![]() Most important for Dee was her contract, in 1959, with Universal Studios, where her image of a budding beauty was polished. The film set the tone for the "beach party" movies of the 1960s. Despite not measuring up to the bikinied girls on the beach, she is courted by the two grooviest surfers in town, Moondoggie (James Darren) and Kahoona (Cliff Robertson). In 1959, the 5ft 5ins tall Dee was seen to embody the wholesome, all-American ideal in Gidget (a nickname meaning "girl midget"). However, having been coached in diction and demeanour, she got through the part with surprising poise. ![]() ![]() According to the producer, Dee was cast "for the sake of the US teenage public". This implausibility was explained in the script by a prior transatlantic misalliance on the part of Harrison's Lord Broadbent. Her screen debut, aged 14, was in Until They Sail (1957), followed by the title role in Vincente Minnelli's The Reluctant Debutante (1958), based on the West End hit by William Douglas Home, in which the very American Dee played the very English Rex Harrison's daughter.
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