This movie opens with everyone in a club, The Vanguard, twisting to a jazz band....YES, you read that correct...a jazz band. After the credits for The Young Swingers, we get to the main plot point about a business woman (Jo Helton) wanting to close down the club in order to build a high rise building. The club is run as a co-op and is just barely making money, one of the members even states "I don't dig profits". Which brings up another point, there is a lot of "hipster jive" talk near the first of The Young Swingers, but it quickly falls away as the movie progresses. During this sequence of the movie we get our first song when The Sherwoods (Karen Gunderson of The New Christy Minstrels and John Merritt) sing "Elijah" Molly Bee is the niece of the business woman and her 21st birthday is coming up soon. Rod Lauren comes to the house to reason with the aunt, but she has gone away on a business trip, instead he finds himself talking to Molly. Rod and Molly have a small argument and he gets in a huff and leaves. Back at the club we get our next performance when Gene McDaniels sings "Mad Mad Mad" backed by a small jazz combo.
Molly brings a date, Jerry Summers, with her to the club, but when he finds out it's basically a coffeehouse, Jerry says "What is this, one of those hootenanny joints?" He wants Molly to leave and she doesn't want to go. This results in a fight between him and Rod and Jerry winds up leaving Molly behind. We get our next performance, which is a stand up comedy act by Jack Larson (not the same one from the Superman TV series). He not only does some comedy, but also sings a surfing song, "Watusi Surfer" that includes impressions. Molly's aunt has the power turned off to the club and when the lights go out everyone in the club leaves, except Molly. While Rod is closing things up, Molly turns on a portable radio and sings along with "Come A-Runnin". Rod hears Molly and tells her she has a great voice and Molly replies "It's Not Mine". This will make sense a little later in the movie. In the meantime Molly's aunt is still trying, with the help of her lawyer, to get the club closed. Nothing seems to work and during this sequence we flash back to the club where Rod sings "I Can't Get You Out of My Heart".
Rod comes to see Molly at her house and finds out that her mother, who was a singer, was on a USO tour when she was killed in a plane crash along with Molly's father. This is why Molly said earlier that Rod wasn't hearing her voice, but her mothers'. Her aunt hears this and it softens her heart a little bit, but not enough to cancel Molly's birthday party when she finds that Molly has invited everyone from the club.
Molly is fed up with her aunt and, since Molly has turned 21 and can do as she pleases, she leaves home and joins the rest of the gang at the club. The aunt decides to go to the club to check things out for herself. First up are The Sherwoods singing "Greenback Dollar", but they sing "don't give a hmmmm for a greenback dollar" instead of "don't give a damn for a greenback dollar". Molly then sings a Rod McKuen song "You Pass Me By". When her aunt hears how much Molly sounds like her mother, her heart of stone finally breaks.
Unfortunately the club burns down due to some faulty wiring and Molly blames her aunt, but it is quickly revealed that it was faulty wiring and her aunt is also getting the co-op a new club. Everyone's happy and the birthday party is back on where Gene McDaniels sings "Voice on the Mountain" and The Sherwoods once again sing the hmmmm version of "Greenback Dollar" (guess they only knew two songs!!). The movie closes out with everyone twisting to the same song ("Come To The Party") we heard at the first of the movie.
It looks like the makers of The Young Swingers tried to appeal to a lot of different musical tastes. The poster makes it appear that The Young Swingers is a hootenanny movie (like Hootenanny Hoot, which was released the same year), but there's only two folk songs in the movie, both sung by The Sherwoods. Molly Bee who had recently been appearing on The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show and The Jimmy Dean Show does NOT sing country songs in the film, instead she sings a couple of pop tunes. Rod Lauren, probably best known for his appearance in the cult film The Crawling Hand, had a minor hit in 1960 with "If I Had a Girl" and sings one teen lounge type number (that's the only way I know to describe it). Gene McDaniels best known for his hit "100 Pounds of Clay" instead of doing his hit song, does a couple of light jazz tunes. Then we also have the inclusion of stand-up comedy with Jack Larson, plus having the twist open and close the movie.
Having so many different elements in the movie didn't give it any clear focus and with its weak plot I can't imagine anyone liking this movie very much. Besides the Molly Bee performances, the best thing I could say about The Young Swingers is that it was short (71 minutes). I will give The Young Swingers props for showing that a woman could be as tough a business person as any man, and for including Gene McDaniels as just one of the gang without any references to the fact that he was the only black actor/performer amongst the rest of the white cast.
You can find Molly Bee singing her two songs from the film on youtube - "Come A-Runnin" (whoever posted the song mis-identified it as Snap My Fingers) and "Till You Pass Me By".
Since Rock Around The Clock had been such a success, this sequel, Don't Knock The Rock (DKTR) was quickly rushed into production and released in December of the same year (1956). DKTR however failed to garner as much success as the original movie. This caused a third movie in the series that would also have featured Bill Haley to be canceled. The failure of DKTR could also have had something to do with Haley's "rock and roll" career faltering around the same time.
