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 83. 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!

1957: A young British skiffle band named The Quarrymen plays its very first gig on a flatbed truck for a fete in Roseberry Street in Liverpool. The group was led by the very brash John Lennon. A few months later, Paul McCartney would join the band, soon to be followed by Paul's mate, George Harrison.

1968: Due to the recent assassination of Robert Kennedy, Steve Binder, the director of Elvis Presley’s upcoming Christmas special decides to ditch “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” as the closing number. On this day, he asks musical director, Bones Howe (see photo), to pen a “more socially conscious” song as a replacement.

That same afternoon, Howe writes “If I Can Dream.” Elvis likes it and the rest is music history.

1969: The town of Northridge, California hosts the Newport Rock Festival. Acts at the festival included Creedence Clearwater Revival, Ike and Tina Turner, Jethro Tull, Joe Cocker, the Rascals and Steppenwolf.

Jimi Hendrix is the headliner and his $125,000 paycheck sets a record for the most ever paid to a rock act for a single performance up to that time.

1973: In London’s west End theater district, a modest little musical that will eventually rock pop culture has its first performance.

Tim Curry takes the stage as Dr. Frank N. Furter in The Rocky Horror Show.

1977: On the eve of their wedding, Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf and his intended, Silvia Sommerlath receive a special serenade when they attend a Stockholm concert by, who else, ABBA.

1978: Grace Slick takes the stage in St. Goarhausen, West Germany with Jefferson Starship, but is really too intoxicated to perform. Instead, she sings badly and starts taunting the audience with Nazi references.

The crowd doesn’t appreciate it. They riot, causing a million dollars damage. The end result, Slick leaves the band, not returning until 1983.

1967: What would quickly become known as “the Summer of Love” kicks off in California on this day when the Monterey Pop Festival opens. Among the acts: Eric Burdon and the Animals, the Association, Booker T. and the MGs, the Byrds, the Mamas and the Papas, the Who, and several relatively new acts such as Canned Heat, the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding, Simon and Garfunkel, and the Steve Miller Band.

Top ticket price for the event is $6.50 and a documentary of the event by filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker, released two years later helps cement the fame of both the event and several of its top acts.

Remembering the Beach Party Films

Who would have ever thought that two Italians from New York City would come to represent the “summer blond” California surfing movement?

But that’s what happened when American International Pictures launched one of the most successful series of pictures with Beach Party in 1963. Since then, the names Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello are not only eternally linked to each other, but also to the whole surfing craze of the 1960’s.

Here's the lowdown on the movies that kept us entertained in the mid-1960's.

AIP was famous for producing what we called “drive-in movies.” These were movies that really didn’t get a whole lot of attention from critics…or from their intended audience, if the truth be told. That’s because most of us went to the drive-in to have a place to be alone with our boyfriends/girlfriends. There was a reason we called drive-ins “the passion pit.”

So AIP produced movies that could be made quickly and cheaply and provide just enough entertainment when you were coming up for air between make-out sessions.

Mainly, they dealt in cheap horror films, often with more than a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor – like Buckets of Blood, a whole slew of low-budget Edgar Allen Poe movies, and their most famous film, the original Little Shop of Horrors.

Always quick to cash in on trends, the head of American International, Sam Arkoff, saw the business both Gidget (1959) and Gidget Goes Hawaiian (1961) had done. So he planned his own low budget surfing movie with a few changes.

First, he added a lot more girls in skimpy bathing suits. Then, he banished any parents. (Think, did you ever see Frankie’s mom or Annette’s dad in a beach movie?) Any adults on screen (and they included Bob Cummings, Dorothy Malone, and Don Rickles) were the object of comedic ridicule. Arkoff also got rid of any moralizing or social consciousness. Viet Nam? Civil rights? They just didn’t exist in this world. The Beach Party films were pure, 100% escapism.

Most movie buffs consider an even dozen films as the “official Beach Party series.” They are:

• Beach Party (1963)
• Muscle Beach Party (1964)
• Bikini Beach (1964)
• Pajama Party (1964)
• Beach Blanket Bingo (1965)
• Ski Party (1965)
• How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965)
• Sergeant Deadhead (1965)
• Dr, Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965)
• Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1967)
• Fireball 500 (1967)
• Thunder Alley (1967)

Of course, the success of this series also spawned additional imitators, including Ride the Wild Surf (1964 w/Fabian, Tab Hunter, Barbara Eden & Shelly Fabres), Beach Ball (1965 w/ Edd “Kookie” Byrnes and the Four Seasons), and others.

Not all of the AIP series took place on the beach. Ski Party, for example, is set at a winter ski resort and the final two films focus on car racing, not surfing.

In most of the films, Frankie and Annette played the same characters (Frankie and Dee Dee). They are joined by a regular company of other kids who also played the same characters from film to film. The most memorable of these was unquestionably Harvey Lembeck as the least threatening biker in history, the bumbling Eric Von Zipper.

Due to their other commitments, Frankie and Annette don’t always appear together in these films. For example, Annette appears opposite Tommy Kirk in Pajama Party while Frankie goes it alone in Ski Party. However in both of these films, the missing partner from the team pops up in an amusing, but brief walk-on.

Half of the Beach Party films were directed by William Asher, who was to marry Elizabeth Montgomery and go on to help create and run her successful Bewitched TV Series.

With all those boys and girls in next-to-nothing bathing suits and no adult supervision, you’d think there might have been quite a bit of sexual content in the Beach Party movies. But you would be wrong.

The movie posters and radio advertising for these films always promised way more sex than the actual pictures delivered.

There was also a reason why Annette never wore a bikini in any of the films. It’s because she was still under contract to the Walt Disney Studios and they would only approve her Beach Party appearances if she stayed in a one piece or the most modest of two-pieces.

The films aren’t “musicals” in the conventional sense, but they were always loaded with plenty of tunes aimed at the teenage audience. In fact, Brian Wilson, of Beach Boys fame, was recruited to write many of the songs in the very first Beach Party film. And in Ski Party, you get excellent on screen performances of their hits by James Brown, the Hondells, and Lesley Gore.

While none of these films are Academy Award material, the Beach Party series holds up better than you might expect. Renting or streaming one tonight may bring back fond memories from your teen-age years. That is, if you ever looked up at the screen when you were at the drive-in.

1988: An Italian photographer catches married man Bruce Springsteen doing something he shouldn’t with E Street Band member Patti Scialfa. Publication of the photo helps trigger Springsteen’s divorce from actress and model, Julianne Phillips.

The Boss will eventually marry Scialfa.They remain married today.