"Johnny Fain of Malibu," by Denny Aaberg, ran in the Spring 1998 issue of Surfer's Journal. All quotes featured here are from that article.


My family moved to the Malibu Colony in 1944, the year after I was born. It was still wild. I remember armed gauchos on horseback, patrolling the beaches, keeping people away from the Rindge Estate on the point. Every day I would walk a mile to school—from the Colony to Webster Elementary, up on the hill. There were flocks of blue herons. And swans. I saw two giant condors up Malibu Creek one day. You'd think you were somewhere in a remote part of Africa.


My friends and I were always looking for an adventure. One day, while riding our horses through the high chaparral, we came upon a California brown bear. Our horses bolted and ran at breakneck speed, only to be stopped by the raging rapids of Malibu Creek. For a week there had been a torrential downpour with no let-up. The creek had turned into a treacherous river. The rapids were huge. The current was sweeping down to the ocean at 50 miles per hour. ‘“We gotta do it,’ I told my friends. We decided, then and there, we were going to shoot the rapids all the way to the ocean—come what may.

The next morning we hiked four miles up the creek to Rindge Dam, lugging an official six-man, Army-Navy liferaft. We hacked our way through the thicket and found a rock ledge to launch from. We looked into each other’s eyes, counted to three, and jumped into the raft, hanging on to the sides for dear life as the rapids swept us away. I’ll never forget going over this raging waterfall, getting completely immersed, then coming out of it and still going. We rebounded off the rocks, oars flying everywhere. The current swept us beneath the bridge on Pacific Coast Highway to where the creek meets the ocean. It was like going down the Colorado River. We made it all the way down past the boulders on the beach to safety. We were invincible! So we thought.

The raft screamed out into the ocean, and there was this giant eruption of waves coming in. The raft hit the surf and exploded. Cracked in half. Just disintegrated. All the equipment was lost. It was every man for himself. I got sucked down to the pier before I got to shore.


I had to keep the adrenaline going. I tried surf mats first. I’d blow mat up as hard as I could and ride waves in on my knees. On the final run, I’d stand up. That’s what got me— being able to stand up on a mat. What a rush! Then one afternoon, after mat surfing, my buddy and I walked down the shore toward the pier and saw a couple of guys out in the cove on big redwood-balsa surfboards. It was Matt Kivlin and Tommy Zahn. Kivlin rode up behind Zahn, jumped onto the back of his board, and they made a tandem run all the way to shore.

I hooted, ran home, and told my parents to forget the army-navy raft. "I don’t want to go down the rapids anymore. I gotta go surfboarding!" They were so elated that they went out and bought me a new board—a seven-foot all-balsa Velzy. That was 1956, and I was 13. It was the same summer Tubesteak built his palm-frond shack on the beach. The crew took me in, probably because I was the only local kid hanging around at the time. In return, I’d take them back to my house in the Colony and let them clean out the refrigerator. That was the trade-off. In the backyard of my parents’ house, when the surf was flat, we’d have these all-out tournament matches of Ping Pong and croquet.


He was good at anything he tried, and highly competitive. He’d go nuts if I beat him at anything. Whether it was Ping-Pong, croquet, or tennis—Miki and I would have heated battles. With the usual gang of Mickey Munoz, Tubesteak, Kemp Aaberg, Mike Doyle, and the boys looking on, Miki would invariably come out the victor.


I didn’t pay any attention to what was going on with Gidget and Moondoggie and the rest. I didn’t know who was waffling who in the shack. I was too busy learning how to surf. It was extremely difficult. Pearl dives, wipeouts, dings—plus the broken bones and stitches. None of it mattered. I was so stoked that the more I got sewn up, the more I couldn’t wait to get out there again. The more blood, the better. No one gave me any help in the water. Nobody told me a thing about how to surf. I watched three people that I thought were the best there: Kivlin, Dora and Weber. Kivlin was a stylist. Dora had the maneuvers. He could read a wave as good as anybody I’ve ever known. And Weber was a gymnast. I took something from all three of them and tried to formulate my own style. By the end of that first summer, I was good enough so I didn’t have to go to the doctor for any more stitches.


