Kivlin, right, and Darren bear a certain resemblance. Photo: Screenshot//File
Reading the obituary of actor/singer James Darren that ran on The Inertia back in early September, I wasn’t surprised to see his role as Malibu surfer “Moondoggie” in the 1959 hit film Gidget highlighted. After all, it’s what you’d expect from a website that, to paraphrase National Geographic magazine, covers “The surfing world and all that’s in it.” What was surprising, however, is how when reporting on Darren’s death at age 88, so many mainstream news sources also led with Moondoggie, despite Darren’s decades-long career that saw the crooner appearing in popular, era-spanning TV productions from The Time Tunnel (1966) to T.J. Hooker (1982) to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1998). For example, the Hollywood Reporter’s bold type headline read, “JAMES DARREN, ‘GIDGET’ SURFER, DIES AT 88.”
James Darren, surfer? Sure, Gidget was a box-office smash, introducing California beach culture to the world and igniting the sport’s first, and culturally most impactful “surf boom.” And yeah, the wave action was great, with surfers like Mickey Dora and Mickey Muñoz (wearing a bikini and wig) doubling for Darren and actress Sandra Dee, respectively. But before even meeting real locals Dora and Muñoz, how on earth did the film’s producers settle on casting a dark-haired Italian from Philadelphia (born James William Ercolani), as the prototypical Malibu surfer?
It’s not the first time I’ve pondered this question. In my 2010 documentary Hollywood Don’t Surf, an examination of the film industry’s half century of largely failed attempts to make an authentic surf movie, I point to the seemingly inexplicable casting choices made in the genre’s seminal “Big Three” surf romps – Gidget (’59) Beach Party (’63) and Ride the Wild Surf (’64) –which in each case featured good-looking Italian kids from Philadelphia (Darren, Frankie Avalon and Fabian) in the lead roles. Even taking into consideration Hollywood’s track record of boneheaded decisions when it comes to catching surf lightning in a bottle, this early misstep was easily one of its weirdest.
Or was it? A recent email received has me re-thinking my smugly constructed theory, positing a scenario that could end up affording those old Hollywood boys a bit less derision. I’ll get to it in a minute.
The Kivlin board, a highly sought-after piece of equipment back in the day.
This particular email was a promo for this year’s California Gold Surf Auction 2024. Not just any announcement, however, but a “Holy Grail Alert!” The grail in question is an absolutely mint-condition, balsa-wood “Malibu Chip” replica, shaped in 2004 by Matt Kivlin. The holy part? Matt Kivlin, who died in 2014 at age 85, is one of surf history’s least-heralded innovators, a standout performer and surfboard designer who in the late 1940s and ‘50s literally changed the entire direction of the sport. The pointed nose on your board? That was Kivlin. Shorter, lighter, more maneuverable surfboards? Yep, Kivlin. The cutback? Kivlin. Effortless, smooth point-break style, today alá Tom Curren, Dave Rastovich and Torren Martyn? Thank Kivlin for that, too. In fact, so much of what we’ve come to embrace as “modern” surfing had its genesis in the imagination of this cool, creative young surfer from Santa Monica, California, who left an indelible mark on our culture before gracefully stepping off the stage in the late-1950s.
Matt Kivlin began surfing in 1943, when at age 14 he met California’s ultra-waterman Pete Peterson, who mentored young Matt in the waves in and around Santa Monica Bay. He later took up with eccentric board designer Bob Simmons, with whom he’d drive up and down the then near-empty, post-WWII Pacific Coast Highway, surfing everywhere from Point Dume to San Onofre. Yet it wasn’t until he befriended another talented young Los Angeles surfer named Joe Quigg that Kivlin began to focus his talents, both in the water and on the garage shaping stands. With balsa wood cheap and plentiful, he and Quigg would collaborate on design, running up to nearby Malibu to test-ride their freshly hewn boards.
