How To Win Dates and Influence the Dobie Gillis Type


In November of 1959 TV Guide published this article of teenage dating advice written by Mrs. Enid Haupt, then editor of SEVENTEEN Magazine. The article is as idiotic as its premise so we won't bore you with Mrs. Haupt's inane pronouncements about not being overly competitive, overly intellectual, overly helpless or overly anything else. But we do think you might enjoy Dobie's response:

And Now A Word From Our Male

by DOBIE GILLIS (as told to Max Shulman)

I would like to say that I have read Mrs. Haupt's article about girls with considerable interest, because it so happens that I am considerably interested in girls, as you may know if you have been watching me on CBS every Tuesday night. To me the most wonderful things in the world are girls -- beautiful, soft, creamy, lovely, round, white, pink, brown and blue (their eyes, I mean) girls, and I love them with every aching corpuscle. . . .

Mrs. Haupt is almost as big an expert on girls as I am, and I am glad to say that I agree 100% with her conclusions. The kind of girl Mrs. Haupt describes is exactly the kind of girl I am looking for -- a girl who is sweet, intelligent, modest, friendly, considerate and kind to small weak objects like kittens, puppies and me.

If I can't find such a girl, then I will settle for a girl who is fairly sweet, moderately intelligent, medium modest, partially friendly, generally considerate and occasionally kind to small, weak objects like kittens, puppies and me.

In fact, I might even settle for a girl who is mean, rotten, shrill, hateful, and kicks me on sight. The important thing is I've got to have a girl. But I'm never going to have a girl because to get a girl you need money, and to get money you need to work, and how are you going to work if you spend all your time chasing girls?


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