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
Technicolor Surf Boom
Frankie and Annette in Beach Party
Sanda Dee in Gidget, 1959
Gidget promo, 1959
Dora (left) and Noll, in Ride the Wild Surf. Photo: Church
Surfing returned to the silver screen as glorious farce. Frankie and his surf buddies rode to shore in a pack, while Annette and her girlfriends waved from the beach. Everybody clustered up and danced the Watusi, then set about defeating a biker gang, or space aliens, or a rogue pack of bodybuilders.
Surfing had generated a lot of momentum by 1959—new boards, wetsuits, competition, surfer-produced films; a magazine on the way—and the sport was at a tipping point. Then the movie version of Gidget was released in April of that year and pushed it over the top. A nine-year surf explosion followed. Wave-riding itself became more popular, yes. But the boom was mostly a cultural phenomenon, one that ...
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