The Sexual History Of "Gidget"
Latest“Gidget has always been such a strong symbol of girl power…With female surfing exploding across the globe, the time is right to bring her back in a major way.” Clearly, these producers haven’t read the weird original source material!
The new show, which “Pterodactyl Prods” tells Variety “will tackle contemporary issues and will be aimed at teens, tweens and pre-tweens” clearly echoes the wholesome 1960s Sally Field series and the trio of popular teeny-bopper films that spawned it. But the original Gidget books, on which the franchise was based, were weirder altogether. Creepy, even. Okay, maybe that’s a little unfair to Austrian-born scribe Frederick Kohner. But it’s also true that the Gidget books were bi-zarre. And that the author, a Hollywood screenwriter, apparently based the first one on his teen daughter’s diary, which he found and read against her wishes. Girl-power?
The first one, 1957’s bestselling Gidget, was the most straightforward: Gidget is a sheltered young woman who longs to join the crew of surfers, like the real-life Kathy Kohner. She does, and gets involved with the dreamy Moondoggie. Sure, the film left out the weird “psychiatrist” sequence and her preoccupation with sex, but as adaptations go, this was relatively faithful.
Gidget Goes Hawaiian (1961) This was an adaptation of the eponymous film. Gidget goes to Hawaii with her parents. Problems with Moondoggie and another girl jealous of Gidget’s surfing prowess ensue. The rival girl spreads rumors that Gidget is a slut. Gidget has a weird fantasy sequence of being pregnant and possibly a hooker. That’s all cleared up, but Gidget suspects her parents are having wild affairs and arranges some kind of scheme to entrap them.