As per our current Database, Gidget is still alive (as per Wikipedia, Last update: May 10, 2020).
Currently, Gidget is 96 years, 11 months and 25 days old. Gidget will celebrate 97rd birthday on a Monday 20th of May 2024. Below we countdown to Gidget upcoming birthday.
Popular As | Gidget |
Occupation | Actress |
Age | 96 years old |
Zodiac Sign | Gemini |
Born | May 20, 1927 ( Port Angeles, Washington, United States) |
Birthday | May 20 |
Town/City | Port Angeles, Washington, United States |
Nationality | United States |
Gidget’s zodiac sign is Gemini. According to astrologers, Gemini is expressive and quick-witted, it represents two different personalities in one and you will never be sure which one you will face. They are sociable, communicative and ready for fun, with a tendency to suddenly get serious, thoughtful and restless. They are fascinated with the world itself, extremely curious, with a constant feeling that there is not enough time to experience everything they want to see.
Gidget was born in the Year of the Rabbit. Those born under the Chinese Zodiac sign of the Rabbit enjoy being surrounded by family and friends. They’re popular, compassionate, sincere, and they like to avoid conflict and are sometimes seen as pushovers. Rabbits enjoy home and entertaining at home. Compatible with Goat or Pig.
"It's Franzie," I said. "From Franziska. It's a German name. After my grandmother."
Kohner, a Czechoslovakian Jew, worked in the German film industry as a Screenwriter until 1933 when he emigrated to Hollywood after the Nazis started removing Jewish credits from films. Over the coming decades Kohner and his wife Franzie raised their two daughters by the beach while he toiled as a Screenwriter for Columbia Pictures. As his children grew into American teenagers he noticed that his daughter Kathy in particular was drawn into a very specific, regional, contemporary slice of American teenage culture – the surf culture.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the character Gidget (the prototypical beach bunny) was adapted for three films, all directed by Paul Wendkos and released by Columbia Pictures:
The original Gidget was created by Frederick Kohner in his 1957 novel Gidget, The Little Girl with Big Ideas (reprinted numerous times under the shortened title Gidget, by which it is more widely known), written in the first person and based on the accounts of his daughter Kathy (now Kathy Kohner-Zuckerman) of the surf culture of Malibu Point. Kohner, a prolific Screenwriter with one Academy Award nomination, published seven sequels to this novel, five of them original novels:
She does not give us her last name. In subsequent novels, her name is Franzie Hofer. In the films in which she appears, her name is changed to a more English sounding Frances Lawrence, and the names of some other characters are changed as well. In the 1960s television series (episode 16, "Now There's a Face"), Gidget gives her full name as Frances Elizabeth Lawrence.
In 1965, the character was adapted for television in the Screen Gems sitcom series Gidget, starring Sally Field. The series reintroduced Larue, a timid, awkward girl who often accompanied Gidget on her zany escapades, and an older married sister Anne Cooper ("Ann Cooper" in the novels), both of whom appear in the original 1957 novel but are absent from the motion pictures. Gidget's brother-in-law, who appeared in the novels as Larry Cooper, an intelligent but condescending child Psychiatrist was reinvented in the television series as John Cooper, an obtuse but lovable psychology student. In the television series, Gidget regarded both her sister and brother-in-law as clueless squares. The pilot episode ("Dear Diary - et al.") explains that Gidget's boyfriend Moondoggie is sent east to Princeton University with the convenient understanding that both were free to date others while separated, thus opening plots to a variety of complications and guest stars. In the sitcom, Gidget's mother is deceased (not true in the novels or the motion pictures), and the series focuses on the father-daughter relationship with Gidget receiving moral instruction from her father at episode's end and growing a little wiser from it. The sitcom ran for only one season, but spawned a devoted cult following.
In 1969, Karen Valentine starred as Gidget in the telemovie Gidget Grows Up, freely adapted from the 1968 novel Gidget Goes New York, but also functioning as a sequel to the 1965 sitcom series.
In 1972, another telemovie was made titled Gidget Gets Married, in which Gidget finally married longtime boyfriend Moondoggie. Monie Ellis played the title role. This incarnation of Gidget is unique in that it gives Moondoggie's real name as "Jeff Stevens." In the novels, the other telemovies and The New Gidget he is "Geoffrey H. Griffin" (the middle initial is mentioned only in the first novel); in the Hollywood films and the sitcom Gidget he is "Jeffrey Matthews." Later that year, Hanna-Barbera produced a 60-minute animated feature for television, Gidget Makes the Wrong Connection, with Kathy Gori as the voice of Gidget. It was broadcast as part of the Saturday morning series The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie.
In 1985, a follow-up of the 1965 sitcom series was launched with the telemovie Gidget's Summer Reunion, starring Caryn Richman as a grown version of the character played by Sally Field. This was followed by a sitcom series The New Gidget, which ran for two seasons, 1986–1988.
In 2000, Francis Ford Coppola staged a musical adaptation of Gidget with a cast of students from the Orange County High School for the Arts, calling it "sort of A Catcher in the Rye for girls". Coppola wrote the book and cowrote the score with John Farrar, and Krysta Rodriguez played Gidget.
In 2007, Terry McCabe and Marissa McKown adapted a stage play Gidget from Kohner's 1957 novel. It was performed at City Lit Theater in Chicago in May and June 2007, directed by Marissa McKown and starred Sabrina Kramnich as Gidget.