While it only lasted one season (1965-66), Gidget has never really faded from public consciousness. There are several reasons for this.
1.) The character of Gidget became a cultural icon thanks to multiple movie and TV projects. Prior to the TV series, Gidget had been the title character in 3 movies as well as the original 1957 novel that gave birth to the character.
2.) Sally Field overcame a couple of silly sitcoms (Flying Nun, anyone?) to emerge as one of our generation's most respected actors, earning three Emmies and two Oscars. That Gidget was her first starring role meant it was often mentioned when anyone discussed her career.
3.) The series is actually pretty good.
As you may know from reading one of our other posts, there really is a Gidget. She’s Kathy Kohner, who became one of the few female surfers in the early days of the sport. Her dad, Frederick Kohner, wrote a fictionalized account of her teen years that, in turn, became the basis for three very successful films, Gidget (1959), Gidget Goes Hawaiian (1961), and Gidget Goes to Rome (1963).
In adapting her exploits for the small screen, producers employed the senior Kohner as the script consultant (he actually contributed several stories during the show’s only season). They cast Don Porter, who had played Gidget’s father in the last of the films. They also brought back three characters that were in the novel, but cut from the movies: Gidget’s best friend, Larue, her older sister Anne, and her brother-in-law John, a know-it-all psychologist who was constantly psychoanalyzing Gidget’s behavior.
One of the endearing features of the show is that Gidget breaks the fourth wall and directly addresses the audience about how she feels after certain scenes. For the young guys watching the show, she also spends quite a bit of time in two-piece swimsuits and baby doll pajamas.
While the show featured quite a few beach scenes and plenty of surfing footage, Gidget’s boyfriend Moondoggie is sent off to college in the pilot episode, freeing up Gidget for plenty of romantic escapades throughout the run of the series. The core of the series is really the daddy-daughter relationship between Gidget and her single dad (Professor Lawrence is widowed in the TV series).
Her annoying brother-in-law was played by an actor named Peter Duel, who went on to other TV series like Love on a Rooftop and Alias Smith and Jones. Among the actors who showed up for bits parts during that single season were Judy Carne (who became Duel’s co-star in Love on a Rooftop), Richard Dreyfuss, Bonnie Franklin, and Barbara Hershey – the latter two showing up in multiple episodes as classmates of Gidget.
While Field was 19 at the time of filming, her character is only supposed to be 15. That makes her romance with the college-aged Moondoggie somewhat creepy. In other episodes, she gets involved with other adult men, which concerns her father somewhat, but not like how that subject would be handled today.
Whle the show experienced low ratings during the regular season and was cancelled, it actually scored very good ratings during the summer reruns. Instead of reversing their decision and going forward with a second season, ABC in their infinite wisdom decided to create a whole new sitcom for their budding star - the aforementioned Flying Nun.
BTW – Gidget’s signature expression, “Toodles,” was originally ad-libbed by Sally. The producers liked it, so it became her standard farewell expression.
Because of Field’s subsequent fame, the series has actually been rerun on TV many times and is available on home video. Gidget, the character, went on to a made-for-TV movie, Gidget Grows Up (1969 – with Karen Valentine), and a series reboot, The New Gidget in 1986, featuring a grown-up Gidget, Moondoggie, and Larue. It lasted two seasons.