“Sometimes one or two boards a week,” recalled Kivlin, in a rare interview appearing in a 1988 issue of Longboard magazine. “We’d surf Malibu every afternoon at 5:00, and if the board worked, somebody would usually buy it.”
The boards did work. Following a trip to Hawaii in 1948, where he witnessed the futuristic performance of legendary beachboy Rabbit Kekai, who on a finless “Hot Curl” was carving turns off the tail and then moving forward into diagonal trim, Kivlin adapted his boards to Malibu’s perfectly shaped walls, cutting down length, narrowing the nose, eliminating rounded belly through the center, and scarfing tail kick too increase maneuverability. Compared to this period’s existing “plank” surfboards, and even the innovative contributions from Bob Simmons (whose wide, concave balsas were designed to go fast, but only in one direction), Kivlin’s “Malibu Chips” were a complete game-changer, ushering in the era of “performance surfing.” Yet it wasn’t just the boards Kivlin was building and riding, but how he rode them.
“Pioneer of the modern style of surfing,” commented Joe Quigg, in a 1975 SURFER magazine feature about the history of Malibu. “The most advanced surfer 1947 through 1951. Moving at very high speed through turns, gracefully and easily, with his board in perfect trim on fast, low-tide walls. Matt contributed many of the shape ideas presently found in the modern surfboard, and his riding style influenced the other board builders of the day.”
And then he was gone, essentially walking away from the surf scene he was so instrumental in creating. Having quit surfing entirely by 1962, Kivlin went on to a degree in architecture, eventually opening his own firm in Santa Monica in 1971. Throughout a subsequent — and very successful — career, Kivlin designed and built over 200 homes, including 80 in the Malibu area, where his distinctive aesthetic is still much sought-after. In 2020, for example, a three-quarter acre, four-bedroom, Kivlin-designed Malibu property went on the market for just under 13-million dollars.
The trio of Kivlin surfboards known to exist today are just as valuable. Only two that were shaped during his ‘50’s heyday have survived, one currently on exhibit at the California Surf Museum in Oceanside, the other at San Clemente’s Surfing Heritage and Cultural Center. A third, the “Holy Grail” being offered at the 2024 California Gold Surf auction, was shaped by Kivlin in 2004 and donated to a Surfrider Foundation fundraising auction, where this Malibu Chip, the first he put his hand to since 1962, eventually sold for $45,000.
When it comes to authentic surf culture, Matt Kivlin was, in every way, the real deal. And so, what does this have to do with the production of 1959’s Gidget, and the casting of dark-haired Philadelphian James Darren in the role of Moondoggie, Malibu’s hottest hotdogger?
Kivlin was all grace and style. Photo: Courtesy Kivlin family.
Well, just imagine — imagine, mind you — a Hollywood studio executive back in 1957, having just acquired Fredrick Kohner’s bestselling novel Gidget: The Little Girl With Big Ideas. Imagine said producer dispatching a nameless production assistant out of Burbank, down Lankershim Blvd., across Sunset to the PCH, then west up to Malibu, with instructions to bring back some idea of what these Malibu surfer types actually looked like. Imagine this PA parking at the foot of the pier, then walking down onto the beach, filling their wingtips with sand. Imagine their eye drawn, not to the rowdy crew hanging out by the old Adamson wall, not yet, but at the sight of a surfer, in what is most probably their very first sight of the species, speeding smoothly across a clean, three-foot Malibu wall, stance relaxed in forward trim, climbing, dropping, doing everything needed to match the speed of the curl and nothing more, riding all the way to the pier, and then stepping off his board onto the sand; all one stylish, choreographed movement, from take-off to kick-out.
Now, imagine that surfer being Matt Kivlin. Then look at the photos of Kivlin and Darren.
Not saying it did happen. But if it did, it could explain a lot.
For more information on Kivlin’s “Holy Grail”, and all the other classic surfboards and vintage memorabilia on the block at the California Gold Surf Auction, click here. Online bidding begins on Oct. 5, 2024, at 5:00pm PDT
