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  • Good Old Days Magazine

    A Little Girl With Big Ideas

    May 31, 2022 3 minutes
    By Michael O’Donnell

    In the early 1960s, it seemed like the topic of surfing was everywhere. There was surfer music on the radio with tunes like Surfin’ USA by the Beach Boys and Surf City by Jan and Dean, among many others. There were surfer/beach movies too, starring teen idols like Annette Funicello, Frankie Avalon, Shelley Fabares and Fabian. But the entry of surfing and the beach life into mainstream American culture really started in 1959 with a movie called Gidget.

    The movie starring Sandra Dee, James Darren and Cliff Robertson, was based on the 1957 book by screenwriter Frederick Kohner titled . Kohner was born in 1905 near Prague, at that time part of Bohemia within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but now the capital of the Czech Republic. He seems an unlikely source for a story about an American teenage girl nicknamed Gidget, but his path in life would eventually bring him and his family to live near the beaches of Malibu.

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