Gidget is a 1959 American CinemaScope comedy film. The picture stars Sandra Dee, Cliff Robertson, James Darren, Arthur O'Connell, and the Four Preps. in a story about a teenager's initiation into the California surf culture and her romance with a young surfer.
The film—directed by Paul Wendkos—was the first of many screen appearances by the character Gidget, created by Hollywood writer Frederick Kohner (based on his daughter Kathy). The screenplay was written by Gillian Houghton, who was then head writer of the soap opera The Secret Storm, using the pen name Gabrielle Upton. This would be Upton's sole contribution to the Gidget canon. The story was based on Kohner's 1957 novel Gidget, the Little Girl with Big Ideas.
The film, which received one award nomination, not only inspired various sequel films, a television series, and television films, but is also considered the beginning of the entire "beach party film" genre. Gidget is credited by numerous sources (Stoked! A History of Surf Culture by Drew Kampion; The Encyclopedia of Surfing by Matt Warshaw; and Riding Giants, a documentary film by Stacy Peralta—to name just three) as the single biggest factor in the mainstreaming of surfing culture in the United States.
Plot
Francine Lawrence (Sandra Dee) is about to turn 17 and is on her summer break between her junior and senior years of high school. She resists the pressure to go "man-hunting" with her girlfriends and laments the days when the girls had fun together without boys. Francine also rejects her parents wishing to fix her up on a date with the son of a friend of the family, Jeffrey Matthews (James Darren).
On a jaunt to the beach with her well developed girlfriends, flat-chested tomboy Francine meets surfer Moondoggie. She quickly becomes infatuated with him, but he shows no romantic interest; at any rate, Francine is more attracted to surfing than man-hunting.
At home, Francine importunes her parents for $25 for a used surfboard. Russ (Arthur O'Connell) and Dorothy Lawrence (Mary LaRoche) grant their daughter's request as an early birthday present and the excited youngster returns to the beach to surf. The gang dubs their female associate "Gidget", a combination of "girl" and "midget".
Gidget associates with an all-male surfer gang led by the worldly beach bum, The Big Kahuna (Cliff Robertson). Kahuna is a Korean War Air Force veteran twice the age of Gidget who is fed up with all the rules he had to live by when he flew combat missions, and dropped out of normal society. He travels the hemisphere surfing with his pet bird. Moondoggie admires Kahuna and wants to emulate him by joining Kahuna in working his way on a freighter to go surfing in Peru at summer's end, instead of going to university as his self-made father plans. Kahuna and Gidget enjoy each other's company, with Gidget questioning how he can survive an aimless and lonely existence without a job. She questions whether if Kahuna knew then what he knew now would he still make the same lifestyle choice after leaving the Air Force. Kahuna later reflects on Gidget's words after the death of his only friend, the pet bird.