for the end of the production of each episode; their length resulted in Hickman requesting and getting a teleprompter from which to read them for season two forward. The show was not filmed before a live studio audience; during the first season, a live audience viewed each episode and provided its laugh track. Subsequent seasons used a standard laugh track provided by technician Charles Douglass. Creator Max Shulman served as the show runner for and an uncredited producer of Dobie Gillis. He contributed scripts for episodes of the show during all four seasons, with several stories – including "Love is a Science" (season one, episode three), "Love is a Fallacy" (season one, episode 22), and "Parlez-Vous English" (season two, episode 11) – directly adapted by Shulman from his original Dobie Gillis short stories. During its fourth season, the show, by then known as Max Shulman's Dobie Gillis, suffered both from competition with NBC's color Western The Virginian and from the growing inattention from Max Shulman. Shulman began spending increasing amounts of time at his home in Westport, Connecticut, while the show was in active production, ceding his role as show runner to associate producers Joel Kane and Guy Scarpitta. CBS decided not to renew Dobie Gillis after production had concluded on its fourth season. The theme song "Dobie" was written by 20th Century-Fox musical director Lionel Newman, with lyrics by Shulman. The theme was sung by Judd Conlon's Rhythmaires, with music conducted by Newman. Session singer Gloria Wood of the Rhythmaires provided the scat singing used as incidental score during the first two seasons. Series regular casting notes Dwayne Hickman, at the time the breakout star on The Bob Cummings Show (also known as Love That Bob) as nephew Chuck MacDonald, gained the part of Dobie Gillis over several other candidates, including Michael Landon. Despite being cast as a 17-year-old, Hickman was 24 when he starred in the pilot in the summer of 1958. Because Hickman had appeared for several years on Bob Cummings as Chuck, he was required by Shulman and CBS to bleach his dark brown hair blond for the role of Dobie to distance himself from that character in the public's (and the sponsors') minds. By the second season, however, Hickman was permitted to return to his natural hair color, after he had complained to the producers that the constant bleaching required to keep his low crew