Gidget - Frederick Kohner

Frederick Kohner

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.

Surfing was a then minor youth movement that built its foundation around a sport, love of the beach, and jargon that must have proved a challenge to an Eastern European immigrant. The details fascinated Kohner, who was empathetic with his daughter's feminist intention to participate in a "boys-only" sport. A book was conceived and Kathy became her father's muse as he delved into the surfing world with his daughter as his guide. Over a six week period Kohner wove the stories she told into a novel, which he titled upon completion with her nickname, Gidget.

In the original novel, Gidget gives her name as follows:

"It's Franzie," I said. "From Franziska. It's a German name. After my grandmother."

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.

Kohner also wrote other novels about the experiences of different teenaged girls, including The Continental Kick, Mister Will You Marry Me?, and The Gremmie, as well as non-fiction books such as the biographies Kiki of Montparnasse and The Magician of Sunset Boulevard.