1969 - GIDGET GROWS UP the art of the made for TV movie and Karen Valentine all in one post.

Karen Valentine is Gidget in Gidget Grows Up, a sterling example of what was called the made-for-TV movie of the week genre that was quasi popular during the 1960's.

Vivacious Karen Valentine was what passed for a TV personality/actor in the late 1960's, she smiles and bubbles her way through the role of Gidget Lawrence who drops out of school and decides to advance the cause of world peace by getting a job as a tour guide at the United Nations.  She gets involved in a non-sexual relationship with an older man but ends up back with her old boyfriend the "Moondoggie" who is now a captain in the Air Force.

The thing about toothy Karen Valentine was that she essentially gave the same performance in about everything she ever appeared in on TV.  If you needed a perky actress Valentine was your go to person. The peppy Karen Valentine is what is charitably known as an actor with a "limited range."

There seems to be a lot of nostalgia for made for TV movies, and there were a few a good ones like Duel, and Brian's Song.   But for every That Certain Summer, TV audiences with sit mind numbingly in front of their screens and watch, The Over the Hill Gang, The Feminist and the Fuzz, But I Don't Want to Get Married and The Over the Hill Gang Rides Again, all films that struggled to rise to the level of at least mediocrity.  You could probably count the number of good TV movies on one hand and not have to use two of your fingers to count with.

 Gidget Grows Up is what is called a "gentle comedy."  A film that  doesn't go for big laughs but is supposed to make you feel good.  On that level it's pretty awful.  One has to be interested in the trails and tribulations of a tour guide for God's sake and zesty Karen Valentine was always one of the most unsexy actresses on TV even wearing mini skirts.  The film loads up the cast with a bunch of has been actors like Bob Cummings, Paul Lynde, Nina Foch and Warner Anderson who do what they can but its a lost cause. 

No one was ever going to think Gidget Grows Up was some kind of masterpiece or even a decent entertainment, but it gives you a pretty good idea of what passed for mindless TV junk in the late 1960's and early 70's  before people had the Internet to waste time on.

75 minutes, written by John McGreevey, unsurprisingly he wrote a lot of TV shows.