I surfed Malibu year 'round. In the winter, to keep warm, we’d have a giant fire going on the beach. The wetsuits were terrible—if you had a wetsuit at all. We’d wrap a couple of potatoes in tin foil, put them in the fire, and let them cook while we were in the water. We’d only last 15 or 20 minutes out there, then we’d go in, gag down a baked potato, and charge up with carbohydrates for the next go-out. Our surf knots were bulging. I didn’t mind the cold so much. I was numb to it.


By the next summer, my peers were actually cheering me on in the water. Even though I was the youngest surfer at Malibu, I kept up with the older guys. That was the challenge. That’s what helped my drive. I knew if I didn't keep up, I was gone. Later on, I got a Panama hat, and that was a big deal. If you had a certain ranking in The Pit, you were allowed to wear a Panama hat and stripes on your trunks. It was like being a commander with bars on your shoulders. The hat and the stripes were people’s way of knowing you were somebody without knowing your name. Then they got to know your name real quick. Rank and file.

I was lucky because I had plenty of time to surf. My mother [Jeanne Bartlett] was a professional writer—she wrote the screenplay for 

, the film that made Peter Lawford a star. My dad owned and operated Malibu TV. The chores I had at home were minimal. That helped me tremendously. While most kids were out doing their paper route or some other odd job, I was in the water advancing to new heights. I remember thinking of the Indy 500 while I surfed, I’m passing people in my Formula One race car, pitting myself against the wave, pushing myself to the limit. I wanted to see how far I could go to defy the force of gravity. Only the equipment was holding me back


I was riding a Velzy-Jacobs balsa. When the foam boards came in, at first I couldn't ride them as well. I preferred balsa. It had a better feel. You could power the soup better. Balsa boards kept their momentum. They would just plane and keep going. The foam boards seemed too light, too buoyant, and I lost the feel of the wave. I'd be bouncing around like I was on a soap cart out there. But what are you going to do? Balsa was on its way out. Foam was coming in. You had to make the adjustment. Then they stabilized the foam by gluing in a stringer, and after that I got the boards wired.


The scene in Gidget, where Sanda Dee almost drowns in the kelp beds? Nobody wanted to do it because these strings of kelp would wrap around you and hold you under. So that was the first film I did, it was the summer of ’58, and I got hired to be one of Dee's stunt doubles. They put me in a wig and one-piece bathing suit and I did the scene. Linda Benson and Mickey Munoz also doubled for Dee, in the surfing scenes.

A lot of the Malibu guys resented the fact that they weren’t hired to work on Gidget. But I got Dora in—he was my mentor. I couldn’t leave home without him. I introduced Miki to the movies; I knew a lot of producers and directors. I surfed with them. I didn’t have to call. They called me. Once that whole thing got started, I was making 400 dollars a week and that was a lot of money in those days. Dora, Mike Nader, Duane King and I were part of the gang in 

Muscle Beach Party, Beach Blanket Bingo, How to Stuff a Wild Bikini 

beach films that American International Pictures made. They brought in Dick Dale and the Del-Tones, because the surf music thing was starting to happen at the same time. We were in hog heaven, getting paid for going surfing and doing bit parts. We thought it would never end.


Surfing became second nature to me. I didn’t have to think about the moves any longer. It all became intuitive. That’s the beauty of it, the real high—when surfing becomes subconscious. I was into slip-slides where you trim high, release the rail, drop down around the section, then put the rail back in the wave again. Actually, Dora was the innovator of this maneuver. He was using his hips in perfect gyration with the wave, like in that song, "Hippy Hippy Shakes."


It wasn't like that, really. It was all show. Miki and I would hang out together. He introduced me to the Hollywood and Beverly Hills party circuit. Miki always had some little caper going. We had some wild times. It was a lot of fun. He was older than I was, and he was my mentor, and he was always going to be my mentor—no matter how old we got. But it wasn't always smooth. If I edged ahead of him, even on one wave at Malibu, and the section broke behind me and he didn’t make it—oh, I’d hear about it.


