The wave at Cape St. Francis, named Bruce’s Beauties after Bruce Brown’s The Endless Summer, wasn’t discovered by Bruce Brown. But does that actually matter? Photo: Courtesy of Bruce Brown Films
You likely know the wave called Bruce’s Beauties from that iconic scene in The Endless Summer. You remember the one: Mike Hynson and Robert August climbing a dune in coastal South Africa at Cape St. Francis to lay eyes on what could be the most perfect right-hand point break on Earth. The wave was named for Bruce Brown, who made The Endless Summer. But Dick Metz, who was called “the most underrated surf legend ever,” by Bruce Brown’s son Dana, was there before Bruce Brown was. I didn’t know if Metz’s arrival was a myth before I made Birth of the Endless Summer, but I had a gut feeling that it was true.
Jamie Brisick wrote something important in Birth of The Endless Summer: A Surf Odyssey. I’m not just saying this because it’s the companion book to my Emmy® nominated film Birth of The Endless Summer — the untold story tracing Dick Metz’s epic, pioneering surf journey from 1958-1961 through the South Pacific and Australia to the far reaches of South Africa. Brisick is an uncompromising and talented writer, not to mention the only former pro surfer who was a Fulbright scholar. Dick Metz is no slouch either. It was Dick Metz’s vagabond adventures that would help inspire Bruce Brown’s The Endless Summer. Brisick sums up several decades of surf history in a few poignant words: “To be a surfer is to be a traveler.”
Whether we are surfers, rock climbers, lawyers, or baristas, we are all, in a way, descendants of The Endless Summer. Dick Metz’s pioneering of surf breaks like Cape St. Francis, made famous in Bruce Brown’s The Endless Summer (“a perfect movie,” said The New Yorker), set the wheels in motion for us to seek and discover our version of “The Perfect Wave.”
Metz arrived at the picture-perfect, reeling waves at St. Francis Bay four years before Brown did. The wave at Cape St. Francis would famously become known as Bruce’s Beauties, and Metz’s early arrival was one of the reasons I jumped off to create this ambitious film, six years in the making. But I also knew, when researching deep in the archives of the Surfing Heritage and Culture Center (SHACC) for a film I made set in 1950s Malibu, “12 Miles North: The Nick Gabaldon Story,” that Dick Metz’s story was, first and foremost, an amazing adventure. The Metz travel photos from his legendary and pioneering trip, which I discovered at SHACC, were enough to blow your mind. I always say that his journey alone is one of the most important road trips in history, whether you’re a fan of Jack Kerouac’s On The Road, Che Guavara’s The Motorcycle Diaries, or William Finnegan’s Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life.
Dick Metz was at Cape St. Francis, four years before Bruce Brown made it famous in The Endless Summer. Photo: Courtesy of Bruce Brown Films
Mike Hynson had good reason to believe Metz had a hand in The Endless Summer becoming what it is today, but Robert August would tell me, “Don’t believe everything you hear.” Bruce Brown, if he were alive, would have admitted Dick deserved credit for being there first. Metz told me he’d kid Bruce about it. “Geez, Bruce,” he’d have said. “I don’t think any of your friends would want to know I was at Cape St. Francis years before you were.” This quip was always delivered with laughs because if you know Dick, he’s quick with those.
People ask me whether Dick Metz finally got his due with the making of my film. Never mind that the waves at Cape St. Francis could have been called “Metz’s Majesties” instead of “Bruce’s Beauties.” People ahead of their time never seem to get the credit. On Metz’s wild hitchhiking journey from the center of Africa to the beaches of Cape Town, he had a chance meeting with John Whitmore, a man who would become the father or uncle (“Oom”) of South African surfing. It was an encounter that Paul Botha, a South African surfing historian, would say was “the most fortuitous meeting between two surfers in the history of South African surfing.” Whitmore is the subject of a meticulously researched and worthy book by Miles Masterson, The Oom: The Biography of John Whitmore. Miles played a pivotal role as an associate producer on our film, arranging all of the key interviews in our two weeks of filming from Cape Town to Jeffreys Bay and Cape St. Francis.
