Gidget

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If it weren't for a 16-year-old Jewish girl from Brentwood, you wouldn't be surfing. If you think you're some kind of societal outcast or rebellious fringe dweller, then get over it. Gidget was there first.

As late as the '50s, surfing remained the sacred pastime of Hawaiian nobility. Californians were doing it, but not more than a couple thousand of them along the entire coast. In the East, surfers were truly a rarity. Foam surfboards had recently made it more accessible, but it was still something extraordinary. Then along came Gidget, "the little girl with big ideas," and she blew the lid off it. First there was the girl, Kathy Kohner, who wanted nothing more than to be a surfer, then the Hollywoodization of the surfing lifestyle, followed by the spawn -- a mass of beach movies, beach music and a beach invasion.

Kohner, born in 1941, lived in an affluent Los Angeles neighborhood with her parents, refugees of the Holocaust. Young Kohner began loitering on the beach at Malibu in 1956 at the urging of her mother to explore the outdoors. She bought her first board from Mike Doyle for $15. She fell for the lifestyle instantly and pushed for acceptance from the "Pit" regulars such as Miki Dora, Mickey Munoz and Terry "Tubesteak" Tracy. She was soon dubbed "Gidget," a blend of girl and midget, and bribed her way to local status. After two summers at the 'Bu, she headed off for college and didn't look back. Today she is known as Kathy Zuckerman, a Pacific Palisades mom and hostess at a nearby restaurant.

While Gidget's surfing "career" was nothing more than a rite of passage, something she left behind long ago, it was soon immortalized. Her father, B-movie screenwriter Frederick Kohner, turned her daily adventures into a 1957 novel, Gidget -- The Little Girl with Big Ideas, which was purchased by Columbia Pictures and released in 1959. It starred Sandra Dee opposite hunky James Darren. In subsequent releases, Gidget would travel to Hawaii and Rome, grow up and get married. The beach movie had arrived, perpetuating in Beach Blanket Bingo, How to Stuff a Wild Bikini, Ride the Wild Surf and other equally cheesy spin-offs. The Gidget infatuation has not gone away; a musical by Francis Ford Copolla and starring John Travolta, The Big Kahoona [sic], is due in theaters soon.

The action in Gidget is more love story than surf story. From her suburban shelter, the undeveloped Francine Lawrence joins her buxom buddies at the beach for her first "manhunt." "More fish than dish," her interests lie in the waves rather than the surfers' shorts. After squeezing 20 bucks out of her dad to buy a board, she is mentored by Kahuna (the Tubesteak character), a self-described surf bum whose surfing attire consists of a grass hat, capri pants and a stogie. Gidget's love interest is Moondoggie, a brooding rich kid of similar stock who is intent on shedding his silver spoon. In his defense, his surfing stand-in is none other than Dora himself And Gidget is doubled by Mickey Munoz sporting a wig. Every so often, the surfers break into song, which may be the missing ingredient from recent attempts at surfing on the big screen (Shane Dorian and Matt George hitting a few high notes certainly would have made In God's Hands more entertaining). As always happens in Hollywood, after the luau, the fight scene and the parental intervention, Gidget gets the guy and Kahuna gets a job.

As beach movies infiltrated the big screen, surfing replaced rock and roll as the national fad of choice, and all over America, greaseballs were replaced with wax balls and hot rods with Woodies. As for Gidget's beloved Malibu, the unspoiled playground she stumbled upon in 1956 disappeared as quickly as the capitalists could run to the bank. The sacred sport of kings was sacred no more. -- Jason Borte, October 2000