The original Gidget novel, created by Frederick Kohner in his 1957 novel “Gidget, The Little Girl With Big Ideas”
#8. Gidget
Kathy Kohner was born in Brentwood, California. In the mid-50s, the diminutive Kohner began frequenting Malibu, and became somewhat of a mascot for the local contingent there, including the likes of Terry “Tubesteak” Tracy, Johnny Fain, and Miki Dora who helped paint the landscape of California surfing.
According to David Rensin’s All For a Few Perfect Waves, it was Tubesteak that gave her the name “Gidget” when he called her a girl-midget. The name stuck, and her father, a screenwriter, took on her story as a book project in 1957. In a month and a half, the novel was done and full of his daughter’s stories from the beach. The book was turned into a movie in 1959, and turned into a phenomenon. The quiet perfection of 1950s Malibu was stormed by armies of inland surfers, all desperate for a piece of the lifestyle that was depicted. This was the true beginning of surf culture as we know it today: Surfer Magazine was founded the year after, and the Beach Boys began their meteoric rise to fame. The 1960s saw many more Gidget novels and films released. Interestingly, Gidget’s happy go-lucky demeanor came hand-in-hand with Miki Dora’s angst-filled rhetoric against the crowding of his home break–two completely different outlooks on surfing and the lifestyle that goes with it born on the same beach at the same time in history.
