Beach location

I doubt this was filmed anywhere near Malibu Road, or Malibu Canyon Rd. There is no way you can legally drive cars or land airplanes on any beaches in Southern California. Alcohol is illegal, and there is only one beach in all of So Cal where you can have a fire--it's in Huntington Beach. You have to get a permit. My facts applied in 1963 when this was made, though I might be outdated now...

The filming location of "Paradise Cove" is the location used to film everything--remember "The Rockford Files?" It's a privately-owned beach that exists or existed down a private road north or Malibu proper. They ran fishing boats that took people out at dawn on Saturday mornings, had a restaurant, and a private beach. Only on private land could you construct one of those palm frond shacks and lean your surf boards against it. But Paradise Cove was not known for its surfing...it looks like they filmed the surfing elsewhere and spliced the scenes together...

For kids in California, these movies were a mystery--and a joke, an insult--an attempt by old people in Hollywood to make quick cash on the popularity of surfing, rock and roll, and even the Beatles (all the "yea, yea, yeas" in the songs). It was insulting to real beach kids! And no one ratted up their dyed black hair or greased it back if they were guys and went to the beach! Surfers had floppy long hair even as long ago as the Beach Boys. These black hair people were called "Greasers" and they never went to the beach! Greasers wore hair teased up and back, leather jackets, drove souped-up cars around, esp lowered ones, and they had pale skin. There were no beatniks at the beach!

Surfers wore their hair straight and long--because if you are in the water all day, you can't be dealing with slicking or teasing hair back. Plus, these "kids" are 30 and 40 years old! Surfers who hung out at the beach were very young--there was even a bus that went up the beach from Santa Monica that took your surfboard--for those too young to drive! By the time people had to work for a living, they got too old to hang out at the beach every day. Professional and lifetime surfers are a separate class--they are found out beyond the waves when surfing, and otherwise they leave the beach. They don't sunbathe much--it would detract from surfing. The young kids with a board probably get in the way of the real surfers. The people surfing in these movies are stunt men and women...

These movies are funny and amusing for what they were, but don't confuse them with reality. There were no people like this at the beach. None. You'd be more likely to find Gidget there.