Matt Warshaw talked to Kathy Zuckerman née Kohner, better know as Gidget, in 1993. Quotes from this article appeared in the May 1994 issue of Los Angeles magazine, for an articled titled "When Malibu Ruled."

I'm a hostess at the Broadway Bar and Grill, in Santa Monica, on the Promenade near 3rd. I've been there almost six years.

Yesterday I called there, looking for you. The woman who answered didn't know who "Kathy" was. I started to explain, and she went "Oh, you mean Gidget!"

That's how they know me, yes. Gidget is still a part of my life, and always will be. If you ask for Kathy Zuckerman they won't have any idea who you're talking about.

Does the Gidget legend weigh on you much?

My ego was never tied into being Gidget, no.

Do you ever compare the Hollywood Gidget, or the book Gidget, or the TV Gidget, to the way you actually lived it on the beach?

No, not really. I don’t know. I mean, I’m 53 now and I was 16 then. It was so long ago. I certainly don’t go to Malibu now. I don’t surf anymore. I don’t sit there and watch. Malibu, for me, is still the Malibu from when I was a girl.

Did you meet Sandra Dee [the movie Gidget]?

Just once. But I liked her a lot and thought she did a wonderful job.

Did you give her any instructions on how to be Gidget?

No, not at all. She knew what she was doing.

Maybe I was a little bit of a tomboy than the way she played it.

I started in 1956 and quit in 1958 when I went to college.


I loved surfing, but parts of it were really hard. Learning was hard. I was pretty much the only girl out there, and the boys teased me a lot. I didn't have an easy time. But it was fun, too. And just really simple at first. It was just going to the beach and surfing. No book, no movie, no sequels, no myth. I was just a girl who surfed, and the guys at Malibu named me Gidget. Then I left and everything kind of went crazy.

What was it like for you when the movie came out?

It was great, I loved it, but in a way I felt more like part of the audience. I was mostly done with that part of my life. It wasn’t important to me the way it was with Tubesteak [Terry Tracy] and everybody else. I mean, Tube just loved it so much. I remember once when I met his family, many years ago, and his children said, “Oh my God! We watch 

 every Thanksgiving! Dad loves that movie!”

But for me, I think surfing was just a teenage rite of passage. Some kids went to Westwood every weekend to go to the movies. I went to the beach. That was because of my mom, actually. She thought going to Westwood and hanging around the Bruin theater all day wasn't such a great idea. She wanted us to go to the beach instead because it would be healthier, so we did. And in those three years I went from being a little girl to getting my own identity. I surfed at Malibu and became Gidget. But it didn’t become my life.

Kathy Kohner

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