Cowabunga, Doris Day

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This is Mostly True Stories, and I’m Jim Flynn.

Today’s episode: Why I'm Still Waiting to Surf With Gidget

Back when I was a kid, movies made life look easy — you wore a tux on the weekend, drank martinis at lunch, and somehow never had to go to work. Surfing with Gidget? Working like Cary Grant? Sure — any day now.

Let’s take a look back at how Hollywood sold us the dream… and why I’m still waiting for my penthouse.It all started back in the 1930s, when the silver screen wasn’t just a form of entertainment — it was an escape hatch from the real world.

During the Depression, movies offered people a temporary escape from their squalid lives. Audiences were treated to a steady stream of palatial Park Avenue apartments — with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers as your neighbors, and maybe mixing a dry martini for the Thin Man and Mrs. Thin Man.


Fast forward a few decades, and the fantasy shifted from Park Avenue penthouses to sunny California beaches.
By the 1960s, we had the Beach Blanket movies...
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The girls were hot, but not allowed to wear bikinis that showed their navels. Frankie Avalon could ride a surfboard without ever falling off, or even getting wet.

I'm still waiting to go surfing, I'm sure it will happen any day now, although  I heard that Gidget is in assisted living. Cowabunga, Life Alert Button!

While the surf crowd catered to teen dreams, grown-ups had their own version of Hollywood make-believe — led by Doris Day.

There were still the dry martinis, and I don't remember seeing Doris' navel. She went shopping a lot, and carried beribboned boxes containing all the clothes she bought. She frequently dropped the boxes...a major dramatic plot event. Sometimes she'd twist her ankle, and drop the boxes!

Women never had to go to work, and if the men did, they'd stroll through spectacular modern offices for five minutes, then go to lunch...and have a dry martini or three.

I had the vague notion that I would someday have a job like that. The pay seemed to be good, I'd live in a penthouse and could leave work any time Doris Day phoned me with a DEFCON One crisis, for example, she had dropped a pink hat box in front of a runaway garbage truck...and twisted her ankle.


But the Hollywood dream machine eventually ran out of steam — and by the early 1970s, studios seemed to be competing not for Oscars, but for the fastest route to bankruptcy.


They had a two-pronged strategy: Big Expensive Stupid Musicals, and Even Stupider Counter-Culture movies.

Of all the money vaporizing musicals, one stumbles into the spotlight like a drunk uncle at a wedding: Paint Your Wagon.

If you haven't seen Paint Your Wagon, try to catch it, maybe on Turner Classics, although it's seldom shown...Why? Because it stinks!...and nobody ever wanted to see it. Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin sing! As if they were musical stars! Dirty Harry channels Julie Andrews! I am not making that up.

Man, did Tinseltown not read the room! Old people didn't get this new stuff, and young people were listening to Jimi Hendrix. 

Having face-planted with musicals, Hollywood pivoted to counter-culture — or at least their polyester-clad interpretation of it.

But Hollywood seemed tone deaf, and never got it right. Their approach was like the portrayal of hippies on the TV show Dragnet. Lots of tie dyed shirts, wigs and bandanas tied around the wigs. One hit: Easy Rider. No plot. I challenge you to sit in front of your TV and pay attention to the entire movie...hint: this is not possible.

​Hollywood would have done better if they just continuously threw hundred dollar bills out the window for a few years, but pulled the plane out of its dive at treetop level and started making movies like Jaws, Star Wars, and The Terminator. A new kind of escapism.

Next time: How Hollywood’s grand tradition of escapism has migrated to your phone — and why binge-watching is the new three martini lunch.

​If you have questions or comments, please click on the blue sincere jimmy link right here:

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