Who is Zelda Gilroy?
Zelda Gilroy, portrayed by the American actor Sheila James Kuehl, was the love-struck teenager in CBS’s The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. Zelda, who was bright in academics, athletic, and somewhat plain-looking, was smitten with the handsome clean-cut teenager Dobie Gillis, who had his romantic sights on the most conventionally attractive girls, such as Thalia Menninger, many of whom shunned him for various reasons. Zelda was always there for Dobie and his friend Maynard G. Krebs, portrayed by Bob Denver. Zelda especially irritated Dobie by twinkling her nose at him. He often twinkled back as a reflex action, he claimed, only to warn Zelda, “Now stop that, Zelda!” Zelda assured Dobie that he would eventually come to love her through the influence of “propinquity.” Though in the series, Dobie was disillusioned with Zelda, in two later made-for-TV films, he was depicted as having married Zelda, running his father’s grocery store, at first with the help of his father Herbert, then just him
