LOS ANGELES — LOS ANGELES (AP) — James Darren, a teen idol who helped fuel the surfing craze as a charismatic beach boy in the 1960s and starred opposite Sandra Dee in the hit movie “Gidget,” died Monday at age 88.

Darren died in his sleep at a Los Angeles hospital, his son Jim Moret told news outlets.

Moret told The Hollywood Reporter that Darren was scheduled to have an aortic valve replacement, but was too weak for the surgery. “I always thought he would pull through,” his son told the entertainment industry, “because he was so cool. He was always cool.”

In his long career, Darren acted, sang, and built a successful career behind the scenes as a television director, directing episodes of such well-known series as “Beverly Hills 90210” and “Melrose Place.” In the 1980s, he played Officer Jim Corrigan on the TV police series “TJ Hooker.”

But to young movie fans of the late 1950s, he might best be remembered as Moondoggie, the dark-haired surfer in the 1959 hit “Gidget.” Dee played the lead role, a feisty Southern Californian who heads to the beach and eventually falls in love with Moondoggie.

“I was in love with Sandra,” Darren later recalled. “I thought she was absolutely perfect as Gidget. She had enormous charm.”

The film was based on a novel written by Californian Frederick Kohner about his own teenage daughter, which sparked an interest in surfing and influenced pop music, slang, and even fashion.

For Darren, his success with teenage fans led to a recording contract, as it did for many young actors at the time, including Tab Hunter and Annette Funicello. Two of Darren’s singles, “Goodbye Cruel World” and “Her Royal Majesty,” reached the Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. (“Goodbye Cruel World” also appeared in Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical 2022 film, “The Fabelmans.”) Other singles included “Gidget” and “Angel Face.”

Darren was the only “Gidget” cast member to appear in both sequels, 1961’s “Gidget Goes Hawaiian” and 1963’s “Gidget Goes to Rome.” Dee was replaced by Deborah Walley in the second film and Cindy Carol in the third. (“Gidget” later became a television show, launching the career of Sally Field.)

“They had me under contract; I was a prisoner,” Darren told Entertainment Weekly in 2004. “But with those beautiful young ladies, it was the best prison I think I’ll ever be in.”

As a contract player with Columbia Studios, Darren also appeared in adult films including “The Brothers Rico,” “Operation Meatball” and “The Guns of Navarone.”

By the mid-1960s, when Darren appeared in “For Those Who Think Young” and “The Lively Set,” his big-screen acting career was all but over. He appeared in only a handful of films after the end of the 1960s, his last appearance being in 2017’s “Lucky,” directed by John Carroll Lynch.

But he remained active in television, appearing in the late 1960s as the lead in the science fiction series “The Time Tunnel” and having guest and small recurring roles on such TV series as “The Love Boat,” “Hawaii Five-O” and “Fantasy Island.”

Darren was a series regular for four seasons of the William Shatner-starrer “TJ Hooker” in the 80s. When he appeared on the show, he saw that there was no director listed for an upcoming sequence and asked if he could audition.

“When it came out, I started getting offers to direct,” he told the New York Daily News. “Pretty soon I started getting so many offers to direct that I basically gave up acting and singing.”

Darren directed episodes of “Walker, Texas Ranger,” “Hunter,” “Melrose Place,” “Beverly Hills 90210” and other series for nearly two years. In the 1990s, he returned to acting with small roles on “Melrose Place” and “Star Trek, Deep Space Nine.”

Darren was born James Ercolani in 1936 and grew up in South Philadelphia, not far from fellow 1950s and 1960s teen idols Fabian and Frankie Avalon. Singing came naturally to him, and by age 14 he was performing in local nightclubs.

“From the age of 5 or 6, I knew I wanted to be an entertainer, or maybe famous,” he said in a 2003 interview with the News-Press in Fort Myers, Florida. He noted that celebrities such as Eddie Fisher and Al Martino lived in the same neighborhood as him, “a real neighborhood. It made you feel like you could be successful, too.”

According to a 1958 Los Angeles Times profile, he got a chance when he went to New York to have some photographs taken. The photographer’s office put him in touch with a talent scout.

He was soon signed to Columbia Pictures, and the newspaper reported that after a few appearances his fan mail at the studio “was second only to Kim Novak’s. … The studio now feels the young man is poised to hit the jackpot.”

Darren married his first wife, Gloria, in 1955, and together they had Moret, an “Inside Edition” correspondent and former CNN anchorman. After a divorce, he married Evy Norlund, who came to the U.S. as a Danish entry for the Miss Universe contest. They had two sons, Christian and Anthony.

He was also godfather to Nancy Sinatra’s daughter AJ Lambert. Sinatra, his “For Those Who Think Young” co-star, posted The Hollywood Reporter’s obituary on her X-page, with a broken heart emoji.

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Bob Thomas, a veteran Associated Press journalist who died in 2014, was the lead author of this obituary.