In my opinion, it wasn't Haley who couldn't make this movie into a hit, instead the problem was the casting of Alan Dale (a friend of Alan Freed's) as Arnie Haines. In DKTR, Arnie Haines is supposedto be the biggest and greatest "rock and roll" star of the time. Alan Dale was a great big band singer and possessed a great set of pipes, but trying to pass him off as a great "rock and roll" singer was a fatal flaw in DKTR and I doubt audiences at the time bought the premise any more than I did. For a look at Alan Dale/Arnie Haines check out the trailer at the end of this review.
The plot of DKTR has Arnie and his band tired of the limelight and deciding to take a break and go back home to see their families and rest up. They ask Bill Haley to take over their bookings and he's glad to accommodate. Unfortunately, when Arnie and the boys arrive home they find that they're not welcome in their own hometown due to playing that "evil rock and roll" music. Adding to their woes is a nationally syndicated columnist, Arlene MacLaine (Fay Baker), who has come to town to check out Arnie and writes a column deriding their music. The publication of her column causes towns all across the U.S. to start canceling "rock and roll" shows.
Arlene's daughter Francine (Patricia Hardy) is on Arnies side and wants to prove her mother wrong. In order to combat the bad connotation that "rock and roll" has received Arnie, Francine, and Arnie's manager, Alan Freed, decide to stage a charity "rock and roll" show in the next town over. Francine will get her mother to attend and see there's nothing wrong with the music. Everything almost works out, but Arnie refuses the advances of a piece of "jailbait" (Jana Lund) and to get even she brings a bottle of liquor to the dance. All the hubbub about the liquor causes a fight to break out at the dance. The liquor and the fighting make "rock and roll" once again look bad when all of this is reported in the newspapers. Arnie comes up with a solution to show the old fogies that "rock and roll" isn't any worse than the music/dancing they grew up with and everyone comes to their senses for a happy ending.
Even though Bill Haley was listed as the star of DKTR, he's actually only a supporting player in the movie. Haley and The Comets get to perform several songs before and during the charity concert and Bill has a few speaking parts in the movie. The concert also includes The Treniers (fronted by twin brothers Claude and Cliff Trenier) who sing "Rockin' on Saturday Night" and "Out Of The Bushes" and prove what a great show band they were. Dave Appell and The Applejacks do "Applejack" and "Country Dance". Best of all we get some real "rock and roll" when Little Richard sings "Tutti Fruitti" and "Long Tall Sally". The only bad part of Little Richard's performance is he's not very animated, it appears someone told him "look into this camera" because no matter which way the shot is set up, he's always looking straight ahead.
A couple of things I neglected to mention in my review of Rock Around The Clock which also hold true for DKTR: There are some great dancers in both movies, as a matter of fact, the group dancers are much better than the featured duet dancers in both movies. I also found it odd that Haley's group included a steel guitar player. I imagine this was a holdover from Haley's country and western days. I'm not saying a steel guitar player can't rock (see Junior Brown or Robert Randolph), just that it's a strange instrument to see in a "rock and roll" band.
After seeing Ferlin Husky in Hillbillys In A Haunted House, I decided to check out another one of his movies - Swamp Girl. I also got a bonus, since when I got the movie, I found that Claude King (Wolverton Mountain) co-stars with Ferlin in the movie. While neither Ferlin or Claude need ever worry about winning an Oscar, both are as good or better than some of the other actors in Swamp Girl.
The movie begins as Swamp Girl (Simone Griffeth) brings a man into civilization who has been bitten by snakes. When she tosses him onto land, three of the locals who are out for some illegal night fishing hear something and when they go to investigate they discover the man, who unfortunately has already died. A side note about these three locals - they're the worst actors in the movie, one of them must realize this fact because he barely speaks. They're so bad, that anytime they appear in a scene, they make the other actors look better than they probably are. Back to the movie...it's a mystery to everyone how the man got out of the swamp and there's some discussion about how it could have been the legend known as Swamp Girl. This sets up the next scene with Ferlin sitting on the porch of his cabin singing the title song "Swamp Girl".
We find out that Ferlin is the Swamp Ranger and that Claude is the local Sheriff when we find them the next day discussing if there really could be a Swamp Girl. Ferlin sets out in his airboat to see if he can track her down and, of course, he does. While on shore chasing her, Ferlin steps into an animal trap and Swamp Girl has to rescue him. Ferlin gets Swamp Girl to to talk to him and interestingly the conversation is about the traps being illegal and how the Okefenokee Swamp Park is a refuge....a sort of early 70s message of conservation. We get an oddity (actually just badly written dialogue) during the conversation, when Swamp Girl has no trouble with the word "refuge", but doesn't understand the word "deputy".
