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.

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.

Over a six-week period, Kohner wove the stories she told into a novel, which he titled upon completion with her nickname, Gidget.

[10] 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 nonfiction books such as the biographies Kiki of Montparnasse and The Magician of Sunset Boulevard.

Kohner sold the movie rights to Columbia Pictures (through the William Morris Agency) for $50,000, then giving five percent of this to his daughter Kathy.

[11] 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 first film also featured a young Yvonne Craig and Tom Laughlin, long before Laughlin became known as Billy Jack and Craig as Batgirl and her alter-ego Barbara Gordon in the final season of Batman.

[15] 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.

[17] 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".

It was performed at City Lit Theater in Chicago in May and June 2007, directed by Marissa McKown and starred Sabrina Kramnich as Gidget.