High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Gidget is a 1965 Screen Gems sitcom about a surfing, boy-crazy teenager called "Gidget" and her widowed father Russ Lawrence, a UCLA professor. Sally Field stars as Gidget with Don Porter as her father. The series was first broadcast on ABC from September 15, 1965 through April 21, 1966. Gidget was among the first regularly-scheduled color programs on ABC, but did poorly in the Nielsen ratings and was cancelled at the end of its first season. The show gained some popularity in summer reruns but too late to reverse its cancellation.