LOS ANGELES -- LOS ANGELES (AP) — James Darren, a teen idol who helped ignite the 1960s surfing craze as a charismatic beach boy paired off with Sandra Dee in the hit film “Gidget,” died Monday at 88.

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

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

Throughout his long career, Darren acted, sang and built a successful career behind the scenes as a television director, helming episodes of well-known shows like “Beverly Hills 90210” and “Melrose Place.” In the 1980s, he played Officer Jim Corrigan on the television police show “T.J. Hooker.”

But for young movie fans in the late 1950s, he would be best known as Moondoggie, the dark-haired surfer boy in the 1959 hit film “Gidget.” Dee starred as the title character, a spirited Southern Californian who embraces the beach lifestyle and eventually falls for Moondoggie.

“I was smitten with Sandra,” Darren later said. “I thought she was absolutely perfect as Gidget. She had incredible charm.”

The film was inspired by a novel written by California resident Frederick Kohner about his own teenage daughter and helped fuel the growing popularity of surfing — a trend that impacted pop music, slang and even fashion.

Darren's success with teenage fans led to a recording contract, as it did for many young actors of the time, including Tab Hunter and Annette Funicello. Two of Darren's singles, "Goodbye Cruel World" and "Her Royal Majesty," reached the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart. ("Goodbye Cruel World" also appeared in Steven Spielberg's 2022 semi-autobiographical 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 series, launching the career of Sally Field. )

"They had me under contract; I was bound by it," Darren told Entertainment Weekly in 2004. "But with those charming young women, it was the best confinement I could imagine."

As a contract actor at 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 starred in "For Those Who Think Young" and "The Lively Set," his big-screen career was nearing its end. He had a limited number of movie roles after the 1960s, with his final appearance being in 2017's "Lucky," directed by John Carroll Lynch.

However, he continued to work in television, taking on a lead role in the sci-fi show "The Time Tunnel" in the late 1960s. He also made guest appearances and had small recurring roles in TV shows such as "The Love Boat," "Hawaii Five-O" and "Fantasy Island."

Darren was a regular cast member for four seasons of the William Shatner-starring “T.J. Hooker” in the 1980s. While on the show, he noticed a missing director credit for an upcoming episode and asked if he could try his hand at it.

“Once it aired, I received several offers to direct,” he told the New York Daily News. “Soon I was getting so many directing offers, I pretty much stopped acting and singing.”

For almost two years, Darren directed episodes of “Walker, Texas Ranger,” “Hunter,” “Melrose Place,” “Beverly Hills 90210” and other TV shows. He returned to acting in the 1990s with brief roles in “Melrose Place” and “Star Trek, Deep Space Nine.”

Darren, born James Ercolani in 1936, grew up in South Philadelphia, not far from other teenage heartthrobs of the 1950s and ’60s like Fabian and Frankie Avalon. Singing came naturally to him, and by the age of 14, he was performing in local nightclubs.

“From the age of 5 or 6 I knew I wanted to be an entertainer, or maybe even famous,” he shared in a 2003 interview with the News-Press of Fort Myers, Florida. He mentioned that prominent figures like Eddie Fisher and Al Martino lived in his neighborhood, “a real community. It made you believe you could succeed, too.”

According to a 1958 Los Angeles Times profile, Darren's career took a significant turn when he travelled to New York for a photo shoot. The photographer's office connected him with a talent scout.

He was quickly signed by Columbia Pictures, and the newspaper reported that after a few screen appearances, his fan mail at the studio was exceeding “nearly everyone else's except for Kim Novak's. ... The studio now believes that the young man is on the cusp of major stardom.”

Darren married his first wife, Gloria, in 1955, and together they had a son, Moret, who later became an “Inside Edition” correspondent and former CNN anchorman. After their divorce, he wed Evy Norlund, a former Miss Universe contestant representing Denmark. They had two sons, Christian and Anthony.

He was also a close friend and mentor to Nancy Sinatra's daughter A.J. Lambert. Sinatra, Darren's co-star in the film “For Those Who Think Young,” shared the news of his passing on her X page, accompanied by a broken heart emoji.

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Bob Thomas, a longtime Associated Press journalist who died in 2014, was the principal writer of this obituary.