Beach movies and the national mania for bikinis made seductive stars of young shapely actresses and entertained the fantasies of teenage boys -- all the while carrying on as if this was good clean fun.
And she delivers its inspiring closing line — a characteristically sweet but ultimately very fair assessment of what it all had meant.
The character of Gidget was in fact based on a real California teen, and her story served as the basis for her father's 1957 novel, Gidget, The Girl With Big Ideas.