George Redding This was definitely Sandra Dee's signature movie, and as a teen-age boy growing up in the sixties I was really taken with her. (Of course, I was not an aberration.) I saw this movie for the first time in the summer of 1959. I liked the beautiful California beach scenery, and the Four Preps music, and I was reasonably impressed with the acting. The cast was well-chosen. The cuddlesome-looking Sandra Dee was drawing, but she did not receive as much acclaim, as an actress. as she deserved; she was not only a cute bumess, but that little girl was strong-willed and outspoken in this movie. James Darren was a sharp-looking actor and singer, but his character was disgusting, since he was a bitter teen-ager with a big chip on his shoulder. If Arthur O'Connell was supposed to be serious in this movie, he did not do a good job of it as he played the role of Gidget's laughable high-strung father. Mary LaRoche was a beautiful, appealing lady who was wonderful as Gidget's mother. Jo Morrow, beautiful California beach scenery herself, was drawing in her minor role. Tom Laughlin, here about a dozen years before his "Billy Jack" days, seemed to click well with Dee in what was here his minor role. The story was more than what it appeared to be initially on the surface. It was about a teen-age girl who was at a crucial age, namely 16, and thus was in an identity crisis, and it was also about a girl who was, again, strong-willed as well. This movie was also a character study: she was infatuated with Mahuna, (Robertson)- an ex-Korean War vet in his middle thirties who lived only to surf and stay on the beach in a small hut there-, but she also was very up-front when she intonated to him that that was no way for him, nor anyone else, to live, and she thus had a pressing effect on him. (Only recently when I saw the movie on a DVD did I really notice the more serious aspect of the story.) Again, Sandra Dee was as cute as cute could be, but the movie did have a serious side. For more than one reason is it worth the time to see it.

Amy Adler Gidget, er, Frances Lawrence (Sandra Dee) is a teenage girl who is not yet into boy chasing. This leaves her closest friends miffed, because they want to charm the young men and Frances ends up spoiling the scene. So, the other gals run off and begin the hunt, leaving Frances to find her own fun. She does, at the beach, when a handsome surfer, Moondoggie, er, Jeff (James Darren), rescues her when she gets caught in some seaweed. From the moment she hitches a small ride on Moondoggie's surfboard, Frances wants to learn surfing. The "board" gang, several young males and their leader, Kahuna (Cliff Robertson) try to discourage her in every way. But, learn she does and quickly. Soon, she's almost one of the group, getting the nickname Gidget, for girl-and-midget. Also, Gidget soon finds herself falling for Moondoggie but he treats her like a little sister. How can she make him take her seriously? What if she goes after a more mature male, like Kahuna? This classic teenage film is welcome any and every day of the week, summer, winter, spring or fall. Dee and Darren are a great couple and the supporting cast, including Robertson, are great. So is the scenery, costumes, and everything else. Get Gidget. End of Discussion, haha.

annevejb amended at 16 Nov 2007, 23 Nov 2007 This comment is about The Complete Gidget Collection, DVD regions 1, 3 and 4, ntsc, 04807. * Getting to know Lizzie McGuire, a few comments mentioned Gidget. I had seen some Gidget features on UK television around 1979 and as I remembered them as romantic classics, a peak of romance, I was stuck with having to see these. I found them at a reasonably affordable discount source, a UK purchase from Florida. The set covers the three earliest Gidget features, the ones that I was hoping to get. They are 4x3 format trimmed from wider originals, a downer, but at least I could afford the set. There is also a Gidget collection that has the 1965 television series. I get the impression that it might continue on from these as the main actress is around age 19. The first feature has Gidget aged nearly seventeen. The next a year later, should this have been at the end of that summer instead, a straight follow on? Then a year later. * It took a second viewing for these to click for me. First viewing, I found that my taste had changed a lot. It was not the romantic explosion that I remembered. The second feature actually felt dead. Sandra Dee. She is what made me want to look at these again, though she only appears in the first. It is as if she is not acting the role of Girl Midget, but instead acting the role of the Doris Day of those nice roles of the 50's, Sandra doing this well. Then its link with Grease 1978. The first feature is so much dealing with the territory of the dream summer before the action of Grease. Different storyline but so much the same. Danny is inverted? Sandy very Gidge? Grease is quality and this Sandra Dee enhances the Grease explosions, for me. As if some Grease fans gain a lot from having Gidget 1959 in their collection. To me, these do not relate to Lizzie. That is modern and modern is too different. Maybe to The Lizzie M Movie, but really Grease is the word. For me, the other two features in this collection cannot compare, but with tolerance I find that they can grow to have appeal. The above were the starting point for me finding that tolerance. * Gidget 1959 does not have many IMDb user comments, but what is here includes some with the unusual level of quality that I notice in the Buffy comments.

natalierosen I LOVE watching these films of the 1950's which say so much. Well, they say so much about the 1950's. What a ridiculous bunch of substantively nothing some of these films were. The plots are so thin as are the women. I think when one looks at these films ... really looks at them ... one can see why there had to be a feminist movement. All the clichés apply. The women surely do not seem to have a brain in their head.In this film Gidget's friends simply do not know what on earth will happen to poor Gidget if she doesn't have a successful summer which means getting a steady boyfriend. She cannot even return to school if that doesn't happen. Gidget, well, she just ruminates and hand wrings wondering why oh why she just does not have the right stuff. Maybe there is something "wrong" with her that she simply does not care about men. She's such a cutsey tomboy. Uh oh..Nope, not to worry, gay an not an issue. Gay is an impossibility in that era and not even eluded to even though one of her friends seems ever so lesbian to me. Worry not though, her friend who helps her dress for the loowow and listens while Gidget worries about men but says nothing, is pinned, to a guy of course. Gidget's mother reassuringly stands by and tells her everything is AOK and she will know that man when she meets him. Whew, I was SO worried.We know, all's well that ends well and Gidget does finally get a man and of course remains virginal to boot. She realizes there is nothing "wrong" with her at all. She simply did not meet the "right" one. Thank God. She's saved. How could this ever-so bleached blond not meet anyone with those platinum looks and pancake makeup whiter than white skin? One could never take her for a black woman that's for sure. Of course in the 50's there were no blacks right? Did anyone of that era really have hair and skin that color? If one cared to notice her eyebrows were brown! No one notices as blond and white especially women are what America in the 50's wants everyone to be.What was that character all about? If one expects a discussion of War and Peace, Dickens, Steinbeck or even Louisa May Alcott forget it. How about a discussion of James Baldwin, Alan Ginsberg or Lenny Bruce? No way. Will she talk about Jim Crow laws in the south, the Plessy v. Fergusson decision or American foreign policy post WWII? I don't think so. Gidget is about worrying though. It is worrying about learning how to surf, attending loowows in the right clothes, hunky guys and Gidget's lack of attraction to men err lack of attraction to the RIGHT man. Serious stuff.Perhaps, the film is about innocence. Innocence though without some reality is simply trash. That is what the Gidget films are. They are pure and simply ridiculous trash. Sandra Dee had talent however as movies such as "Imitation of Life" and "A Summer Place" attest. It's too bad her talent was wasted on that genre of film. Obviously those films made money and THAT was what Gidget was all about.Oh well, I will admit watching those films is like taking a drink. It's utter escape into a life of pure fantasy and into the innocent life of a 1950's that really never was all that innocent if one was black, female, disabled or, certainly, heaven forbid homosexual. Nope Gidget was surely not reality. For a moment, though, when I watch it, I step away from the sadness and vicissitudes of life as it is.