Surfer girl
Sally Field and Sandra Dee immortalised her on screen, but for many people the real Gidget is a mystery. Noosa Festival of Surfing director Phil Jarratt explores her legacy. If you’re a surfer of a certain age, you’ve probably grown up with the idea of Malibu, the home of California surf chic; an idea peopled with cool cats and hot chicks cruising the Pacific Coast Highway in snazzy rag-tops, hair blowing in the wind, a couple of big old surfboards hanging out the back, stopping here for a frolic on the grey sand, there for a cocktail as the sun sets over the grey-blue Pacific.
The reality of Malibu today is exactly like that, give or take a bum or two recycling half-eaten Subways from the car park bins at Surfrider Beach, or a junkie or three scratching and waiting under the pier. But mainly it’s Hollywood By The Sea, full of actors who surf and surfers who act. I’ve always been lucky at the ‘Bu, with both surf and brushes with fame. I’ve never caught Mel Gibson on a rampage, but I’ve had breakfast with Pamela Anderson at her Colony home, drinks with director John Milius, dinner at Nobu with Hulk Hogan . . . but until recently I’d never had an audience with the queen, the little lady who put Malibu on the map more than half a century ago.
Now, there are many, perhaps a devastating majority, to whom the name Kathy Kohner Zuckerman will mean nothing. There are even those who perhaps blinked and missed the three decades over which an industry was built around the coming-of-age summer of 1956, when a cute and precocious teenager from West Los Angeles learned about love, life and riding waves, and went home and blabbed about it to her dad. Screenwriter Frederick Kohner bashed out a first draft in six weeks and Gidget, The Little Girl with the Big Ideas was published by Putnam in time for the following summer. It was an unexpected smash hit, spawning a movie franchise, two TV series and all manner of hideous merchandise. Along the way, it made stars of Sandra Dee, Deborah Walley and Sally Field.
The book drew wide attention to surfing and the southern California surf subculture. The Los Angeles Times bestsellers’ list ranked it No. 8, just ahead of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. However, the real tidal wave of interest followed the release of the 1959 movie Gidget, a loose adaptation of the novel starring Cliff Robertson, James Darren and a radiant young Sandra Dee. According to Kathy Kohner Zuckerman, now a grandmother living in Pacific Palisades, “we probably would never have had all this attention now if it wasn’t for Sandra Dee”. Pre-Gidget surfers either resented or had mixed feelings about the resulting surf mania. At Malibu and up and down the coast, crowds of neophyte “gremmies” hit the surf, and competition, formal and otherwise, ruled the day.
The novel was not only a major turning point in the evolution of the sport, some contend it helped reshape views about femininity. Oscar-winning screenwriter Frank Pierson says, “You have this surfing culture, which is so masculine, and this little girl becoming a woman is finding her way into that. In that way she is almost a proto-feminist”. While the Gidget phenomenon morphed into California’s essential youth culture of the 1960s, to a soundtrack provided by the Beach Boys, the real Gidget gave up surfing, married a Jewish academic 10 years her senior and disappeared into suburbia to make babies. Now she’s back, big time, but to understand why this matters, it is necessary to look at Gidget in the context of the colourful history of Malibu.
After endless battles with the Californian government over reclamation of land for an extension of the coast highway north of Los Angeles, the Rindge Estate in the 1930s started selling beachfront plots to the new elite of California, the stars of Hollywood and their mega-rich mates. J. Paul Getty built a Romanesque villa, while stars such as David Niven and studio heavies such as Darryl Zanuck created the Malibu colony. By the 1950s, California historian Kevin Starr noted “if Beverly Hills were a Mercedes, Malibu was a Land Rover — rich but rustic”.
At the same time, California’s eccentric and slightly crazy pioneer surfers discovered the perfect waves of Malibu’s Surfrider Beach. One of them, Bob Simmons, slept on the beach for two summers and invented the fin to enable him to track his surfboard along the wave face from in front of the Colony all the way to the pier. One of his first customers for a surfboard with a fin was Gunsmoke star James Arness, a weekend Colony cool cat who hung out and surfed with the likes of Niven, Peter Lawford, Cliff Robertson and the Zanuck kids, Richie and Darrylin. The surfers had no money and hung out in a grass shack on the sand they called “The Pit”, but the Hollywood crew liked their style and let them play with their toys.
Into this smokin’ scene, in the summer of ’56, came Kathy Kohner, a dreamy 15-year-old high school student who desperately wanted to be accepted by the cool cats — and that meant learning to surf. There’s some dispute about who first gave her the name Gidget — meaning girl midget — but it was either Tubesteak, Kahuna or Da Cat. Fred Kohner’s subsequent book somewhat sanitised that summer at The Pit (as you would expect of a proud and protective father who had fled the Holocaust), but you get a better idea from reading snippets of Kathy’s real diary: “July 22. Went to the beach again . . . just love it down there . . . went out surfing three times but only caught one wave. We were all sitting in the dump, smoking and drinking. God forbid my parents could have seen me”.