Metz is quick with the quips and was an endless searcher. Photo: Courtesy of Dick Metz//Surfing Heritage & Culture Center
This meeting between Metz and Whitmore came to be when Dick had said goodbye to the man he’d hitched a ride with for nearly three weeks through Africa. He walked to the nearest beach and not long after marveling at how much the place looked like Laguna Beach, he noticed Whitmore getting out of the frigid waters of Cape Town in nothing but a Speedo (or banana hammock), retrieving a lost surfboard. It was a moment that would be a catalyst for Bruce Brown’s film to come to be, and Whitmore’s hosting of a raucous premiere of The Endless Summer at Cape Town’s Labia Theater a few years later.
But Whitmore wouldn’t just show Bruce the way in South Africa. With Metz’s help, he’d create a pipeline for surfing magazines and foam blanks to be distributed throughout the country. Materials that would help Whitmore build a South African surf culture – through his signature resin boards that would be coveted by board collectors everywhere, a daily surf report on the local radio, and the creation of the national South African surf team. Ingredients that would ignite a global surfing revolution. Dick Metz and Whitmore’s meeting would quite literally change the course of the modern sport of surfing as we know it.
This now-legendary cast of characters followed their dreams and had a passion for everything they put their minds to. Dick told the graduating class of Laguna Beach High School in 2024 that he and his friends had a hard time figuring out what they wanted to do with their lives post-WWII. So they decided on what they didn’t want to do and wrote these things in the sand at Laguna’s Main Beach. These are the rules that they set in semi-stone: 1) No hard sole shoes, ever; 2) Don’t get a job east of the Pacific Coast Highway; and 3) There were other, more X-rated things on the list, but you get the idea.
Metz was a passionate explorer. Photo: Courtesy of Bruce Brown Films
They became surfboard builders, shopkeepers, tinkerers, writers, painters, storytellers, fishermen, musicians, and lifeguards. They didn’t do things to get credit or for career advancement. There were no careers in surfing at that time. Bruce Brown became a seminal filmmaker for the movement. Hobie became the shaper of foam and resin boards that would spark the surfing revolution. The Sandals, The Beach Boys, and The Challengers (who were said to be the first to play “surf music”) would write the soundtracks. The Hoffmans would spread the Aloha shirt worldwide. Dick Metz would open the industry’s first retail shop in Hawaii and be the first to roll out a string of surf shops in Hobie’s name.
Ultimately, it might not be about who gets credit for discovering Cape St. Francis and the world-changing events that followed. John Whitmore was South Africa’s first surf explorer and ultimately was the guy who tipped Metz off to look for surf in the area of Jeffrey’s Bay, which would then lead Dick there in 1959, where he’d set eyes on the endlessly wrapping, machine-like perfection of the waves of Cape St. Francis. Also, in an interview with legendary surf coach, Graham Hynes (in his ’90s now like Metz), he casually admitted that the locals surfed Bruce’s Beauties before Brown arrived, presumably even before Metz got there, when it was called First Bush. What more is the story about, as Brisick so eloquently put it, than the journey itself?
Rob Machado, the voice of Brisick’s book, channeled the ethos of his quest for the perfect wave and built a new career path for professional travel surfers outside the constraints of competition. Kelly Slater admits he’s always inspired by The Endless Summer. In his mind, it’s the greatest surf film of all time because surfing is all about seeking some un-surfed bank off of the Aleutians, or another unknown spot on the map. “That sense of adventure never ends,” said Kelly.
Metz, getting out of the water at Makaha. Photo: Courtesy of Bruce Brown Films
Mikey February told me that The Endless Summer was the first surf movie he ever watched that featured South Africa, which made him feel welcome in the surfing world. It was also cool to learn that Mikey grew up in Kommetjie very close to where Metz used to camp and surf with Whitmore in 1959. Joyce Hoffman, the first female world champion graced with a signature Hobie board, would credit Whitmore for what’s important in South African surfing and how South Africa and Whitmore collectively would help surfing become a legitimate global sport.
Digging through our deep history, which we are so lucky to have as surfers, it’s this common bond; the seeking and sharing of waves that connect and unite us. Dick Metz showed us all the way — to jump on a ship, stick out your thumb, and bribe your way onto a freighter. To find our way around the world with our wits. To experience a place to its fullest. Absorb the culture, and live and ingratiate ourselves with the locals. If there happens to be a perfect wave at the end of it, great. But it doesn’t really matter who discovered it. What we can learn from our history is that if we revel in the journey, we might not need to find anything after all. We can just enjoy the ride.
Starting June 20, Birth of the Endless Summer will be available worldwide on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, YouTube Movies, Fandango, and Vimeo on Demand.
