Kathy "Gidget" Zuckerman

• Posted November 20, 2024

Crowds of people packing the beach with colorful towels and oversized beach bags. The water just as full with eager surfers waiting to catch a wave on one of Malibu's three point breaks. The commonality of this sight, congested beaches and equally congested waves, may be what comes to mind for many when they think of the "Malibu surf scene." But it wasn't always this way.

Prior to the late 50s, the term "surf culture" was a foreign, if not non-existent, term. Mass-produced surfboards didn't exist, and neither did any of its accompanying accouterments, like surf clothing, leashes, or even wetsuits. Surfing wasn't even a popular Californian pastime, yet. It wasn't until one young girl's story was published that the surf movement was born. 

Kathy Zuckerman (maiden name Kohner) was the daughter of Czechoslovakian immigrants to the US. Kathy’s parents always went to the beach in Malibu on the weekends, where around the age of three, Kathy was exposed to the surf community. She recalls getting to know the group of surfers in the area when she was between the ages of eight to ten before those surfers moved away and new ones came in. She was around the age of fifteen when she decided to try the sport. Soon after, a local surfer named Mike Doyle sold her her first surfboard for $35. 

That local group of surfers surfed tandem with her (when two people ride the same board) and helped to teach her how to surf herself. It was one of these locals who combined the two words "girl" and "midget," to create Kathy's famous nickname: Gidget.

“I just thought it was great. Because I wasn’t competing with anybody. It was just me and the board and the wave. The water. That was part of what I loved about surfing in the fifties. I mean…there was no surf clothing…no surf competitions…no shortboards…no wetsuits…no leashes…only longboards.”

Kathy was the only girl in her high school, University High, that surfed. In fact, many didn't even know what it was that she did in her free time after school. One girl wrote in Kathy's yearbook "Good luck with your waterskiing!" While the other girls at her school were joining clubs and going to dances, Kathy preferred to do something less mainstream. 

“That’s all I wanted to do, so after school, I’d get to Malibu, because I thought, well this is what I like. I like the guys and I like the surfing and its so way off dead center.” 

The surf community in Malibu where Kathy surfed was a small one. 

“When I would go to Malibu and take my [dad’s] car, if there was somebody else that had a surfboard in their car, you knew who that person was. You waved. You honked. There were not very many of us."

The small community could barely be defined as a "surf culture," in Kathy's opinion. It wasn't until after the publishing of Gidget that "surf culture," as we know it today really blossomed.

Kathy started surfing around 1957. During that time, she kept a series of diaries detailing her experiences, emotions, crushes, and stories from the beach and with the surfers. That year, Kathy approached her father, Frederick Kohner, telling him that she wanted to write a story about it all. Her father, a writer, offered to write it for her, to which she happily agreed. Within three months, the fictionalized tale Gidget was born, sparking a revolution of incomparable proportion within the California coastal towns and beyond. Gidget detailed the crushes, thoughts, and surfing of a teenage girl in the fifties, just like the real Gidget's stories and diary entries did. The book soared to the top ten on the best seller list, sending hoards of Gidget-wannabes to the beach to find their own "Moondoggie" (the name of the lead love interest in the novel).

“It was his success, not my success. But now I think it’s my success because I tell the story and I’m still alive and I did surf, it’s not a fable. I have my diaries to prove it.”

The book became so popular that it sparked a series of spinoff films and novels, featuring various actress portrayals of Gidget. The first film starred Sandra Dee (Kathy's preferred version of "herself" on screen) and James Darren as the two leads, and was a smashing success.

Following the initial success of the novel, Kathy left for Oregon to attend college, where she recalls being known as "that Gidget girl" in a place where there were virtually no surfers at the time. It was then, around the age of 18, that she gave up surfing and began to find her interests elsewhere, such as poetry readings and the Peace Corps.

But after college, Kathy returned to Malibu with her then-boyfriend, now husband, hoping to show him the beaches she had surfed at. It was then that she tried to get back in the water. She remembers the community of local surfers, men and women alike, who helped her get back on her board and surf. She says:

“[It’s] kind of like riding a bike…you don’t forget how to stand up on a wave.”

Prior to Gidget's publishing in 1957, "surf community" may have been a better term to describe the scene at Malibu than "surf culture." Following Gidget the book and it subsequent movies and other media, what we have come to know as the "surfing boom," exploded. The sixties saw the creation of surf music and bands, movies starring celebrities like Elvis Presley and Annette Funicello, all of which would not have been possible without Gidget. 