When the book was a smash, Life Magazine sent a team to Malibu to investigate. One surfer they interviewed confessed he hadn’t read it. “When you get right down to it, if I have enough money to buy a book, I’ll buy some beer.” But the crew at the ‘Bu lived high on Gidget for years, working as extras and stunt doubles. Gidget turned middle America on to surf culture. More importantly, she showed girls they too could be a part of it. Now, at 68, she’s finishing her Sunday shift as a hostess at Duke’s beachfront bar and restaurant, and I’m about to drive her home to Pacific Palisades where she shares a comfy ranch-style home with retired academic Marv Zuckerman, who’s never surfed and isn’t about to start. But first, two lunch customers want to get autographed copies of the recently re-issued book.
“So you’re the real Gidget! I can’t believe it,” gushes an old dude in an XXXL Hawaiian shirt. She holds out her hand and smiles demurely. Kathy is charming, petite and a shocking backseat driver. Over an afternoon cup of tea in their lovely garden it becomes apparent both she and Marv are amused and not a little bemused by Gidget’s resurgence of fame. “Of course I didn’t expect this,” she says with a laugh. “But you take what life throws at you and enjoy it if you can.” This is exactly what Kathy and Marvin plan to do when they visit the Coast this month as special guests of the annual Noosa Festival of Surfing.
So, how many Gidgets does it take to premiere a new Gidget movie? Maybe not as many as you’d find Elvises at an Elvis convention, but expect quite a few when Accidental Icon: The Real Gidget Story makes its Australian debut at the festival as part of Gidget’s Girls Night Out for guys and gals on March 18 from 6.30-10pm at the festival’s Surf City lifestyle expo. Gidgets on stage for the premiere will include Kathy, diminutive Californian surf legend Mickey Munoz, who doubled for star Sandra Dee in the surf scenes in the 1959 movie, and Australian Gidget Layne Beachley, seven-time world surfing champion.
Gidgets in the audience are expected to number in the hundreds, with everyone invited to get into the 1950s Malibu groove and dig out those pedal pushers, frilly blouses and bad Hawaiian shirts. The night out will feature live music by Canadian singer/songwriter Kym Campbell and her band, a 1950s retro swimsuit parade presented by the Karen Neilsen Collection, the Australian premiere of Greg Huglin’s short feature Surfing Dolphins and a chat session with the Gidgets. You can also meet Kathy at Noosa Longboards on March 14 at 6pm.
The Noosa Festival of Surfing, proudly sponsored by the weekender, runs from March 14-21. For a full program of events visit www.noosafestivalofsurfing.com
Story: weekender Issue 617, March 11th 2010.
Sally Field and Sandra Dee immortalised her on screen, but for many people the real Gidget is a mystery. Noosa Festival of Surfing director Phil Jarratt explores her legacy. If you’re a surfer of a certain age, you’ve probably grown up with the idea of Malibu, the home of California surf chic; an idea peopled with cool cats and hot chicks cruising the Pacific Coast Highway in snazzy rag-tops, hair blowing in the wind, a couple of big old surfboards hanging out the back, stopping here for a frolic on the grey sand, there for a cocktail as the sun sets over the grey-blue Pacific.
The reality of Malibu today is exactly like that, give or take a bum or two recycling half-eaten Subways from the car park bins at Surfrider Beach, or a junkie or three scratching and waiting under the pier. But mainly it’s Hollywood By The Sea, full of actors who surf and surfers who act. I’ve always been lucky at the ‘Bu, with both surf and brushes with fame. I’ve never caught Mel Gibson on a rampage, but I’ve had breakfast with Pamela Anderson at her Colony home, drinks with director John Milius, dinner at Nobu with Hulk Hogan . . . but until recently I’d never had an audience with the queen, the little lady who put Malibu on the map more than half a century ago.
Now, there are many, perhaps a devastating majority, to whom the name Kathy Kohner Zuckerman will mean nothing. There are even those who perhaps blinked and missed the three decades over which an industry was built around the coming-of-age summer of 1956, when a cute and precocious teenager from West Los Angeles learned about love, life and riding waves, and went home and blabbed about it to her dad. Screenwriter Frederick Kohner bashed out a first draft in six weeks and Gidget, The Little Girl with the Big Ideas was published by Putnam in time for the following summer. It was an unexpected smash hit, spawning a movie franchise, two TV series and all manner of hideous merchandise. Along the way, it made stars of Sandra Dee, Deborah Walley and Sally Field.
The book drew wide attention to surfing and the southern California surf subculture. The Los Angeles Times bestsellers’ list ranked it No. 8, just ahead of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. However, the real tidal wave of interest followed the release of the 1959 movie Gidget, a loose adaptation of the novel starring Cliff Robertson, James Darren and a radiant young Sandra Dee. According to Kathy Kohner Zuckerman, now a grandmother living in Pacific Palisades, “we probably would never have had all this attention now if it wasn’t for Sandra Dee”. Pre-Gidget surfers either resented or had mixed feelings about the resulting surf mania. At Malibu and up and down the coast, crowds of neophyte “gremmies” hit the surf, and competition, formal and otherwise, ruled the day.
