This is the film that started it all!

Teen exploitation movies! A nationwide craze for surfing! The slang phrase “Big Kahuna!” Sandra Dee’s brief career as a movie star!

Before Gidget, there had been movies aimed at teenagers, but they were mainly bad horror and science fiction films whose stars were still adults. Gidget was the first movie for the Baby Boomers to make the kids and their personal lifestyle the focus.

The movie was based on a book written in 1957 by Frederick Kohner. The book was based on the real life adventures of the author’s daughter, Kathy who was the first female to successfully infiltrate the small California sub-culture of surfers a few years before that. The males really did call her “Gidget” (a contraction of “girl” and “midget”).

 In addition to Ms. Dee in the title role, Columbia Pictures cast future Oscar-winner Cliff Robertson as the head of the surfers (the Big Kahuna) and actor-singer James Darren as Gidget’s would-be boyfriend Moondoggie. While Gidget would change from film to film, Darren is, was and always will be Moondoggie.

The film was actually shot in the winter at Leo Carillo State Park in California. Sandra Dee reports that she had a major crush on Darren during filming and would have gladly surrendered her real virginity to him (mirroring one of the film’s plot threads), but Darren was married at the time and says he did all he could not to give into temptation (sort of  like what ultimately happened in the film)!

The movie earned Columbia a big glassy wave of cash and directly spawned two sequels (Gidget Goes Hawaiian and Gidget Goes to Rome), a TV series (Sally Field's first big break) and three made-for-TV movies (Gidget Grows Up, Gidget Gets Married, and Gidget’s Summer Reunion) as well as brief attempt at an updated TV series, The New Gidget in 1986. It was also directly responsible for inspiring American International to launch the Beach Party movies.

For whatever reason, no actress played the part twice. Sandra Dee was followed by Deborah Walley, Cindy Carol, Sally Field, Karen Valentine, Monie Ellis, and Caryn Richman.

If you watch it today, Gidget is a cut above the Frankie & Annette movies with much better production values and much less gratuitous footage of young girls shaking their bikini bottoms for the camera.

BTW the real Gidget is still around.

Still working? Great! You avoided the first mistake many Boomers make – retiring too early! The longer you work, the more secure you can make your retirement years.

Here are a few other common mistakes:

Taking Social security Benefits Too Soon – Sure, you can start getting your Social Security at age 62, but the experts say that can reduce yourt benefits by as much as 25%!

Retiring With Credit Card Debt – If you can it pays to pay off all your credit cards before you retire. If you can pay off your car loan and pay down the mortgage, so much the better.

Underestimating Your Life Expectancy – People today are routinely living well into their 80’s. The experts say it’s better to over-estimate than to underestimate; so to be safe, plan on living well into your 90’s!

2003: Sam Phillips’ Sun Records studio in Memphis is declared a national historic monument.

1996: Planning to kick off a nation-wide comeback tour, Donovan is denied entry into the U.S. due to a 30-year old marijuana conviction in the UK.

1968: British actress, Jane Asher announces on a UK TV show, Dee Time, that she is calling off her engagement to Paul McCartney. While Ms. Asher has steadfastly refused to discuss it, those close to her say she made the decision after catching Paul in bed with another woman a few days earlier. The bed, by the way, was allegedly in the Asher family home.

1986: To celebrate his 39^th birthday and the 20^th anniversary of the founding of the band named after him, Carlos Santana plays a concert in San Francisco that features all past and present members of Santana who are still living – 17 in all.

In the early days of TV, most major Hollywood studios saw it as “the enemy,” the force that was driving down attendance at movie theaters.

In those days, only Universal (which frankly could use the money), Walt Disney (who knew how to use TV to promote his movies and new theme park) and Warner Brothers really embraced the new medium.

Warner Brothers specialized in churning out 60-minure Westerns and private eye shows for ABC-TV. They began with the Western Cheyenne. When that clicked, others soon followed. One of the first was Sugarfoot, starring Will Hutchins.

While the show lasted 4 seasons, it didn’t run every week. Its first season (1957-58), it alternated with Cheyenne. The 2^nd season, Bronco was added to the rotation. It wasn’t until the 4^th season (1960-61) that Sugarfoot got a regular weekly airing.

The premise of the show involved Hutchins character, Tom Brewster, the proverbial tinhorn from the East – a guy so bad at being a cowboy the other ‘ombres nicknamed him “Sugarfoot” (apparently “Twinkletoes” was a little too over the line in the late 50’s).

Sugarfoot was ostensibly a lawyer, but he seemed to get involved in a fair amount of gunplay. He also seemed to roam far from the show’s Oklahoma setting (especially given how difficult long distance travel was back in the late 1800’s.

