We're all about the history of rock & roll at BoomtownAmerica.com!

Every week, we present “ROCK REMEMBERED,” a deep dive into the hidden history of rock & roll, the stories behind the artists and songs that changed the world. Join host, “Boomtown Bill” Cross each Wednesday at 7 pm (Eastern) with an encore broadcast on Saturday at noon (Eastern).

Join us today as we look at the sometimees successful and sometimes not "Turning Rock Stars into Movie Stars!"

Remember the Beach Party movies of the 1960’s? They were made quickly and cheaply with the barest excuse for a plot (and the barest excuse for swimsuits they could get away with in those days).

Somehow, when they decided to make one more trip to beach in 1987 with Paramount Pictures’ Back to the Beach, they made it look just as cheap and feeble as the original films!

Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello are the stars (natch) only instead of being “Frankie and Dee Dee” as they were called in the original series, they’re now named “Annette” and “Annette’s Husband” (no, we’re not making that up).

What little plot there is revolves around a return trip to Malibu where their grown-up daughter is “living in sin” (remember that concept?) with a new generation of surfer. Also along for the ride is their young son, who actually looks like he could be Eric Von Zipper’s kid (although Harvey Lembeck is nowhere to be found). If we were Frankie, we’d get a DNA test stat. Just sayin’…

Anyway, Frankie’s become a car salesman in Ohio who couldn’t do “surf’s up” if you gave him Viagra. Annette has a serious Skippy problem, and Connie Stevens (who was never in the original series) shows up as the divorced woman on the make, putting the moves on Frankie.

Along the way, you also get cameo appearances by a whole raft of Baby Boom TV icons: Wally & the Beav, Gilligan, Maxwell Smart and more.

You also get Stevie Ray Vaughn jammin’ on the classic instrumental “Pipeline” with surf music legend Dick Dale.

Just when you think things couldn’t get any weirder, Pee Wee Herman pops up out of nowhere to sing “Surfin’ Bird” (we repeat, we are not making this up).

There are some of those really phony looking shots of the stars riding surfboards inside a Hollywood soundstage, a couple of gratuitous jokes about Annette’s two biggest assets, and a surfing competition where June Cleaver gets to say “crapola.”

If you’re feeling nostalgic or want something to play in the background while you engage in a little mid-life make-out session, you might want to rent or stream Back to the Beach this weekend.

Now, anybody know what happened to Gidget and Moondoggie?

Do you know this woman? Before you answer, read this.

This woman totally changed American pop culture without even trying.

Her name is Kathy Kohner. She’s not a composer or a musician. She’s not an artist or designer, yet without her, popular culture in the 1960’s might have been radically different.

That’s because during the summer of 1956, 15-year old Kathy started hanging around with a group of guys on the beach in Malibu who teased her because of her height (she was under 5”) and gave her the nickname Gidget.

Yes, Virginia, there is a real-life Gidget. Her dad, Frederick Kohner, was a writer who turned her adventures with a small group of surfing enthusiasts in the summer of 1956 into a modest little “teen appeal” novel called Gidget, the Little Girl with Big Ideas.

The rest is pop culture history.

The book was published in 1957 (yes, that’s the real Kathy on the cover) and did well enough that Columbia Pictures bought the film rights. Beginning in 1959, there were 3 Gidget films and a TV series that introduced us to a young actress named Sally Field. More importantly, the runaway success of the first Gidget film (starring 16-year old Sandra Dee) touched off a surfing craze that has never really gone away.

In addition to spawning a wave of surf shops and surfer magazines, the surfing craze also gave us surf music, which in turn provided us with what is inarguably one of the greatest American rock bands – the Beach Boys.

The sun, the surf, and the great music cranked out by Brian Wilson and his friends (which included Jan & Dean, Dick Dale, and others) helped shift the focus in American pop culture. Previously, the country took its cue from the East Coast, primarily New York City. Thanks in large part to the surfing craze of the early 60’s, the Pepsi Generation now looked to the West Coast for its fashions, passions and trends.

And it’s all due to little Kathy Kohner deciding that she wanted to surf back in the summer of 1956!

