Gidget (1959)

Film: Gidget (1959)

Stars: Sandra Dee, Cliff Robertson, James Darren, Arthur O'Connell, The Four Preps

Director: Paul Wendkos

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Sandra Dee: click here to learn more about Ms. Dee (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Sandra Dee's early life was rough.  Raised initially with her brother Dodd by her mother and aunt under the birth name Alexandra Zuck, she would eventually live with her mother and her second husband, a real estate executive who sexually abused young Alexandra, something her mother eventually became aware of but refused to acknowledge.  As a teenager, Alexandra (now under the name of Sandra Dee) worked as a high-profile model, suffering from severe issues with her weight & health but becoming quite successful (to the point where biographers argue she made more as a model than as an actress).  This led her to move to Hollywood, and work in film.  A chance encounter with gossip columnist Louella Parsons got Dee's name in the papers, and she won a Golden Globe for New Star of the Year in 1957 for her work in Until They Sail with Joan Fontaine & Paul Newman.  A series of movies in 1957 led to a contract with Universal (Dee would eventually be the last major star under contract to a studio under the old studio system), and in 1959 she'd make the two films that would cement her fame.  First was Imitation of Life, a mammoth hit for Universal (the biggest hit in their history to that point), which we profiled a few years ago when we looked at the career of Lana Turner, and then while on loan to Columbia she made Gidget, our film today, and the movie that she would become synonymous with for the rest of her life.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie follows Francine Lawrence (Dee), who at the age of 17 is feeling pressured to fall in love with boys like her friends do, but she doesn't have that feeling toward them yet.  Still, wanting to fit in, she goes to the beach, and meets a group of surfer boys, including an older man named the Big Kahuna (Robertson) and a younger guy named Moondoggie (Darren).  She falls in love with surfing, and to some degree both of the guys, and starts to surf, getting the snarky moniker Gidget (a combination of girl and "midget").  She proves to be only somewhat good at it (enough to need to be rescued a couple of times), but starts to have real feelings for Moondoggie.  Impatient for him to notice her and for her to feel like she's a real woman, she tries to seduce the Big Kahuna into taking her virginity, which he initially refuses, and then almost does as he finds her charming.  Before he can commit the deed, though, he throws Gidget out where she has a big confrontation with Moondoggie.  She returns to civilization, a bit defeated, only to discover that the "nice young man" that her father's been trying to set her up with all of the movie is a now-respectable looking Moondoggie, who finally takes Gidget on a date.

The movie was pretty consequential in the 1960's.  We talked last month about the career of Annette Funicello and her part in the Beach Party movies, but Gidget really paved the way for those movies in the 1960's to be popular.  It also spawned a sequel (Gidget Goes to Rome) and a short-lived TV series starring Sally Field...neither of these featured Sandra Dee, who was under contract to Universal and so wasn't at liberty to line Columbia's coffers continually with hit movies.  Dee is actually quite good in Gidget.  She finds a sort of spunky feminism that honestly wasn't really a thing in teen movies of this era, when girls were either saints or sirens in movies like this, and while this is no one's idea of a progressive film, it definitely means that Gidget gets to be two things at the end of the movie-both with her dream guy and decidedly herself.

The movie, though, isn't very good outside of these messages.  The supporting characters are so interchangeable you'll get confused when they're referenced, and it's not funny enough even though it's meant to be.  Cliff Robertson's Big Kahuna is sexy but a snore (and it's SO weird to think he'd be clutching a Best Actor Oscar less than ten years from this film's premiere), and James Darren is even less interesting (if, again, quite cute).  I get the appeal here, but this didn't have as much of the snappy fun that the Beach Party movies would have with Frankie Avalon.