"Mickey Dora: the Angry Young Man of Surfing," by Bill Cleary, ran the October 1963 issue of Surf Guide. Dora was 27.

Mickey, how did it all begin; what was your early life like and what made you begin surfing; who were some of the others who were surfing then?

When I was pretty young we went to live in South America for a year or so—my father was in the import business there. We moved back here, but I spent most of my early life locked in boarding schools. That wouldn’t have been so bad, but the counselors had all the fun and the kids did all the work. We always lived in town [Los Angeles], but when my mother married Gard Chapin—who had a fairly big name of his own in his generation of surfing— we used to hit the beaches during the summer and I began surfing. But I was still sent to one private boarding school after another and I didn’t have much freedom or time for surfing. My stepfather had strange ideas about raising kids and devised some pretty stiff disciplinary programs for me. Still, between schools, he would take me around to Malibu and some of the better spots. It wasn’t until 1950 that I got the first board of my own.

In 1954 several of us, including Rick Grigg, Greg Noll, and Bobby Patterson, began to take off for Windansea and San Onofre pretty regularly. Bob Simmons was working for my stepfather who had a honeycomb lamination company. Bob spent all his spare time there working on his ‘concave' surfboards; he lived like a pig, but what a craftsman! Matt Kivlin was probably the top surfer. After he went to the Islands he came back with a modified Hawaiian stance. Every move Matt made was functional; there was a purpose in everything he did. He made waves and was smooth—which is amazing for a guy his height. In any sport, you copy to learn. I’m guilty of it—we all are. I picked up a lot about turning from Kivlin.

When I went to school, damn near everything was organized. Little league baseball, stoop-tag, the three ‘major’ sports—everything was built up around the buddy system. They never left you alone. But with surfing, I could go to the beach and not have to depend on anybody. I could take a wave and forget about it. But don’t get me wrong. Living at the beach isn’t the answer. Hollywood is a tremendous town. I live here and I’m not saturated—I still get jazzed when there are I waves. Guys who live at the beach get waterlogged and their brains get sick. It’s just like living in a ski resort; if you’re there, you ski your brains out.

In the old days before the Valley cowboys and aircraft workers entrenched themselves at Malibu, it was uncrowded and you actually got tired doing the same thing on every wave. So you took off in positions that were damned near impossible. Now it’s saturated. If you want to get into the curl at Malibu, you might as well forget it. It’s a thing of the past. But we used to get so bored that we improvised and developed things like the "el spontaneo." Bending over and jutting our hands behind our legs, we'd look between our ankles with our tongues hanging out. But when a certain kind of wave came through from the south it’d catch you in a pocket, joining down so hard that you’d damned near bite your tongue off. You don’t do things like that anymore. Malibu is like a bloodbath, the accident rate has climbed so high.

You’ve talked about “old” Malibu—how can you still surf there with 200 guys in the water, when in the old days ten surfers was a crowd?

The crowds have added another dimension for me. I've merely re-patterned my technique. These guys take off in front of me and they’re scared to death; they know I’m behind them, but they never know what I’ll do next. They run up and put their feet on the nose and I give them a little nudge in the tailblock. Then they start to corkscrew. It never fails. I Messerschmidt them—I dogfight them—I go behind and below them and they’re so out of control, they simply crack up. There was this one guy—I did this all the way across the point on the inside. I never even touched him, but he dug a rail and took gas. I found out later that he lost three teeth from it. And the worst part was that he had worn braces for four years and had only had them off for a week when he got it.

It used to be that when I went to Malibu, I’d never know what was going to happen—whether I’d get robbed, rolled, or what. But now that the County [Lifeguards] have a foot in it, it’s different. There used to have three or four punch-outs each day. Now you have the aircraft workers, the Valley imbeciles, and the guys from Palm Springs. And the world thinks it’s better off with the ‘Payola’-inspired organizations that have their hands in the beach concessions.

What do you think of the younger generation of surfers?

