Darryl Hickman

Darryl Hickman
File:Darryl Hickman.png
Years active at Hanna-Barbera	1979-1992
Characters played	Waggs Steve Trevor

Darryl Gerard Hickman was an American former actor, screenwriter, television executive, and acting coach. For Hanna-Barbera, he provided the voice of Waggs in The Biskitts animated television series.

Hickman died on May 24, 2024, at the age of 92.

Roles

20th century

• The Biskitts (1983)
  • Waggs

Other roles

Hickman started his career during the Golden Age of Hollywood, of which he notably starred as a child actor in The Grapes of Wrath (1940), starring Henry Fonda and directed by John Ford. Other notable acting roles Hickman did were Men of Boys Town (1941) with Mickey Rooney, and Leave Her to Heaven with Gene Tierney and Cornel Wilde. Following the latter movie, he became more critical of child acting and instead opted to go on therapy for several years to cope with his past.

Finding adulthood to be difficult to adjust after being in stardom as a child, he retired in 1951 to enter a monastery as a Passionist monk. He continued acting a month later, but with fewer roles than he had at the peak of his career. One of his few notable roles me made during that period was in the 1956 film Tea and Sympathy, and in younger brother Dwayne Hickman's sitcom The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, as Dobie's older brother Davey in three episodes. In 1976, he made a minor appearance in the satirical black comedy film Network, directed by Sidney Lumet.

Hickman also became a television executive, producer, and screenwriter during that time. In the early 1970s, he was associate producer of the long-running Love of Life soap opera series. He also wrote a book on his acting coach career, titled The Unconscious Actor: Out of Control, in Full Command, which was published in April 2007.