Gidget

Plot Summary

Gidget the Little Girl with Big Ideas by Frederick Kohner was published in 1957. The book is about a girl named Franzie aka “Gidget,” who is a smart, petite, 95 lb, 16 year old, living in Malibu. Gidget wants to be older and curvier like her friends, and is determined to prove she can surf just as well as the boys on Malibu Beach. The surfers nickname her “Gidget,” which is short for girl and midget. She falls for Jeff aka “Moondoggie,” a college student who prefers to surf and won’t give Gidget the time of day. “The Great Kahuna” is a surf bum who the other surfers look up to, and “he shows Gidget how to get up on her feet from her knees while on the board” (Stillman, “The Real Gidget”). Gidget uses Kahuna to make Moondoggie jealous. “At the end of this sweet summer’s tale, as Moondoggie confronts the Kahoona over what appears to be a scene of consummated passion, Gidget takes off on her board.” “The book concludes with Gidget riding a way by herself for the first time. ‘I was so jazzed up that I didn’t care whether I would break my neck or ever see Jeff again- or the great Kahuna. I stood, high like on a mountain peak, and dove down, but I stood it.” Unlike the movie ending where Gidget and Moondoggie declare their love for each other, “Book Gidget concludes that she was never in love with the Kahoona or Moondoggie — so much for boys and their predictable offerings. The objects of her affection, all along, were her surfboard and the sea” (Stillman, “The Real Gidget”).

Biographical Criticism

The real Gidget is the author, Fredrick Kohner’s daughter, named Kathy Kohner-Zuckerman, who in 1956, learned to surf and was nicknamed “Gidget.” “Unlike the beach bunnies who were already hopping along the shore, Kathy decided she wanted to join the men in the water and brought sandwiches with her to trade for time on their boards. She bought her own board for $30 and taught herself to surf” (Lunefeld).

“It was as the point that Kathy decided to commit her experiences to paper that things became more complicated. She was planning to write a book about that summer, but her father convinced her that he should write it, because he was already a professional screenwriter. “Frederick began to listen in on his daughter’s phone calls, with Kathy’s permission, but not her friends, in order to get the language right” (Lunefeld).

“Frederick Kohner wrote the book Gidget in six weeks. It was his first novel” (Zuckerman). “Frederick went to William Morris, a publishing deal was instantly hatched, and the movie rights went to Columbia for $50,000. Frederick gave Gidget five percent (an act that would be described nowadays as “buying the rights” to a subject’s story)” (Stillman, “The Real Gidget").

While Kathy and the fictional book character of Gidget are Jewish, “the cinematic and televised Gidgets came from bland American families and generic, WASP moms and dads. Also erased was Gidget’s status as a feminist heroine. By the time the novel was adapted for films and television, seeing ‘Jeff again’ regained it supremacy and Gidget the inspiration became Gidget as played by a succession of Hollywood actresses, using Malibu as a backdrop for the Hollywood dyad of girl meeting boy” (Lunefield). “Gidget is the obvious inspiration for Malibu Barbie” (Lunenfeld).

“Kohner-Zuckerman spent four summers surfing in Malibu before leaving for college in Oregon. After graduating, she signed up for the Peace Corps but was summarily kicked out because, well, she was a bit boy-crazy. She returned to Los Angeles to teach high school and middle school” (Sachs). “In 1964 she married Marvin Zuckerman, a man 10 years her senior. When they met, Zuckerman had not heard of Gidget, and knew nothing of beach life. He never learned to surf, but Gidget taught him to ski. They had two sons together and she is now a grandmother.” (Stillman, “The Real Gidget”).

“While in college, Zuckerman remembers seeing ‘Gidget’ the movie, and thought, ‘This is ridiculous. They made a movie of my life. I saw the movie 52 times. I loved it, and I still love it.’ She thought [Sandra] Dee played her fairly well, but was less pleased with Sally Field’s performance as Gidget in the television series that aired in 1965. Field was too main-stream to portray a counter-culture girl, and the show didn’t have enough surfing, Zuckerman said” (Albright).

“Two-time Emmy-winning television segment producer Brian Gillogly filmed a documentary about her life, ‘Gidget: An Accidental Icon.’ The hour-long movie debuted at the Malibu Celebration of Film festival in October. Gillogly hopes to start showing it at theaters and on television. He met Zuckerman in 1980, while doing an article for Surfer Magazine, and was interested in her life’s journey. ‘It’s an interesting story. It’s about Hollywood, it’s about surfing. It’s an interesting look at California culture and history,’ he said. For the film, Gillogly interviewed surfing, film and television veterans, as well as young girls inspired by Zuckerman.

