Vitals

Cliff Robertson as Burt “The Big Kahuna” Vail, beach bum and Korean War Veteran

Malibu, California, Summer 1959

Film: Gidget
Release Date: April 10, 1959
Director: Paul Wendkos

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Now that it’s summer, let’s flash back to the beach party movie that started it all. Before Frankie and Annette and before we ever followed Elvis to Hawaii, there was Gidget.

Czech-born writer Frederick Kohner was inspired to pen a novel by his daughter Kathy, who was nicknamed “Gidget” (a portmanteau for “girl” and “midget”) while learning to surf on the beaches at Malibu. Gidget, the Little Girl with Big Ideas became a top seller after it was published in 1957, so Kohner sold the rights to Columbia Pictures—awarding five percent of the $5,000 sale to Kathy—where screenwriter Gabrielle Upton adapted it for the screen. With journeyman director Paul Wendkos at the helm, Gidget was shot in just 26 days through the early summer of 1958, primarily on location at Leo Carrillo State Park in Malibu.

Gidget was a breakthrough role for Sandra Dee in the titular starring role as 16-year-old Francine Lawrence, who doesn’t share her girlfriends’ interest in man-hunting and rather wants to spend her summer learning how to surf. She makes a splash at the local beaches, where the regular surfers adopt her as their mascot. The boys like “Moondoggie” (James Darren) all idolize the beach-dwelling “Big Kahuna” (Cliff Robertson), who describes himself simply:

I’m a surf bum! You know: ride the waves, eat, sleep—not a care in the world.

Robertson was pushing 40 by the time he played the twentysomething Kahuna, who had flown for the Air Force during the Korean War—echoing the actor’s real-life passion and skill for surfing and aviation. Neither Dee nor Robertson would reprise their roles in the sequels, Gidget Goes Hawaiian (1961) and Gidget Goes to Rome (1963), which replaced the lead actress with Deborah Walley and Cindy Carol, respectively. Sally Field then played Gidget on the short-lived TV series, which featured Martin Milner (of Route 66 and Adam-12) in a single-episode appearance as a reimagined Kahuna.

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What’d He Wear?

Kahuna’s limited, hard-worn wardrobe reflects his chosen life as a beach bum. He exclusively wears fully unbuttoned shirts with the sleeves torn away, most frequently a collared white oxford-cloth cotton shirt with a front placket, breast pocket, and box-pleated back with a locker loop.

For the climactic party during the final act, Kahuna wears a dark midnight-blue shirt similarly customized with the sleeves ripped off. The collar may have also been removed, leaving only a neckband.

When he’s not wearing jeans, Kahuna regularly wears clamdiggers—the seafaring work trousers intentionally shortened to mid-calf, named for wearers who so modified their trousers to keep the bottoms dry while working in shallow water… perhaps digging for clams? In the late 1940s, fashion designer Sonja de Lennart took inspiration from classic clamdiggers to design her Capri pants that have become more traditionally associated with women.

For his introductory scene, he matches his white cotton shirt to white linen flat-front trousers that taper down to mid-calf, where they’re plain-hemmed and split with vents on the outer side of each leg. Kahuna’s clamdiggers rise high to Cliff Robertson’s natural waist, held in place simply with a dual-fastened hook closure hidden in the extended waistband as there are no belts, braces, or tabs to otherwise adjust the fit. They have a simple patch pocket over the back right of the seat.

As a more rugged alternative, Kahuna also wears jeans in a light-to-mid blue denim, fraying along the seams and the edges of the classic five-pocket arrangement. The button fly and hint of arcuate stitch against the back pockets suggest that Robertson was outfitted with Levi’s 501 jeans with the brand’s familiar red tab removed from the back-right pocket seam.

Kahuna’s much-abused CVO-style sneakers also reflect a maritime heritage as their siped soles had been developed in the mid-1930s by Paul A. Sperry—yes, of Sperry Top-Sider fame—for wearers to retain traction on wet decks. Kahuna’s sneakers have light stone-colored canvas uppers, which have been so heavily worn that they’ve started tearing away at the toes. Despite this distress, the dirty white rubber outsoles are still intact. He wears them barefoot, tying the flat white woven laces through five sets of white-finished eyelets on each shoe.

The only brief alternatives to the two pairs of pants mentioned above are Kahuna’s dark midnight-blue clamdiggers, styled identically to his white ones but much darker in color.

The above screenshot introduces another distinctive part of Kahuna’s wardrobe: his palm-front straw hat, woven from palm leaves rather than fine straw with the frayed leaves intentionally left untrimmed around the brim. Presenting a rustic contrast to more refined Panama hats, the exaggerated appearance of these hats with their uncut leaf ends projecting outward from the wide brim became beachcomber shorthand in mid-century Hollywood. Kahuna’s beachcomber hat is secured with a brown rawhide chin strap that pulls through a sliding cylindrical bone-like tube toggle.

Kahuna maintains his beachy sartorial attitude with a carved wooden tiki idol suspended from a dark-brown cord around his neck. Naturally, Kahuna doesn’t wear a watch, instead sporting a black leather wristband wrapped twice around his left wrist.

Kahuna uses a weathered brown leather flight jacket as a pillow in his beach hut, finally pulling it on for the final scene as he leaves the surfing life behind to resume his career as a commercal pilot. The jacket has a straight front-zip with a snap-down collar, shoulder epaulets, twin hip pockets with flaps that close through a single hidden snap, and darker brown ribbed-knit cuffs and hem. Though likely not true military issue, the jacket reflects the classic A-2 style made famous by U.S. Army Air Forces pilots during World War II, so it may be intended to date from Kahuna’s Air Force service during the Korean War.

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What to Imbibe

The Big Kahuna drinks plenty of Rheingold Extra Dry beer during the luau, even popping a few more cans for him and Gidget back at Joe’s beach house, which she describes as “a real den of iniquity.” Seeing this Brooklyn lager so prominently in these Malibu-set scenes may be surprising to viewers familiar with Rheingold’s reputation as an East Coast beer through mid-century, but Gidget was actually produced at the end of Liebmann brewery’s attempt to expand Rheingold across the country.

After acquiring new plants in the Bronx and New Jersey through the late 1940s, Rheingold established its West Coast operations by purchasing the San Francisco and Los Angeles plants of Acme Brewing Company in 1954. While Rheingold continued prospering at home, becoming the leading beer in New York state, it set its sights too far with the western expansion; the San Francisco operation shuttered after only a year, and Rheingold sold the L.A. brewery to Hamm’s in 1957.

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How to Get the Look

The Big Kahuna exemplifies the mid-century surf guru archetype in his raggedly rebellious clothing like collared shirts with the sleeves torn away, clamdiggers and jeans, and a palm-frond beachcomber hat and carved tiki totem hanging around his neck.

• White oxford cotton shirt with collar, front placket, breast pocket, box-pleated back, and cut-away sleeves
• Light-blue denim Levi’s 501 button-fly jeans
• Light-stone canvas CVO-style sneakers with 5-eyelet lacing system and white rubber outsoles
• Palm-frond straw beachcomber’s hat with rawhide chin-strap
• Dark-brown neck-cord with carved wooden tiki idol pendant
• Black leather wraparound wristband

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Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

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The Quote

Better start learning, Moondoggie, there’s a price to pay on everything.