He began as James Ercolani, the son of Italian immigrants, armed with nothing but charm, hunger, and a stubborn refusal to accept his assigned place. As Moondoggie in Gidget, he became the bright, tanned promise of postwar America, yet he refused to be trapped in that single beam of light. He sang his way up the charts, time-traveled on television, wore a badge beside William Shatner, then quietly slipped behind the camera to shape stories instead of merely starring in them.
In his final great role, as Vic Fontaine on Deep Space Nine, Darren found a kind of summation: the crooner, the counselor, the memory of an era that never quite existed, yet somehow healed people anyway. Off-screen, he was the steady center of a family that saw the man behind the legend. His passing in quiet sleep contrasts the roar of his career, but the arc is complete: a life fully spent, not merely survived.
