Gidget (film)
Gidget | |
---|---|
William A. Lyon | |
Music by | Arthur Morton |
Color process | ColumbiaColor |
Production company | Columbia Pictures |
Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 95 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Box office | $1.5 million (est. US /Canada rentals)[1][2] |
Gidget is a 1959 American CinemaScope comedy film.[3][4] 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.[5][6]
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
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.
Hoping to make Moondoggie jealous, Gidget hires one of the other surfers in the gang to be her date to a
In the end, her father arranges a date for Gidget with Jeffrey Matthews that she grudgingly accepts. To her surprise, Matthews turns out to be Moondoggie. The two return to the beach to find Kahuna tearing down his beach shack and find out that he has taken a job as an airline pilot. Moondoggie and Gidget realize how they feel about each other and, as an act of romantic devotion, Moondoggie asks Gidget to wear his class pin. Kahuna cheerfully warns Moondoggie that Gidget is quite a woman.
Cast
- Sandra Dee as Francine "Gidget" Lawrence
- Cliff Robertson as Burt "The Big Kahuna" Vail
- James Darren as Jeffrey "Moondoggie" Matthews
- Arthur O'Connell as Russell Lawrence
- The Four Preps as Band at Beach
- Mary LaRoche as Dorothy Lawrence
- Joby Baker as Stinky
- Tom Laughlin as Lover Boy
- Sue George as Betty "B. L." Louise
- Robert Ellis as Hot Shot
- Jo Morrow as Mary Lou
- Yvonne Craig as Nan
- Patti Kane as Patti
- Doug McClure as Waikiki
- Burt Metcalfe as Lord Byron
Cast notes:
- The studio wanted Elvis Presley to play the role of Moondoggie, but he was in the United States Army at the time.[7]
- Malibu surfers Miki Dora and Mickey Munoz appear in the surfing scenes.[8]
Production
The film was shot in just 26 days during June–July 1958 at Leo Carrillo State Park and Columbia Pictures Studios. Sandra Dee originally was going to film the sequel Gidget Goes Hawaiian but didn't.[9] Rose Marie Reid designed all of the women's swimsuits in the film.[10]
Reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 55% of 11 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 5.8/10.[11]
Contemporary domestic reviews
HEY, GANG! Just saw the snappiest teen-age picture! Sandra Dee, who’s really a baby though she’s getting a makeup as hardboiled as an old silent vamp, goes to Malibu Beach—that’s in Hawaii—on her vacation and mixes up with some icky boys who have nothing to do but show their muscles, suntan, ride surfboards, and make lazy passes at Sandra, which is all she rates. It’s called “Gidget,” and is at the Fox.[19]
Helen Bower of the Detroit Free Press called the film "summer sea-sand-and-sun fun" and noted that "older people can enjoy watching the bright, happy young ones idling away the hours on the Pacific ocean beach at Mali-bu, where much of the movie is set. They'll see some quite exciting surfboard riding, too, in the sport imported from our 50th state."[20] Mildred Martin of The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that "the film is spiked with a song or two, spends endless Eastman Colored CinemaScope footage on "riding the curl" and other aspects of surfboarding and fairly crawls with energetic, carefree youth in all types of bathing costumes."[21] R.H. Gardner of The Baltimore Sun wrote that "it would be ironic if in the rubble of our present civilization, future generations unearthed a print of "Gidget," for, after seeing it, they'd never understand the kind of people we were. The film, now at the Stanley, is in my experience unique. Its characters—answering to the names of Moondoggie, Kahoona, Lover Boy, B. L., Hot Shot, Waikiki, Lord Byron, etc.—look like human beings instead of shaggy dogs, cartoon creations or science-fiction monsters, but their behavior brands them as products of a culture with which I am totally unfamiliar."[22] Kaspar Monahan of The Pittsburgh Press wrote that "although Gidget was obviously designed to appeal to the younger set, there's no law against an oldster viewing it and even enjoying it. In fact, I found the new arrival at the Harris a most refreshing and original slant on the troubles and problems besetting a young maiden on the threshold of womanhood."[23] Leonard Mendlowitz of the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph wrote that "there are no weighty problems or significant messages in this light and bright musical, might well have been called 'How Frannie Got her Fraternity Pin.'"[24]
Contemporary international reviews
The film received generally negative reviews in other continents. Campbell Dixon stated, in The Daily Telegraph that Swedish director Ingmar Bergman's Journey Into Autumn, "which will corrupt nobody's morals, has an 'X' certificate. Gidget, a moronic story for teenagers about a girl suffering from sex in the head, is 'U', presumably because she is only 16 and, if she does succeed in getting herself seduced after long and patient effort, it will be all in girlish fun. Am I alone in finding these values a little odd?"[25] John Waterman of the Evening Standard described Sandra Dee as "acting valiantly and with a background of brilliantly photographed surf-riding."[26] Margaret Winxman of the Daily Herald said that "when it comes to chilling the spine, you can keep your electro-plated invaders from outer space, mangled marrows from the interior of the earth and finned things from the bottom of the sea. For me the most terrifying Monster of the lot is the all-American teenager—at least, as currently portrayed in Gidget. It isn't the noise they make—which is deafening. It isn't the lingo, they speak-which is untranslatable: It isn't even the capers they cut—which are maddening. It's their devilish disregard for anybody else's feelings, comfort or dignity which is so appalling. (Parents, of course, being strictly from 'squaresville,' are quite expendable.) And these, mark you. are supposed to be nice teenagers."[27] Dick Richards of the Daily Mirror called the film "a frail little piece [that] will make anybody over the age of twenty-one feel very old and jaded."[28] An unnamed critic for Australia's Sun-Herald newspaper called it an "unevenly coloured but passably pleasant and quite innocuous film."[29] Colin Bennett of The Age called it "a picture that might be roughly described as a tusical, or teen-agers' musical." He added:
Columbia's wardrobe department supplies Sandra Dee, the squeaking blonde in the title role, with 19 cute changes of bathing suit. Columbia's orchestra supplies three hit songs, all of which sounded awful to me. And Gidget's Mom supplies the sentiment: Gidget will know when true love comes along because she'll hear "little bells ringing in her heart." By the end of summer, the bells have pealed and Gidget is wearing her fraternity pin which should keep her happy until next year, when, no doubt, we will be subjected to The Return of Gidget.[30]
Retrospective reviews
Craig Butler in
Awards and nominations
The film received a 1960 Golden
See also
References
- ^ Tom Lisanti, Hollywood Surf and Beach Movies: The First Wave, 1959-1969, McFarland 2005, 29
- ^ "1959: Probable Domestic Take", Variety, 6 January 1960 p 34
- ^ Variety film review; March 18, 1959, page 6.
