Gidget - "Independence Gidget Style" - 05:00 am Saturday, December 20 on WZME MeTV+

Don Porter (Actor) .. Prof. Russ Lawrence

Born: January 01, 1912
Died: February 11, 1997

Trivia: After a few seasons of stage work, Don Porter signed a Universal Pictures contract in 1939. Porter spent most of his screen time at Universal as a general-purpose actor: he was most interestingly cast in Abbott and Costello's Who Done It? (1942), energetically participating in the film's slapstick climax. In the postwar years, Porter played many a stuffed-shirt businessman, often with a few illegal irons in the fire. On television, he played Ann Sothern's eternally flummoxed boss, theatrical agent Peter Sands, in the long-running (1953-57) sitcom Private Secretary (aka Susie). When Sothern decided to make a few alterations in her subsequent Ann Sothern Show(1958-61), she brought in her old friend and colleague Porter to play another boss, hotelier James Devery. In 1963, Porter was cast as Gidget's dad Mr. Lawrence in the theatrical feature Gidget Goes to Rome (1963); this led to his being recast in the same role on the 1965 TV version of Gidget starring Sally Field. One of Porter's more rewarding post-Gidget assignments was the part of the teflon-coated Republican incumbent in Robert Redford's The Candidate. Don Porter was married to actress Peggy Converse. Porter passed away in Los Angeles at age 84.

Lynette Winter (Actor) .. Larue

Richard Bull (Actor) .. Maitre D'

Born: June 26, 1924
Died: February 03, 2014
Birthplace: Zion, Illinois

Trivia: In films from the mid-'60s, American actor Richard Bull was seen in The Satan Bug (1965), The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), Secret Life of an American Wife (1969), Newman's Law (1971), and several other major Hollywood productions. Many of these roles were bits or atmosphere characters: guards, policemen, and the like. Television afforded Bull larger character roles, especially in the sitcom field. Within a ten-year period (1964-1974), he guested on Gidget, Family Affair, Gomer Pyle, USMC, The Andy Griffith Show, My 3 Sons, Room 222, and Bewitched (as pilgrim John Alden in a "flashback" episode). He also had a recurring role as a ship's doctor on the mid-'60s fantasy weekly Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. From 1974 through 1982, Richard Bull played store proprietor Nels Oleson, the even-tempered, long-suffering husband of overbearing Harriet Oleson on Little House on the Prairie. Bull continued to appear in films and episodes of TV shows until his death in 2014 at age 89.

Viola Harris (Actor) .. Miss Conway

Born: July 05, 1926

Rickie Sorenson (Actor) .. Boy Surfer

Died: August 25, 1994

Trivia: Rickie Sorenson was a child star of the late '50s and early '60s; while he did appear in a couple of feature films, he was primarily a television actor. He first acted in a failed pilot for a Tarzan television series that was eventually compiled with two other unsuccessful Tarzan pilots, all starring Gordon Scott, and released as Tarzan and the Trappers (1958). Sorenson played the jungle boy Tantu. From 1961 to 1962, he played Tommy Banks in the television sitcom Father of the Bride. He later guest starred occasionally on other series. In 1963, Sorenson voiced the character Wart in Disney's animated feature The Sword in the Stone.

Carol Ann Williams (Actor) .. 1st Girl

Celeste Yarnall (Actor) .. 2nd Girl

Born: January 01, 1946

Trivia: The only child of a Navy Commander, American actress Celeste Yarnell was given her first name because (as the actress told TV Guide in 1968) her mother thought she was "celestial." Cashing in early on her cool-blonde beauty, Yarnell was the last winner of the Miss Rheingold crown (the contest was sponsored by a New York-based brewery), a fashion model, and a bit actress in the years before she met her future husband, Sheldon Silverstein, at a Hollywood party. Silverstein became her manager and schemed to turn his new client into the next Raquel Welch by squiring her around at the Cannes Film Festival. The result was a slew of magazine cover appearances and the starring role in a British-Spanish "nudie" jungle movie titled Eve (1968), which showed Yarnell's physical attributes, if not her acting skills, to good advantage. She later appeared in Live a Little, Love a Little (1968) opposite Elvis Presley, but the bulk of Yarnell's work in the late '60s was on TV shows like It Takes a Thief, Land of the Giants, and Star Trek. Yarnell never truly got past the "This Year's Blonde" stage, and by the '70s was being featured in blood-spattered horror pictures and Philippine-made adventure quickies. Like many former starlets, Celeste Yarnell left the business for the more financially rewarding -- and less exploitative -- world of real estate.

Gidget: Independence Gidget Style

05:00 am - 05:30 am, Saturday, December 20 on WZME MeTV+ (43.2)

Independence Gidget Style

Season 1, Episode 26