weekend bookings began to fill his cal-
endar and remove the need for off-
stage supplemental income, the enter-
tainer branched out theatrically by
doing mystery stage productions at
restaurants and private parties.
Lasting between two and three
hours, the original plays often can be
interactive with audiences but always
must have a funny angle.
"I write the outlines and the jokes and
bring in people who can improvise,"
explains Ross, who has found actors
through an independent comedy class
he teaches, clubs he's frequented and
community theater projects. He is assist-
ed by his girlfriend, Debbie Strickler.
Once in a while, Ross will bring
Jewish humor into his act, depending on
the venue and mood of the audience.
Although he was not raised in a very
observant home, he did have a bar mitz-
vah. His brother, Martin, works for cha-
sidic Jews vvho operate a camera business
but whose religious beliefs restrict photo
taking, says Ross.
"As I get older, I wish I was more
rooted in traditions," says the comic, a
movie fan who finds it compelling, yet
difficult, watching films about the
Holocaust, often reacting so strongly
to the horrors that are shown that he
steps away for segments.
Also an avid reader, Ross plans to go
over some of Elmore (Dutch)
Leonard's books before returning to
Michigan. He wants to connect with
the actual spots bringing local color to
the mystery novels.
To entertain himself as he travels
from one booking to another, Ross
scouts weird places that also could
bring some new takes to his routine.
"I went to a flood museum in
Pennsylvania and saw stuff that was wet
60 years ago," he recalls. "I went to a
Ted Lewis museum in Ohio — he's the
entertainer who asked audiences, 'Is
everybody happy?' — and saw in the
guest book that I was the only one
there for days. I've heard about a mus-
tard museum in Wisconsin, and I'm
not going to pass that up."
All spicy ideas are filtered through
the humorist's personality.
"My act ultimately is about me, and
that keeps evolving," he says. ❑

Dennis Ross will appear 8 p.m.
Thursday, Aug. 2; 9:30 p.m.
Friday, Aug. 3; and 8 and 10:30
p.m. Saturday, Aug. 4, at Mark
Ridley's Comedy Castle, Fourth
and Troy, Royal Oak. $6
Thursday/$12 Friday and
Saturday. (248) 542-9900

Surfer Girl

Kathy Kohner Zuckerman, the real Gidget, is
Jewish, 60 — and riding the waves once again.

girls, even though positive female role
models are far more common today
than in the mid-'50s.
or surfing historians, major
"It's such a cure story," said
trends fall naturally into
Zuckerman, who turned 60 in January.
two epochs: B.G. or A.G.
"I must have reread the book 10 times.
— "Before Gidget" and
I said to myself, 'This is so cool."'
"After Gidget."
For Zuckerman, the story is a flash-
Gidget was initially a best-selling
back to a time in her life when life
novel published in 1957.
was simple and hot summer days
Two years later, the story of the perky
were spent at "the Bu" (Malibu) surf-
"half-girl, half midget" who
ing with older boys who
learned to surf with the boys
Kathy Kohner
had adopted her as their
was made into a blockbuster
Zuckerman:
m ascot.
film. The movie's impact upon
"In all honesty,
"In all honesty, none of
surfing was similar to what A
none of the boys hit the boys hit on me," she
River Runs Through It did to fly- on me," says the real recalled. "I was just the
fishing.
Gidget. "I was just
little pest."
Purists of both pastimes have the little pest."
The novel is a tribute
never quite recovered from
to Frederick Kohner's
hordes of wannabes who invad-
relationship with his
ed their previously uncrowded secret
youngest daughter. (Kohner's other
spots.
daughter, Ruth, is 10 years older and
Now, Gidget returns to bookstores in
has no desire to share the limelight
the form of a paperback published by
with her younger sister.)
Berkley Books.
A careful reading reveals the Gidget
The new edition features a foreword by
character as a blending of the author's
the real Gidget, Kathy Kohner
erudite sensibilities with the sweet,
Zuckerman, whose teenage exploits at
naive voice of his boy-crazy, surf-
Malibu beach were fictionalized by her
stoked daughter.
writer father. It also is illustrated with pho-
Here's an example from the second
tos from Zuckerman's pri-
vate collection.
Gidget democratized
surfing. Wave riding was
no longer the exclusive
domain of burly water-
men and a few women
who shared a special
relationship with the
ocean.
While the movie ver-
sion of Gidget, starring
Sandra Dee, continued
to germinate in pop cul-
ture via television —
where Sally Field took
over the role — and on
video, the original novel
by Los Angeles screen-
writer Frederick Kohner
lapsed after six printings
in May 1964 before it
was reworked for today's
release.
Zuckerman said she is
thrilled that the book
will now be available to
a new generation of

TERRY RODGERS
Copley News Service

r,

•

chapter, written in Gidget's voice:
"I've been in and out of that bitchin'
Pacific from Carmel down to
Coronado and there's no water around
the world that can beat it. That's what
Rachel Carson says, too, and she
ought to know, having written that
terrific book The Sea Around Us."
It's hard to imagine any 14-year-old
girl in the 1950s having read Rachel
Carson. Elsewhere in the novel, Gidget
makes reference to Silent World, the
seminal 1956 documentary film by
Jacques Cousteau. Hardly a kiddie flick.
Kohner's achievement in capturing
the essence of the then-emerging youth
beach culture is all the more remark-
able given his background: a German-
speaking Jewish intellectual who fled
Eastern Europe in advance of the Nazi
oppression. He died in 1986 at age 80.
"I was his eyes and ears for what was
happening at the Bu," said
Zuckerman, who kept her own
account of her intrepid beach days in a
series of diaries that she still has.
She recently reread her diaries to
compare her actual experiences to her
father's story.
June 24, 1956, was her diary's first
entry to mention surfing.
"Dear Diary: I didn't do much but
go to the beach. I didn't think I'd have
fun, but I met Matt [Kivlin] and he
took me out on his surfboard. He let
me catch the waves by myself. And
once I fell off the board and went fly-
ing in the air. I didn't get hurt at all."
Zuckerman surfed at Malibu Point
during the summers of 1956-59, then
went away to college at Oregon State
University. After earning a degree in
English, she married a professor in
1965. She worked as a substitute
teacher and raised two sons.
The real Gidget didn't surf again
until Mike Doyle, a lifelong friend
who sold her her first surfboard, took
her out on a tandem board in La Jolla,
Calif, in 1995.
"That was my reawakening," she
said, explaining that she's recently got-
ten a new surfboard and is back at
Malibu trying to surf.
So far, she's ridden a few waves in
Hawaii and paddles out at Malibu to
ride them on her stomach. She's redis-
covered how being in the water and
paddling in the ocean is exhilarating.
"I feel you can go home again," she
said.
For Gidget, her father's story, as well as
her real-life experiences at Malibu, were
about discovering one's place in the world.
"I felt that the Bu was my place,"
Zuckerman said. "I felt comfortable
there. And I felt this was my purpose.
I needed to learn to surf: ❑

Tt,

7/27
2001

73