Velma Dinkley was modeled after Gay rights activist Sheila James Kuehl's character on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis

Velma Dinkley is modeled after Zelda Gilroy

There were cheers and jeers when it was announced last year that Velma Dinkley from the Scooby-Doo franchise was a lesbian. It was reported that many fans said they always suspected but some like myself assumed she was a brainy nerdy tomboy because only heterosexual couples were acknowledged on television as well as in many corners of the real world. If you did not know gay people and never heard anyone talk about the LBGTQ community this would be the logical assumption. No one knows what Hanna-Barbera was thinking when they created the character but they did actually model Velma after a lesbian actress whether knowingly or unwittingly.

Sheila Kuehl who went by the stage name Sheila James portrayed Zelda Gilroy on the sitcom The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis from 1959-1961. The four teens in Scooby-Doo Where Are You were based on the main characters in the CBS series with Freddie Jones as a popular blond athlete like Dobie Gillis (Dwayne Hickman) and Daphne Blake being rich and popular like Thalia Menninger (Tuesday Weld), and Hippie Shaggy Rogers resembles Maynard G Krebs (Bob Denver) who is a beatnik. Velma is in the images of Zelda Gilroy ( Kuehl/ James) but the actress has said she was in the closet at that time and she believes a much-talked-about spinoff for Zelda never came about because she looked too "Butch."

James/Kuehl and her character were different

The former actress says that it was somewhat known in the entertainment industry that she was a lesbian but she does not know if her sexuality is the reason for the demise of her career. Hickman went on to make several movies including Cat Balou and Denver had the title role in Gilligan's Island while Weld became a full-fledged movie star with roles in films like Pretty Poison, Return to Peyton Place, Rally Round the Flag Boys, and Looking for Mr. Goodbar.

On The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis Zelda loved Dobie who was crushing on Thalia who would not give him the time of day. Zelda often pointed out how smart she was because she could always answer the teacher's questions that other students did not but Dobie was not impressed. On Scooby-Doo Where Are You, however, Velma never showed a romantic interest in Freddy and have him ignore her for Daphne. The group was simply four friends who solved mysteries.

Today Kuehl/James is out and is a legislator who champions the cause of all people especially the rights of the LBGTQ community. She spent six years in the California State Assembly and eight years in the State Senate.

"She is the first openly LGBT person to be elected to the California legislature, and she has authored 171 bills that were signed into law. She is currently a law professor at UCLA. Family law was my specialty,” Kuehl says. “I wanted to apply family law to LGBT issues. As a legislator, I brought through the very first bill that included sexual orientation in hate crimes.”

Velma-Sheila-Zelma

While she has always been a strong LGBT advocate, Kuehl firmly believes that all people are entitled to equality and justice. “I don’t want to put our community above any other,” she says. “I want our needs to be met, but our community needs to be engaged in the larger community. It’s not about whose issues are more important, but how similar the issues are.”There are probably Dobie Gillis fans who assumed that Thalia was written as the popular blonde girl who was the dream of every teenage boy and Zelda was the girl who was not as physically attractive and who did not have all the boys after her.

This is the way it was in school in those days with the Thalia's of the world being the cheerleaders, homecoming queens, and voted most popular while the Zelda's were good on the debate team and during the science fair. So to recap Velma was created based on the character Zelma who was straight but her portrayer Sheila James is gay and now Ms. Dinkley has been identified as lesbian.