Chapter: 4
Ten-Year Boom
- Gidget the All-Powerful
- The Rebel Next Door
- Hobie vs Velzy vs the IRS
- Better Surfing Through Chemistry
- Summer on the Inside
- Surf Fashion, Lightly Salted
- Surfing the Newsstand
- Process of Elimination
- Oil City Showdown
- The Jazz Stylings of Phil Edwards
- Technicolor Surf Boom
- Heroes and Villains
- Blackball Blues
- Dick Dale, Destroyer of Amps
- Surfing in Five-Part Harmony
- Tokyo to Tel Aviv
- Flight of the Larrikin
- Bob Evans Means Business
- Midget Wins It All
- But Will it Play in New York?
- Houses of the Holy
- We Own the Sidewalks
- Beautiful from any Angle
- Duke's Big Contest
- Can You Handle the Penetrator?
- Girls, Don't Panic!
- David Nuuhiwa Walks on Water
- An Invincible Summer
An Invincible Summer

August, Hynson, Brown, LAX

Bruce Brown

John Whitmore, Elands Bay

Cape St Francis. Photo: Bruce Browne

An Invincible Summer
Newsweek said The Endless Summer was “not very well made,” and that filmmaker Bruce Brown “knew little about the niceties of shooting a documentary.” Then the magazine went ahead and named it one of the 10 best films of 1966 anyway. That's the kind of roll Brown and his movie were on.
Nothing better encapsulated the 1960s surf boom, nor more clearly marked its end, than The Endless Summer, Bruce Brown’s cheerful monster-sized crossover documentary hit. Filmed in 1963 at the very height of the boom, Endless Summer wasn’t released to general audiences until fall 1966, at which point the movie played like a coda for a era of the sport that, rather than being endless, vanished almo...
Subscribe or Login
Plans start at $5, cancel anytimeTrouble logging-in? Contact us.