Gidget (1959) on Netflix
Francine Lawrence, nearly seventeen, meets the surfer Moondoggie at the beach. He shows no interest, so she takes up surfing, and the all-male crew adopts her as a mascot named Gidget.
- Netflix3.0/5
- IMDb6.6/104,357 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes55%
Trailer
Plot summary
Francine Lawrence has a summer break to fill before her senior year, and she has no taste for the man-hunting her girlfriends do. At the beach she meets Moondoggie, a surfer who takes no notice of her. Her interest shifts from him to his sport, and after her parents advance her the money for a used board she returns to the water. The all-male surfing crowd takes her on as a mascot and gives her the nickname Gidget. The gang follows The Big Kahuna, a former Korean War jet pilot in his thirties who has dropped out of society and roams the world surfing with a pet bird, Flyboy. Moondoggie admires him and wants that life rather than the university his father has in mind.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Gidget (1959)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The studio wanted Elvis Presley to play the surfer Moondoggie in Gidget, but Presley was serving in the United States Army at the time, so the part went elsewhere.
- Gidget is credited by sources including Drew Kampion's Stoked! A History of Surf Culture, Matt Warshaw's The Encyclopedia of Surfing and Stacy Peralta's documentary Riding Giants as the single biggest factor in mainstreaming surfing culture in the United States.
- The character Gidget was created by Hollywood writer Frederick Kohner and based on his own daughter Kathy; the 1959 film was the first of many screen appearances for the character.
- Gidget inspired various sequel films, a television series and television films, and is considered the beginning of the entire "beach party film" genre.
