Oscar-winning actress Sally Field admits that Gidget was “my beginning and I loved her!” Former Motion Picture Academy President Frank Pierson calls Gidget as “a proto-feminist figure.” And says former U.S. Surf Champion Jericho Poppler Bartlow, “I remember thinking, `Gidget could do it.I know I can.'”

“Accidental Icon: The Real Gidget Story,” a new one-hour documentary, will world premier on October 8, 2006, at the Malibu Celebration of Film festival.

Narrated by Jorja Fox (“CSI”) and produced by Brian L. Gillogly and Master Communication, the project explores the largely untold story of the real “Gidget,” Kathy Kohner Zuckerman, and how her account of surfing Malibu in the mid-50’s became the basis for a best-selling novel by her father Frederick Kohner.

A half century later, “Gidget” is celebrated as an enduring Hollywood movie/TV franchise and a slice of Americana, with considerable impact on popular culture and the sport of surfing.

Surf legends and present-day “surfer girls” set the stage and take the Gidget story full circle. Prominent actors, writers and directors, many of whom brought Gidget to the big and small screen, provide an often enlightening behind-the-scenes perspective.

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