- ^ Harrison's Reports film review; March 21, 1959, page 46.
- ^ "A Generation of Gidgets", by Jeff Spurrier, The Atlantic Monthly, April 2002 Retrieved 4 August 2009.
- ^ "Surfer Girl, Forever" by Hugo Martin, Los Angeles Times, June 17, 2006. Retrieved 4 August 2009.
- ^ "Gidget: It's the summer of 69". 19 March 2010. Retrieved 14 January 2017.
- ^ "Gidget (1959) - Notes - TCM.com". Retrieved 15 October 2022.
- ^ "Sandra Dee Out West: Page 2". Retrieved 14 January 2017.
- ^ Layton, Roger (28 August 2015). "Iconic swimsuit designer the subject of new exhibition at BYU Library". Herald Media. Retrieved 15 October 2022.
In 1959, Sandra Dee and the other female co-stars of the film "Gidget" all wore Reid's suits.
- ^ "Gidget". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved November 12, 2023.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 1 October 2008.
- ^ Scout, Screen (March 21, 1959). "Holiday Film Fare in Town". San Francisco Examiner. Retrieved November 12, 2023.
- Los Angeles Mirror. Retrieved November 12, 2023.
- The Gazette. Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Retrieved November 12, 2023.
- ^ "Pleasant Little Film About Youth". Montreal Star. July 23, 1959. Retrieved November 12, 2023.
- ^ "Teeners Get A Break Here". New York Daily News. April 16, 1959. Retrieved November 12, 2023.
- ^ Adams, Marjory (April 15, 1959). "Sandra Dee Star of "Gidget" At Pilgrim and The Fenway". The Boston Globe. Retrieved November 12, 2023.
- ^ Standish, Myles (April 17, 1959). "The New Films". St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Retrieved November 12, 2023.
- ^ Bower, Helen (March 26, 1959). "There's Sea, Sand, Sun and Fun in This One, Kids". Detroit Free Press. Retrieved November 12, 2023.
- ^ Martin, Mildred (April 13, 1959). "Sandra Dee Costars With James Darren". The Philadelphia Inquirer. Retrieved November 12, 2023.
- ^ Gardner, R.H. (May 20, 1959). "A Gidget—Girl "Gidget"". The Sun. Baltimore, Maryland. Retrieved November 12, 2023.
- ^ Monahan, Kaspar (April 13, 1959). "Pert Sandra Dee Has Name Role In Lively 'Gidget'". The Pittsburgh Press. Retrieved November 12, 2023.
- ^ Mendlowitz, Leonard (April 13, 1959). "'Gidget,' a Bright Musical, Created for the Teenage Set". Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph. Retrieved November 12, 2023.
- ^ Dixon, Campbell (July 11, 1959). "A Tale of Two Heroes". The Daily Telegraph. London, England, United Kingdom. Retrieved November 12, 2023.
- ^ Waterman, John (July 9, 1959). "Hollywood has another stab at itself". Evening Standard. London, England, United Kingdom. Retrieved November 12, 2023.
- ^ Hinxman, Margaret (July 10, 1959). "THE WORST SCREEN MONSTER OF ALL". Daily Herald. London, England, United Kingdom. Retrieved November 12, 2023.
- ^ Richards, Dick (July 10, 1959). "An orgy of spectacle". Daily Mirror. London, England, United Kingdom. Retrieved November 12, 2023.
- ^ "'Gidget'". The Sun-Herald. Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. November 15, 1959. Retrieved November 12, 2023.
- ^ Bennett, Colin (January 23, 1960). "Waiting for the Silly Season to End". The Age. Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Retrieved November 12, 2023.
- ^ Allmovie review Retrieved 15 October 2022.
External links
- Gidget at IMDb