“The Gidget movie was the start of the billion dollar surf industry, as far as I’m concerned.”

However, amidst the sunshine and innocence of the early surf movement, a darker side was growing. Cult films like Big Wednesday changed the face of surf by showing a rougher side to the public. What followed was the drug, drinking, and sex-surrounded culture of the late sixties and seventies. It was around this time that localism also began to emerge. Localism is the idea or belief that only local surfers and certain people should be allowed at a certain surf spot. The idea appeared out of the increasing commonality of overcrowded beaches and, simultaneously, waves. Kathy talks about this shift with sadness. On one occasion she asked a friend why he stopped surfing and he said that a man had threatened to kill him if he touched his wave. Kathy remembers that her surfer friends would bully and tease her, play pranks and things, such as burying her surfboard, but nothing like what localism is today.

Many people today often talk about Kathy as a hero of women in surf, an industry that is notorious for its gender imbalance. However Kathy herself says:

“I never understood the term ‘gender.’ That was a later time period. When somebody said, ‘Well that was a gender issue, you broke the barrier…'

Well, I said, 'What do you mean by that?'

'Well you were a girl out there surfing in a man’s world.'

'I was out there surfing because I had a crush on somebody and I wanted to do this sport that they were doing and it was a lot of fun.'"

Kathy talks about how she didn't surf 'to break the glass ceiling,' but rather to have fun and be with the guys she had crushes on. She sees herself as a normal teenage girl, doing things a normal teenage girl would do. There were also some other young women in the water that surfed as well. Kathy remembers Pam, a girl of about twelve, as well as a group of girls a bit older than her.

“Well I didn’t know what feminism was. I still really kind of don’t know what feminism is. I guess I was a feminist because I went out into the world of boys’ surfing."

At 83, Kathy doesn't surf anymore, but she continues to carry on the legacy of Gidget.

“It’s a very brief period in my life, that time. But now it seems incredibly important to me because this was a real time where these people were doing surfing and there weren’t a lot of us and we're dying out, that group from the fifties."

Among the many surfers Kathy admires, she told me about Robert August and P.T. Townend, the latter of which affectionately calls Kathy “the Fairy-Godmother of surfing.” She talks about her gratitude to them for taking her into the surf community with open arms, even though they barely knew her. Kathy says:

“That’s a very important thing, to be welcomed into a community…The surfers have welcomed me into the community, so I wanna give back by…showing up for them and helping out.”

Kathy had the original Gidget book reissued in 2001 in an effort to continue the impact the story had. Around that time, she began making a more active effort to attend speaking events and re-engage with the surfing community. The book itself has not lost impact even today, 67 years after its original publication. It continues today to inspire readers and be a testament to the beginnings of what can now be called “surf culture.” 

Kathy realized the importance of promoting Gidget, not just as a book, but in honor of the “longboard memories” of past surfers who can no longer tell their own stories. She continues the legacy by talking to the current generation of surfers and learners about surf history, both her life and otherwise, at her job at Duke’s restaurant in Malibu, where she spreads the spirit of Aloha to all who will listen.

She told me with a smile:

"Once a surfer, always a surfer."

Sources Used in This Article outside of my personal interview with Kathy:

Cater, Ben. Various. HIS3035, various, Point Loma Nazarene University. Class lecture.

Liebenson, D. (2021, March 4). The Real-Life Gidget looks back from 80: “I lived it all.” Vanity Fair. https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2021/03/the-real-life-gidget-looks-back-from-80?srsltid=AfmBOoqld9tKUsP5z2DWPBUD40F5_BvUIwtpjn0wIqCPH77M-p7yBf8q.

Swanton, W. (2018, September 8). Gidget surfs the real world: She was a teenage girl who inspired a generation of surfers when her father’s story of Gidget became wildly successful. The Australian. Retrieved November 19, 2024, from https://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/gidget-surfs-the-real-world/news-story/db17eacd955bb181b230cdae0b80f99a.

Yang, M. (2024, July 5). The real-life Gidget, Kathy Kohner-Zuckerman is coming to Coronado. The Coronado News. https://thecoronadonews.com/2024/07/the-real-life-gidget-kathy-kohner-zuckerman-is-coming-to-coronado/.