The Anti-’Gidget’

“Some” (whoever they are) apparently believe that Francis Ford Coppola’s musical “Gidget” could become another “Grease” (“Gidget Grows Up, Into a Coppola Musical,” by Mark Chalon Smith, Aug. 5). Or it might be another “Finian’s Rainbow” or “One From the Heart” (the 1982 bomb that brought down Zoetrope Studios); Coppola hasn’t had much success with musicals.

A musical “Gidget” retold as a female “Catcher in the Rye”? Sounds like a parody. (Gidget as a humorless, alienated, teenage neurotic? Will she refer to Moondoggie and the other surfer dudes as phonies and morons? Will her aimless, immature brooding get her kicked out of high school?)

The name Gidget is supposed to combine girl and midget; maybe they should rename her Golden: girl and Holden (as in Caulfield, who, interestingly, hated musicals). Come to think of it, there’s already been a musical female Holden: Gavin Lambert’s Daisy Clover, played in the film version by Natalie Wood (and that was a flop, too). Maybe the songs will be good, anyway.

KEVIN DAWSON

Sunland

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“Gidget--The Musical” sounds intriguing. And any new work by auteur F.F. Coppola is bound to be fascinating. But the article does not even mention the creator of the semifictional Gidget, Frederick Kohner. His best-selling novel of 1957 pretty near invented the surf-culture industry. The half-dozen Gidget books and feature films, two TV series, several TV movies and other non-Gidget novels followed a long career as a Hollywood scriptwriter, including a 1938 Oscar nomination.

Without “Doc” Kohner, Coppola would have no cultural icon to put music to, nor would your reporter have anything to report.

G.E. NORDELL

Culver City