We had a sort of showdown at the ’65 Malibu Invitational. Both of us were in the finals and I think Miki figured he would just go for it and try to take my head off. I don’t know why, but every good wave that came through, he happened to be behind me. This one time, my instincts told me to just duck, and as Miki kicked out I felt the air whiz past my ear, the nose of his board missing my head by inches. Besides that, he shoved me off waves, dropped down on top of me, and I threw a few rocks at him from the beach. But we had the right to do this. There were no rules. We were gladiators—and the crowd loved it. Except it wasn't all show. Miki came in third in that contest, I came in second, and he was furious. He hurled his trophy into a trash can and left the beach. I understood. What did these senile surf freak judges know? He figured they swindled him out of first place. Just because he tried to decapitate Johnny Fain, they shouldn’t hold it against him. Anyway, it really didn’t matter who should have won that contest— Miki was still the best at Malibu.


I went over and surfed in the Duke contest one year. I didn’t do very well because I arrived just one day before the event. You try going out your first day at Sunset when it’s 12-foot and the peak is shifting all over the place. The wave is coming in one way, and all of a sudden it’s somewhere else and you have to dive underneath. Or you catch it, and guys like Billy Hamilton are dropping in on you and you’re staring at the reef on the inside—the one that has a giant scalpel on it.

Hawaii was okay as long as I minded my P’s and Q’s, but sometimes I'd get a little excitable. I tried to be Johnny Carson on the North Shore and crack jokes that nobody understood. The local boys thought I was insulting them when I was just trying to be humorous. I was invited to all the parties—the problem was getting out alive.


Every year I thought the crowd at Malibu couldn’t get any worse than the year before—and every year it did. Then the Tapia sewer treatment plant came and completely polluted the water. I didn’t like surfing there anymore. Around 1975 I got the part of Shorty Shane in the TV movie 

, and I decided I wanted to become a serious actor. Everybody said I did a good job in that film. I got a lot of TV parts and was gaining ground. I wasn’t surfing much then because most of the time I was in acting class, studying. I was playing a lot of tennis, too, which fit in with the movie acting. I played in these celebrity tournaments, with actors and producers, which helped to open doors. They'd all come down to the Colony, which made it easy for my agent. I was meeting a new set of people. After talking surf talk for so many years my vocabulary was extinct. I had no vocabulary. I was in sign language.

Everything was going well, then something bad happened. I got a role in a movie called 

', playing a surf star, which suited me perfectly. Then halfway through the film, while we were on location in Pismo Beach shooting a surf scene, my co-star lost his balance, fell backwards, and shot his board right into my face. I got 55 stitches in my cheek; it took the doctor four hours to do all the work. But one side of my face was destroyed, and they had to find another actor to take my place. 

' was going to be my showcase, but instead it was the end of my acting career. After that, I went into real estate.


I had hip replacement surgery in 1992. My hip probably went out because it was smashed on the bottom at Pipeline several times, and kicked out on a lot at Malibu. The more blows you take in one spot, the more the arthritis forms. The operation lasted five-and-a-half hours. Total hip replacement. It took 18 months to heal. Meanwhile, I fell victim to the powerful effects of drugs and alcohol. I was almost a goner. Finally, a good friend of mine threw me into the Pepperdine pool and said "Swim for your life, Fain. This is your last chance." Nine months later, after I swam what must have been from Malibu to San Diego and back, I felt a total resurgence. I thank God every night for giving me one last chance.

My surfing career has been a blessing and a curse. Unfortunately, the surfing lifestyle can give you a false set of values—because you think it’s never going to end. You develop tunnel vision. You lose your perspective of what life’s all about. Why should you care about anything else? Earthquakes—who cares? It’ll cause a giant tidal wave—so you’re hoping for an earthquake. On the other hand, surfing is good for you. It's important to keep surfing. Not just for the physical aspect, but for the spirit. It's good for your soul.

[Photos: Brad Barrett, Ron Stoner, LeRoy Grannis]

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