Before ‘The Many Loves Of Dobie Gillis’ was a silly TV show, ‘The Affairs Of Dobie GIllis’ was a silly musical movie. (Before that it was a series of silly stories by Max Shulman who was responsible for all the silliness. He must have a made mega-ton of money from his silly creation.) Above I’ve posted a charming number from the 1953 MGM musical version. Note that it’s in black and white, highly unusual for an MGM musical of this time. I suspect that it’s because it was too silly a project to waste color on. The best thing is of course the presence of Bob Fosse–he’s the one in the group who can actually dance. All the signature Fosse moves are on display in this very early appearance. The females are Debbie Reynolds and Barbara Ruick–why didn’t someone at the studio change her clumsy, unattractive last name? The other male dancer is Bobby Van. In the 1970s Van and his wife Elaine Joyce were frequent guests on an afternoon game show called ‘Tattletales’, hosted by Bert Convy. For some ungodly reason, I was quite addicted to the show–it came on at 3PM, just as I was getting home from school and kicked off the marathon four-hour back-to-back TV watching stint that I happily indulged in every day. (I took the 7 to 8 Pm hour off to pretend to do homework and then plunged back into the 8 o’clock movie which I usually fell asleep in front of). Anyway, here’s the point. In late 1979, when I was fourteen, I tagged along with my parents to a weekend open-house show-biz party somewhere in west LA. It was an afternoon gathering and I wandered around checking out the vaguely familiar faces–it was by no means an A-list events but I did recognize one important face; Bobby Van was in the playroom playing pool by himself. I wandered in, introduced myself and told him how much I liked him on ‘Tattletales’. He was very nice and started showing me fancy pool-shooting tricks. He even attempted to teach me a few. and I believe we played a game. He was a good guy. A couple of months later I heard that the friendly, chipper fellow I’d played pool with had died of a suddenly diagnosed brain tumor. Bobby Van was my first real “here today gone tomorrow” lesson. Jesus. Anyway, enjoy the show…