The character originated not on television, but in "Love is a Science", a Dobie Gillis short story written by humorist
Max Shulman and included in his 1959 Dobie Gillis short-story collection
I Was a Teenage Dwarf. The Zelda character became popular enough to warrant a spinoff pilot, titled
Zelda, produced in late 1961 for consideration for the 1962–1963 television season. Despite early enthusiasm for the show at CBS, the network eventually decided to pass on it. Sheila Kuehl, at the time a closeted
lesbian and later an openly gay politician in
California, later recalled that
Dobie Gillis and
Zelda producer/director
Rod Amateau told her one day that CBS executive
James T. Aubrey had found the Zelda character "too butch". Although Dobie was romantically uninterested in Zelda in the series, in two later
Dobie Gillis reunion productions, he was depicted as having married Zelda. In the 1977 TV pilot
Whatever Happened to Dobie Gillis?, the now middle-aged Dobie and Zelda are seen running the Gillis family's grocery store with the help of Dobie's father Herbert, while the 1988 TV movie
Bring Me the Head of Dobie Gillis showed just Dobie and Zelda running the store. In both productions, the two had a teenaged son named Georgie (played by
Steven Paul in 1977 and
Scott Grimes in 1988), who was much like Dobie was at his age. In 1969, Zelda was used as the main source of inspiration for the character of
Velma Dinkley from the show
Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, whose main cast was modeled on various
Dobie Gillis characters. ==References==