They’re all sheep. When I was in high school, they were called ‘pachukos’ with their long hair and Levi jackets. They still have their long hair, but they’ve traded their jackets for sweatshirts. They buy a board, take it to the beach for a year and they're a little serious about it—that’s not surfing! They’re phonies. They don’t make waves. They take off on the shoulder and come jamming ‘left’ into the peak, trying to make a wave out of the shoulder. A section comes over and they don’t get through. They don’t cut back, they only go halfway. Most of them can go only one direction, anyway. They’re frauds because they can only do one thing. They’re too specialized. The guys who ride Malibu all the time are in trouble when they hit a shorebreak or go to Hawaii. They do the same thing every time and they’re good at it. If a guy goes over the same ski-slope enough times, of course he’ll have it wired. It’s a good way to get a name. Get yourself a photographer, get your picture in a few magazines, and you’re known. But it’s a lazy way of becoming famous.

Surfing contests are another cheap way of getting a name. If you are good, you don’t need to win phony contests to prove it. These guys have sold themselves—they couldn’t make it any other way and I don’t respect any of them.

How do you feel about commercialism in surfing?

Surfing is commercialized, but I don’t ride anybody’s boards. I pay cash. I get stale if I ride one board too long, so I have a quiver of boards and I ride a different one whenever I feel like it.

What’s your attitude toward the Hollywood pictures you’ve been in recently? [Note: from the late '50s to the mid-'60s, Dora often did surfing stunt work.]

I’m surfing in pictures because I like to work in them. I’ve been in a dozen films so far, including 

Gidget, Gidget Goes Hawaiian, Gidget Goes to Rome, Surfing Wild, Beach Party, 

 Believe it or not, I’ve been ‘discovered’ six times this year. They always give you this line, "You’re the greatest . . . we’ll make millions out of you!" I figured they were right. On one picture [

, not yet released at the time of this interview] we went to Hawaii and lived on the North Shore for two and a half months. We did something that had never been done before. Big-wave riding was filmed in 35mm. They were good people and really wanted to understand surfing; to capture the atmosphere surrounding the surfers who make the annual winter trip to the Islands. I had faith. I wanted to make this thing a success, not only for them but for me also.

When any group of people is together as much as we were, there’s pressure. After a couple of months, I began to get buggy and the pressure began to tell. They didn’t know the difference between Kona winds and offshore and I had to go through this surfboard talk with them. On top of everything, they put me on a diet because I'd put on a little weight for the big surf. I had to lose twenty pounds in one month. Well, as we all know, they had one of the biggest winters ever. It scared the hell out of me. I couldn’t sleep. Little things like their snoring began to bother me. Luckily I was able to sneak out into the bush and catch up on some sleep. But then the tanks from the army base would go roaring by during the night and I couldn’t tell if the surf was getting huge or it was just another invasion. Then I got up one morning and found somebody's underwear left on my toothbrush. I was psyched out! My hair began to fall out. I got stomach ulcers. The waves were frightening. The Pipeline was a little scary, but Waimea had the biggest waves I’ve ever seen in my life. Under all this pressure I had to ride these waves and every time they hit the button on that camera it was a hundred bucks. Like it was Judgment Day. I’m paddling, trying to get going, and these guys are in it even before it stands up on the reef. They’re driving and I’m just getting into it. I rode Waimea, but let’s face it—by choice, I’m a four-feet-and-under man!”

Mickey, you’ve been around surfing a long time and you’re one of the top surfers according to your own criteria and the judgment of others. What do you think of your image in the surfing world?

Every now and then I hear my name associated with something uncomplimentary, and of course it bothers me. We're all in this together. I’m no different than anybody else. I enjoy life and have my own problems. But you have to ask yourself, What kind of people are they who talk about me, yet have never seen me? It bothers me when small minds and small people talk behind my back. I’ve been called a lot of things at one time or another—you name it.

When I am on that beach, it’s a battle. Believe me! When you’re in the water, you’re competing. I try to get waves to myself and every guy in the water is a potential threat to me. I’m out there for one reason. Not to be a good guy or a bad guy. I’m out there to surf. If some nut takes off on the shoulder and comes left into me, I’ll screw him up any way I can because that’s what he’s doing to me. Socially, the kids on the beach at Malibu are younger than I am. We have nothing in common. I have friends I play tennis with and friends I ski with, but at the beach, I’m there to surf. I’m there for waves and nothing else. Surfing is part of my life and I have to have it. It’s just that simple.

Miki Dora (1963)

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