Like another W-B Western, Maverick, Sugarfoot was played very tongue-in-cheek. Jack Elam, veteran (or should that be “grizzled veteran”) of many Westerns was a frequent co-star as Hutchins’ sidekick Toothy Thompson.

As the vogue for all things Western began to fade as our attention would turn to doctors and spies, Sugarfoot rode off into that TVland sunset, occasionally returning in reruns.

The entire series is currently available on DVD.

1958: Following a series of arguments (over money, what else?), manager George Treadwell fires every member of the group, the Drifters. He replaces them with another group that had been calling themselves the Five Crowns.

This new set of Drifters quickly becomes the most successful line-up to perform under that name, scoring hits with “There Goes My Baby,” “This Magic Moment” and “Save the Last Dance for Me.”

1966: One of the great rock &roll mysteries: 22-year old Bobby Fuller, leader of the Bobby Fuller Four (“I Fought the Law”), is found dead inside his parked car outside his Hollywood apartment.

First ruled a suicide, many now suspect foul play as there was gasoline found in his lungs.

Is there a Baby Boomer male who didn’t have a crush on Hayley Mills back in the early 60’s?

If there was, he probably never saw her in her magnum opus, The Parent Trap.

The film trades on the extremely popular, but probably psychologically unhealthy fantasy of a lot of divorced kids that they can somehow get their parents back together again.

In this case, the too dumb for their own good ‘rents are played by Brian Keith (who owns every young girl’s fantasy of a California horse ranch) and Maureen O’Hara (who inhabits no one’s fantasy of a stuffy Boston home, relieved only by Charlie Ruggles as a grandfather with a permanent twinkle in his eye).

In The Parent Trap, their kids are both Hayley Mills (or Hayley and her body double, Susan Henning) as twins who were separated at birth by their idiot parents. 

Based on the German novel by Erich Kästner, Das Doppelte Lottchen (The Double Lottie), where the twins are named Lottie and Lisa. In the transfer to Hollywood, the girls are renamed Sharon and Susan. Somewhere along the way, they also picked up an inexplicable British accent. Very hard to understand as neither parent sounds remotely British.

Is anybody besides us bothered by one small fact? Despite the divorced parents seeming to be on pretty good terms (especially considering the relative rarity of divorce way back when), neither parent has told either of the girls that they have a sister - let alone an indentical twin? How screwed up is that?

Of course if they had been told, you’d never have a picture and we’d never have gotten see Hayley Mills get her underpants exposed to a bunch of boys! Yes, that scene was mighty racy for a Disney picture. Ms. Mills reports that she was so nervous about the scene where one twin cuts away the back of the other twin’s dress at a mixer with the boys’ camp that she actually wore multiple pairs of underwear during the filming of that scene!

Possible rock & roll history was made during the climactic scene involving the twins recreating their parents’ first date at an Italian restaurant in the outdoor courtyard of dad’s (Brian Keith) fantastic California ranch.

The duo serenades their folks with a very catchy little big beat number, “Let’s Get Together,” written by those Disney song-writing fools, Richard and Robert Sherman (later to hit the motherlode with the songs for Mary Poppins).

Here in 1961, a full two years before the Beatles recorded “She Loves You,” you can hear the lad’s trademark pop hook “Yeah, yeah, yeah” being crooned by two other lovable British mop-tops, Hayley Mills and Hayley Mills. Mills rode that song all the way to #8 on the Billboard Hot 100 in September of that year.

For whatever reason, the film’s title tune (also written by the Sherman brothers) is not sung by Hayley, but by Disney contract players Annette Funicello and Tommy Sands, who were busy at the studio filming Babes in Toyland at the same time.

The film was put together by the very capable David Swift. Swift had a long Hollywood career, working as animator for Disney and then as both a writer and director with a credit list that includes Pollyanna, Good Neighbor Sam, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and a variety of TV shows from Alfred Hitchcock Presents through The Love Boat. Appropriately, his final project was serving as screenwriter for the 1998 remake of The Parent Trap starring Lindsay Lohan.

For whatever reason, the original version of The Parent Trap went on to become one of Disney’s best-loved and most-remembered live action films. It wound up the 6^th highest grossing film of the year, coming in just behind West Side Story, The Guns of Navarone, El Cid, and two other Disney films – 101 Dalmatians and The Absent-Minded Professor. The film was also nominated for two Oscars in technical categories (Sound and Film Editing).

BTW - Here's a photo of Hayley with her body double, Susan Henning. The two have remained in touch through all the intervening years.

Before the ’98 reboot, it spawned no less than three made-for-TV sequels all with Hayley Mills returning as the now grown up Sharon and Susan.

The Parent Trap and The Parent Trap II are available on DVD.