed hitherto unseen on American television. Dobie and Maynard are in the same class at school and, despite all their differences, they permanently hang out together.

The show had several unusual aspects. Many of the cast, especially the youngsters, employed a slightly staccato way of talking. The key father-son relationship of Dobie and Herbert was different to typical sitcoms: it was rocky and they even yelled at one another, usually because Dobie wanted his father to lend (give) him money, but Herbert - who did not necessarily know best - was a tightwad and wouldn't part with a cent. Herbert frequently called Dobie 'a bum' when he refused to perform particular in-store chores. Dobie spoke straight to camera - the audience at home - and when the time came for him to receive his compulsory American-sitcom moral lesson, he delivered it upon himself, in front of Rodin's statue the Thinker in the Central City park, in the same pose: crouching, fist tucked under chin. Some sitcom clichés remained, however: episodes were full of people telling frustrating, easy fibs instead of revealing possibly uncomfortable truths, and, as the episode count soared, dramatic changes in the storyline were introduced to inject fresh impetus - in the 1961-62 season Dobie and Maynard enlisted in the army, where they were well out of place and the episodes suffered accordingly, and in 1962-63 they enrolled in college. Apart from the sequels, this was as far as The Many Loves Of Dobie Gillis went.

Big names of the future abounded in the show. Warren Beatty and Tuesday Weld became movie stars, Bob Denver went on to star in Gilligan's Island and the recurring small-role players Jo Anne Worley, Jack Albertson and Ron Howard made their names in Rowan And Martin's Laugh-In, Chico And The Man, and Happy Days respectively. The one man whose career stalled after Dobie Gillis was Dwayne Hickman - he never again appeared in any regular shows, and after the guest spots more or less dried up he went behind the cameras with an executive position at CBS, resurfacing most notably to appear in a pair of Dobie Gillis sequels.

A one-off special, Whatever Happened To Dobie Gillis? (actually a pilot that failed to be promoted to a full series), screened by CBS on 10 May 1977, showed Dobie, now 40, in partnership with his father in the grocery business. Dobie is married to Zelda and they have a 16-year-old son, Georgie, at high school, while Maynard has become a successful businessman. This was followed by a two-hour CBS TV movie, Bring Me The Head Of Dobie Gillis, aired on 21 February 1988, again intended as the springboard for a revival of a weekly half-hour series - and failing. In this, Dobie and Zelda run the store and Georgie attends high school (he had obviously stopped ageing for the last 11 years). Unless death ruled them out, all of the key actors from the 1959-63 show returned to resume their roles, except Warren Beatty and Tuesday Weld; Connie Stevens played Thalia.


Note. Despite its cult status in the USA, The Many Loves Of Dobie Gillis was never screened at the time on British television. One episode was shown within BBC2's themed One Day In The 60s extravaganza, however, broadcast day-long on August Bank Holiday 1993.


[ You ought to read Dwayne Hickman's autobiography. It's a good one. ]
This has some stuff, theme song lyrics.
http://www.tvtome.com/tvtome/servlet/ShowMainServlet/showid-790/

When the series began, Milton Armitage (Warren Beatty) fell into the role most like Reggie -- he was a direct rival of Dobie's for Thalia's attention. And Reggie was known as "Archie's Rival."

Chatsworth reminds me somewhat of Richie Rich, published by Harvey Comics for years.

There was some hostility between Dobie and Milton, just as with Archie and Reggie -- while I seldom really saw that between Dobie and Chatsworth.

Zelda reminds me more of Midge than Betty. :lol:

Dobie might have been inspired by Archie but I certainly don't think it was a rip off of it. It's a wonderful show! And I didn't realize there was a book but I do have a Dobie Gillis comic book that was my dad's.

Dobie might have been inspired by Archie but I certainly don't think it was a rip off of it. It's a wonderful show! And I didn't realize there was a book but I do have a Dobie Gillis comic book that was my dad's.

I've read the book The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis...no surprise there. :lol: Many of the first season episodes are based on the short stories in the book. One big difference though is that Dobie is in college in the book and highschool when the series begins. However, as the series progresses it obviously doesn't follow the book anymore.

I never thought of it being similar to The Archie Comics. I have, however heard that the cartoon Scooby Doo was based on Dobie Gillis. Hmmmm? I guess you never know what will inspire something else.

Yes -- Mark Evanier has confirmed that Scooby-Doo's human characters were based on Dobie and friends. Probably the most obvious are Dobie/Freddy and Maynard/Shaggy.

Yes -- Mark Evanier has confirmed that Scooby-Doo's human characters were based on Dobie and friends. Probably the most obvious are Dobie/Freddy and Maynard/Shaggy.
I think the Velma/Zelda comparison is pretty obvious too! So is the Daphne/Thalia connection.

This was definitely a ripoff of The Archie comics. I used to read the comics as a kid and as soon as I saw this felt like it was a live action version of the Archies. I know that it's based on a novel but that doesn't mean much, as the author could've just based his characters on the comics.