By the way, Kathy is still with us. Her name is now Kathy Kohner Zuckerman. She eventually settled in the Los Angeles area as a teacher. She married college professor Marvin Zuckerman and raised two children. At last report, she was still surfing at age 85. She has been inducted into the Surfer Walk of Fame and is also the subject of a 2010 film documentary, Accidental Icon: The Real Gidget Story.

Somehow, knowing Gidget is still out there shooting the curl is very comforting.

By the way, Gidget also is responsible (indirectly) for the tidal wave of BEACH PARTY MOVIES! You can reads about them here at Boomtown America as well!

At the height of the British Invasion (1964-1965), the most serious challenger to the Beatles was not the Rolling Stones. They really wouldn’t hit their stride until the latter half of the 1960s. The Who scored only one minor hit in the U.S. before 1967.

No, the band that scored the highest was Herman’s Hermits, a bubblegum group before the invention of that term. A boy band decades before boy bands became a thing. Herman’s Hermits were five nice-looking young lads from Manchester. Leader singer, Peter Noone, was nicknamed Herman. He was cute in a way that appealed to the little girls, but didn’t frighten their parents (the way Mick Jagger and occasionally the Beatles did).

In those early years, Herman’s Hermits placed 11 songs in the American Top 10, with another 6 charting inside the Top 40. Between March and August of 1965, they logged twenty-four consecutive weeks in the Top Ten of Billboard's Hot 100. They also starred in two movies, more than any other band of that era outside of the Fab Four.

Here are 5 things about these early rock icons you might not know:

1.) For a brief time, they actually outsold the Beatles. In 1965, Billboard named them the top-selling singles act of the year, selling more 45s than John, Paul, George & Ringo. The Beatles, of course, kept chugging along and remain the best-selling group in rock history.

2.) Peter Noone’s nickname was inspired by a cartoon show. His bandmates all thought that Noone resembled a cartoon character from the Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoon series, Sherman, the little boy who hung around with the brainy, time-traveling dog, Mr. Peabody. To tease him, they started calling him “Herman” like he was related to Sherman. The Hermits’ name was given to the other four members by a pub owner in Manchester when they adopted the scruffier hairstyles made famous by the Beatles.

3.) Instead of drawing on early American rock ‘n’ roll songs, the band’s biggest hits were covers of very old English music hall songs. While the Stones, Beatles, and other British bands were reintroducing American audiences to the songs of Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, and others, Herman’s Hermits pulled their two biggest hits from the catalog of English music hall standards of any earlier, pre-rock era. Those, of course, were “Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter” (which also became the title of their first film) and “I’m Henry the Eighth.”

4.) Unlike most of the British Invasion bands, Herman’s Hermits had no songwriters in the group. Instead, they had to rely on covering those old music hall songs along with a small handful of American pop hits from the 1950s (“Silhouettes” and “Wonderful World”) and songs from emerging British & American songwriters like Steve Bari, P.F. Sloan, and Graham Gouldman (who later became a member of 10cc).

5.) Before turning to rock, Peter Noone had been the child star on a British soap opera. Noone had started out to be an actor. At the age of 14, he was cast as a regular character on the long-running British soap opera, Coronation Street. Two years later, he would give that up when he became a founding member of Herman’s Hermits.

While the hits dried up in 1967, the band did achieve an enduring popularity. So much so that there has been some confusion and a legal battle over who has the right to the name. Noone left the group in 1971 to pursue a solo career. The rest of the band continued on, simply as Herman, until just the original drummer, Barry Whitwam, was left. Whitwam hired other musicians and kept performing, eventually resuming the full name “Herman’s Hermits.”

Peter Noone, by far the most recognizable member of the original group and the guy who had sung all their hits, ultimately took him to court. They settled the lawsuit by agreeing that Whitwam must bill his group as Herman’s Hermits starring Barry Whitwam and Noone can bill his group as Herman’s Hermits starring Peter Noone, although he often performs simply under his own name with no group mention.

Yes, that organic produce may be free of pesticides and synthetic fertilizer, but it’s no safer from germs that may come from harvest, transporting and having it out on display at your grocer’s.

Experts will tell you that germs don’t really discriminate based on how the food was grown. As with any raw produce, make sure you wash it once you bring it home from the store.