The novel was not only a major turning point in the evolution of the sport, some contend it helped reshape views about femininity. Oscar-winning screenwriter Frank Pierson says, “You have this surfing culture, which is so masculine, and this little girl becoming a woman is finding her way into that. In that way she is almost a proto-feminist”. While the Gidget phenomenon morphed into California’s essential youth culture of the 1960s, to a soundtrack provided by the Beach Boys, the real Gidget gave up surfing, married a Jewish academic 10 years her senior and disappeared into suburbia to make babies. Now she’s back, big time, but to understand why this matters, it is necessary to look at Gidget in the context of the colourful history of Malibu.
After endless battles with the Californian government over reclamation of land for an extension of the coast highway north of Los Angeles, the Rindge Estate in the 1930s started selling beachfront plots to the new elite of California, the stars of Hollywood and their mega-rich mates. J. Paul Getty built a Romanesque villa, while stars such as David Niven and studio heavies such as Darryl Zanuck created the Malibu colony. By the 1950s, California historian Kevin Starr noted “if Beverly Hills were a Mercedes, Malibu was a Land Rover — rich but rustic”.
At the same time, California’s eccentric and slightly crazy pioneer surfers discovered the perfect waves of Malibu’s Surfrider Beach. One of them, Bob Simmons, slept on the beach for two summers and invented the fin to enable him to track his surfboard along the wave face from in front of the Colony all the way to the pier. One of his first customers for a surfboard with a fin was Gunsmoke star James Arness, a weekend Colony cool cat who hung out and surfed with the likes of Niven, Peter Lawford, Cliff Robertson and the Zanuck kids, Richie and Darrylin. The surfers had no money and hung out in a grass shack on the sand they called “The Pit”, but the Hollywood crew liked their style and let them play with their toys.
Into this smokin’ scene, in the summer of ’56, came Kathy Kohner, a dreamy 15-year-old high school student who desperately wanted to be accepted by the cool cats — and that meant learning to surf. There’s some dispute about who first gave her the name Gidget — meaning girl midget — but it was either Tubesteak, Kahuna or Da Cat. Fred Kohner’s subsequent book somewhat sanitised that summer at The Pit (as you would expect of a proud and protective father who had fled the Holocaust), but you get a better idea from reading snippets of Kathy’s real diary: “July 22. Went to the beach again . . . just love it down there . . . went out surfing three times but only caught one wave. We were all sitting in the dump, smoking and drinking. God forbid my parents could have seen me”.
When the book was a smash, Life Magazine sent a team to Malibu to investigate. One surfer they interviewed confessed he hadn’t read it. “When you get right down to it, if I have enough money to buy a book, I’ll buy some beer.” But the crew at the ‘Bu lived high on Gidget for years, working as extras and stunt doubles. Gidget turned middle America on to surf culture. More importantly, she showed girls they too could be a part of it. Now, at 68, she’s finishing her Sunday shift as a hostess at Duke’s beachfront bar and restaurant, and I’m about to drive her home to Pacific Palisades where she shares a comfy ranch-style home with retired academic Marv Zuckerman, who’s never surfed and isn’t about to start. But first, two lunch customers want to get autographed copies of the recently re-issued book.
“So you’re the real Gidget! I can’t believe it,” gushes an old dude in an XXXL Hawaiian shirt. She holds out her hand and smiles demurely. Kathy is charming, petite and a shocking backseat driver. Over an afternoon cup of tea in their lovely garden it becomes apparent both she and Marv are amused and not a little bemused by Gidget’s resurgence of fame. “Of course I didn’t expect this,” she says with a laugh. “But you take what life throws at you and enjoy it if you can.” This is exactly what Kathy and Marvin plan to do when they visit the Coast this month as special guests of the annual Noosa Festival of Surfing.
So, how many Gidgets does it take to premiere a new Gidget movie? Maybe not as many as you’d find Elvises at an Elvis convention, but expect quite a few when Accidental Icon: The Real Gidget Story makes its Australian debut at the festival as part of Gidget’s Girls Night Out for guys and gals on March 18 from 6.30-10pm at the festival’s Surf City lifestyle expo. Gidgets on stage for the premiere will include Kathy, diminutive Californian surf legend Mickey Munoz, who doubled for star Sandra Dee in the surf scenes in the 1959 movie, and Australian Gidget Layne Beachley, seven-time world surfing champion.
Gidgets in the audience are expected to number in the hundreds, with everyone invited to get into the 1950s Malibu groove and dig out those pedal pushers, frilly blouses and bad Hawaiian shirts. The night out will feature live music by Canadian singer/songwriter Kym Campbell and her band, a 1950s retro swimsuit parade presented by the Karen Neilsen Collection, the Australian premiere of Greg Huglin’s short feature Surfing Dolphins and a chat session with the Gidgets. You can also meet Kathy at Noosa Longboards on March 14 at 6pm.
The Noosa Festival of Surfing, proudly sponsored by the weekender, runs from March 14-21. For a full program of events visit www.noosafestivalofsurfing.com
Story: weekender Issue 617, March 11th 2010.
