Gidget

This short lived series was very important for many of us just becoming teens in the mid-60's. Her clothing, hairdos, language and relationships with friends and boyfriends were fun to tune into once a week and see what life was like (although somewhat not believable!!) for a teenage girl growing up near the beach in California. Sally Field was a darling girl, perfectly cast here, not afraid to make faces, cry, or even do physical comedy in this series. Gidget had her own bedroom with her own Princess telephone (we all wanted one), lived in a wonderful two story home with a beautiful yard and got to drive her dad's cool car sometimes. And yes, she got into and out of a lot of trouble in the 22 minute show,but at that time in our lives, for a half hour, it was believable to many of us. Like The Donna Reed Show, Father Knows Best, and Leave It To Beaver, these were mild comedies, with gentle story lines, usually a moral to be learned, and left us feeling good about ourselves and maybe had a laugh or two during the half hour show. To many people today,this sounds corny and old-fashioned, but it felt like a safer, more comfortable world back then.

I am a fan of all the Gidget movies and TV shows. I have seen them all from the 1959 Gidget to the 1972 Gidget gets married, and the 1985 the new Gidget TV series. My favorite was the 1965 Gidget TV series starring Sally Field and Don Porter. The show was funny innocent, and heart warming. Sally Field was cute, perky, and adorable as the surfer girl midget. She was the best actress who play Gidget in my opinion. She is also the only actress who played Gidget to win three Emmys and 2 Academy Awards. It is hard to believe watching the show that it only ran for one season. I could not wait to get home from school to watch Gidget.

One interesting note about this show is that it is based on a real story/situation.

The real life Gidget was the daughter of a professor at Malibu's Pepperdine College. She hung out at the beach, surfed and generally amused her dad enough that he wrote a story about her life. This story later was turned into the movie 'Gidget' and then turned into this TV show.

My mom herself was a surfer in the late 50's so I always found this show interesting when I watched it on re-runs as a kid. Or course it doesn't hurt that Sally Field is unbelievably adorable! The show airs on TV Land right now and is surprisingly fun to watch.

Sally Field as a TV-version of Frances Lawrence, aka 'Gidget', that feisty teenager from a Los Angeles suburb in the 1960s, protesting injustices, standing up for the underdog, surfing on the weekends, and meddling in everyone's lives. This half-hour filmed sitcom with laugh-track only lasted one season before ABC unwisely gave it the heave-ho (due to low ratings, though they suddenly picked up during the '66 rerun season). Still, "Gidget" lives on due to canny, clever writing, rich photo stock (with colors that just POP!), a fun supporting cast, a hummable theme song (warbled by Johnny Tillotson), and of course Field, the quintessential little sister/best friend/project manager. Field was an inexperienced young actress who somehow knew the magical trick of connecting honestly with the TV viewing audience (whether addressing the camera directly or not). Her abilities were part instinct and part God's gift. She's indefatigable but never exhausting, and she makes everyone on-screen her pal as well. As widower father Professor Russell Lawrence, Don Porter (carried over from 1963's theatrical "Gidget Goes to Rome") is attractively bemused and never embarrassed, while Lynette Winter is the perfect embodiment of the misfit best friend (doggedly devoted, sometimes against her will). As Gidget's married sister and brother-in-law, Betty Conner and Peter Deuel seldom get their share of bright lines or stories, though Deuel's starchy skepticism is nearly funny on its own. Despite the product plugs, Gidget's rather under-populated high school, and a few slapstick detours, not a bad way to spend an afternoon. It's nostalgic and upbeat, and Field looks great on a surfboard.

By the time ABC filmed the 1965-1966 television version of "Gidget," Frederick Kohner's 1957 novel of that name (based on the adventures of his daughter Kathy) had already provided the basis for three motion pictures. Unlike the Gidget films, however, the television series does not focus on Gidget's romantic involvements. We rarely see her boyfriend Jeff, who is a student at Princeton; and her romantic interests are primarily limited to ill-advised infatuations that do not last beyond a single episode. The television series devotes most of its attention to Gidget's relations with her family, her peers, and her teachers. As with the movies, surfing is an underlying theme, but much of the action takes place away from the beach, and deals with such mundane subjects as school work, dating, getting a job, and learning to drive, as well as more unusual ones such as escaping from a "haunted" house, or evading a witch's "curse." In coping with life, Frances Lawrence, whose diminutive stature earned her the nickname "Gidget" (a contraction of "Girl" and "Midget"), gets advice, sought and unsought, from her father Russ (Don Porter), a UCLA English professor, her sister Anne (Betty Conner), her brother-in-law John (Pete Duel), and her best friend Larue (Lynette Winter). "Gidget" captures the different dynamic that exists in a one-parent, one-child, family--Gidget and her father are especially close. Anne is a somewhat conventional meddling older sister who is trying to make Gidget into a lady. John is an aspiring psychologist who attributes nearly everything to subliminal motives. Gidget customarily ignores their suggestions. Larue is a rather eccentric figure, who visits the beach clad in clothing that conceals everything but her face (and sometimes that as well) because she is allergic to sunlight. Gidget often gets together with Larue to consume exotic sandwiches and discuss whatever problem she is facing. Despite her eccentricities, Larue's judgment is often better than Gidget's, but she sometimes gets drawn into Gidget's misadventures against her will.

Sally Field landed the role of Gidget through a summer workshop screen test. She had participated in secondary school dramatic productions, but she had had no on-screen experience apart from being a supernumerary in the forgettable 1962 film, "Moon Pilot." Although 19 when the program was filmed, Field is entirely credible as the 15-year-old Gidget. And, in mastering this role, she gave early evidence of the acting talent that was to win her many parts (from the Flying Nun to Mary Todd Lincoln) and awards. Her attitude toward the filming of "Gidget" was "absolute total glee," and her performances reflect this. Don Porter served as her mentor; and there was good chemistry between them, both on and off camera. Similarly, Field described Lynette Winter as her "best friend" in real life as well as in the show. Winter brought to her role a veritable arsenal of facial expressions, and a talent for physical comedy perhaps even greater than Field's. It is hard to imagine "Gidget" without these three. Conner and Duel successfully portray an annoying sister and brother-in-law; and Duel displays surprising aptitude for slapstick when he accidentally disconnects the water supply hose to the washing machine, drenching Anne, Gidget, and himself (we are left to wonder what the soaked cat, watching from a corner, thought of this human folly).

"Gidget" is a conglomeration of 1960s artifacts--cars, clothes, hair styles, dances, record players, dial telephones, VHF/UHF television sets, and manual typewriters. In terms of its cast, subject matter and attitudes, it is also a product of its times. Occasionally, there are explicit, if not emphatic, references to sex, and to Gidget's physique. And the cast includes African-Americans playing minor, but respectable, characters. But the women are definitely not liberated. One of Gidget's male acquaintances commands her, "Go fetch food, woman!" Her father tells one of her male classmates what to do "when a woman clamors for complete equality with men," and implies that women really do not want such equality. Gidget receives a spanking in one episode, as does a visiting Swedish female student in another. (No male characters suffer this indignity.) As Gidget concludes in one postscript, "I'd set back women's rights a hundred years--exactly where they belonged." Today, some of this may grate on the nerves, even of those not sensitized to gender issues. On the other hand, in several episodes, Gidget attempts to improve the behavior of her male associates, and, more generally, her participation in surfing involved breaking into what had been a male preserve.

An episode of "Gidget" typically ends with sage advice from Russ, or--better--a humorous epigram from Gidget herself, such as: "You're only young once; but if you work it right, once is enough." Or: "It's too bad you can't be born with maturity, then lose it when you don't need it anymore."