‘To a great degree, it’s a woman’s story, rising above adversity. She wasn’t afraid to break into a man’s world. It’s an inspiring story,’ he said” (Albright).

Historical Criticism

“An 18-year-old surfer girl with the sun-bleached hair is breathing heavily and turning bright red as she approaches her idol, a diminutive grandmother who is signing books after a lecture on surfing history at UC San Diego. Tears well up in the girl’s eyes when she comes face to face with Kathy Kohner Zuckerman, the plucky surfing icon known to the world as ‘Gidget.’ ‘You are my hero,’ the girl stammers, but Zuckerman is dumbfounded. 'Gidget a hero?'” (Martin).

Historically, Gidget is looked at as a hero to some and a villain to others. “To the surfing world, she was the novice wave rider who exposed surfing’s subculture to America’s mainstream. And to a handful of purists, she was the reason California’s best surfing spots have been overrun by pushy kooks and annoying wannabes” (Martin).

Gidget changed the world for surfers for good, especially for women. “The publication of Gidget in 1957 did not just introduce us to the barely fictionalized account of a girl’s summer in Malibu; it started a chain reaction that introduced surfing to the rest of the country and spread it to the world at large” (Lunefeld). Suddenly, everybody wants a part of the fun-filled beach life depicted in the “Gidget” movies, the subsequent “Beach Blanket” spinoffs and the sentimental Beach Boys tunes. Back at Malibu, hordes of surfers pack themselves shoulder-to-shoulder on the breaking wave, evidence that Gidgetmania has changed surfing forever. Moondoggie and the rest of the gang are uprooted when lifeguards demolish the palm-frond shack. Even Gidget is turned off to surfing when she returns from college to find Malibu overrun with newcomers. ‘There were too many boards,’ she says, remembering the scene. ‘Too many surfers.’”(Martin).

On the other side, “this often-told event has lured countless wanderers to the shores of Southern California, even as it continues to anger surfers who blame Gidget for telling the world about what they once regarded as a private wave” (Stillman, “The Real Gidget.”).

“So when places like Surfrider Beach, San Onofre and County Line became overrun by throngs of surf crashers, some surfers blamed Gidget. She was an easy target. Some ‘Gidget haters’ didn’t know or care that Gidget was a real person. Fred Reiss, a 51-year-old surfer from Santa Cruz, wrote a novel in 1995 about a surfer who returns to Malibu 30 years later to kill everyone involved in the ‘Gidget’ movie for ruining his surf spot. The book, ‘Gidget Must Die,’ was a cheap shot but Reiss says the story was rooted in the real-life resentment many surfers felt toward Gidget. ‘I worked at a Santa Cruz surf shop for seven years, and I met most of the legends, as well as tons of guys from the ’60s period, and nearly all of them said, ‘Gidget ruined surfing,’ ‘ he says” (Martin).

“But Gidget has legions of fans who insist she has been unfairly blamed for a surfing craze that was ready to explode anyway because of advances in surfboard technology and a counterculture movement that reshaped the country in the late 1960s and early ’70s. Dick Metz, a lifelong surfer and founder of the Surfing Heritage Foundation in San Clemente, says those who blame Gidget don’t know their surfing history. At the time of the ‘Gidget’ movies, he says, the popular balsa-wood long boards were being replaced by shorter, lighter polyurethane foam short boards. The new, easily maneuverable boards, he says, were a big reason surfing caught fire in the 1960s. ‘The change of materials was going to change the sport,’ he says, ‘I don’t care if there was a book or a movie.’ Zuckerman’s father, Frederick Kohner, wasn’t the only one to profit from Gidgetmania. Locals like Miki “Da Cat” Dora, Johnny Fain and Mickey Munoz got paid to perform the surfing stunts for the ‘Gidget’ movie.” (Martin).

Works Cited

Albright, Mary Ann. “Real-life Gidget recalls life at OSU.” Gazette Times.

Lunefield, Peter. “Gidget on the Couch.” Believer Magazine

Martin, Hugo. “Surfer girl, Forever.” 2006.

Sachs, Andrea. “In Malibu, Gidget's Up.” Washington Post. 2005. Page P01

Stillman, Deanne. “Introduction.” Gidget the Girl with Big Ideas. Berkeley: 1957.

Stillman, Deanne. “The Real Gidget.” Surf Culture: The Art History of Surfing. California Authors.

Zuckerman, Kathy Kohner. “Foreword.” Gidget the Girl with Big Ideas. Berkeley: 1957.