Ferlin has asked Swamp Girl to talk to her Pa about leaving the swamp and coming back into civilization, which she agrees to do. We then get what I guess was supposed to be a shock (and maybe it was in 1971), when we find that Pa is a black man. Pa says he knew this day was coming and he will have to explain to Swamp Girl how he's not her real father, but actually a man named Nat who has raised her.
HOLD ON because here comes a lot of twisted plot: It seems Nat lived in the swamp with an alcoholic doctor who performed illegal abortions. If a woman came to him too late for an abortion, he would let them stay until they had the baby. If it was a boy, they had to take the child with them when they left, if it was a girl, they could either take it or leave it. If they left the baby girl, the doctor had a deal with some sea-faring men who bought the babies and then re-sold them to Arab Sheiks. Swamp Girl was Nat's favorite and he begged the doctor to keep her around and he did, until she was a pre-teen. Then old doc got greedy and decided to sell her. He knew Nat would resist the idea and sent Nat off to run some errands. The seamen wouldn't pay the double price the doctor wanted for Swamp Girl and they killed the doctor and kidnapped Swamp Girl and placed her in a canvas bag. Nat had gotten suspicious and came back just in time to catch all of this and winds up killing both of the men (there's some bad special effects included at this point). Swamp Girl doesn't remember any of this because when the seamen threw the bag with her in it into the woods, she was bitten through the bag by snakes and the fever from those bites wiped her mind clean.
While Nat has been telling Swamp Girl her story, we cut back to a woman, who with the help of her boyfriend, has escaped from prison. She shot a prison guard during the escape with a double barrel shotgun. The duo decide to go through the swamp to reach the Florida line. I guess I don't have tell you that their paths will intersect with Swamp Girl. First they find the cabin with Nat and the woman uses her other shell to shoot Nat (for some reason they only had the two shells....I guess times were tough! ORmaybe only two shells exist for a plot twist that comes a little later). Once they happen upon Swamp Girl, they force her to lead them through the swamp at the point of their shotgun.
Back in town a couple has arrived and hired the three locals to look for their "little" girl in the swamp. This sounds like they are going to be looking for a young girl, but it's actually the escapee. How they knew she was in the swamp is a mystery to me, but that's how the plot has evolved or devolved. Meanwhile back in the swamp, the escapee's boyfriend has stepped in quicksand and drowned. Next up is a fight between the escapee and Swamp Girl, who has been fully aware that there are no more shells in the shotgun (remember above when I said plot twist)....of course why Swamp Girl had been letting herself be forced to lead them through the swamp is somewhat of a mystery to me....but what the hell, might as well go along with it...anyway... After Swamp Girl and the escapee fight for a while, the escapee is chasing Swamp Girl when she gets caught in a trap and a gator pulls her down into the swamp and eats her as Swamp Girl watches, but does nothing. The locals and the escapee's father arrive and it appears that the father shoots Swamp Girl, but she in actuality has just stumbled. Instead, the Sheriff and Swamp Ranger show up and the father gets shot and as he falls, we have a deadly snake attack.
HOLD ON for another convoluted plot twist: When everyone arrives back in civilization, we find out that Swamp Girl is actually the daughter of the escapee's mother and that that was her sister she watched drown. Swamp Girl goes back into the Swamp to get her mind straight, but promises to return to civilization soon....OR maybe they were just thinking about a sequel!
A couple of final things to mention about the movie that I found strange is the usage of a couple of words. Two different characters, who are both white, in the movie use the exclamation "Holy Mackerel", a phrase generally associated with Amos 'n' Andy, but I'm guessing it had probably entered the general lexicon of Southerners by 1971, when this movie was made. Another strange word in the movie was when Ferlin called the escapee's boyfriend "Bohunk", an ethic slur used for Ukrainian or Eastern Central European immigrants and a term I have never heard used here in The South. I am only familiar with it from some Northerners that I served in the army with who made me aware of the word. Since Ferlin had no way of knowing who the boyfriend was, I sometimes think that maybe he meant to say Boy Friend and just said Bohunk (maybe the word meant something different to Ferlin) OR for all I know it was written into the movie by one of the two writers (thankfully, this is their only credited writing production).
The series of beach movies starring Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello began just as I was becoming a teenager. I found them fascinating at the time that kids (OK none of them were really kids) were all just hanging out at the beach with no adult supervision. Man! Did I ever wish I lived in California instead of upstate South Carolina!
Beach Party was the first in the series and it not only begat its own sequels, but also copycat movies from other studios. So many movies of this type were made that four years later the genre was played out and came to an end; although in 1987, Frankie and Annette would appear together once again in Back To The Beach, which is more or less a parody of the original movies.
Beach Party contained all of the elements that would show up in the future movies in the series. Frankie and Annette always sing a few songs, either solo or together. In Beach Party Frankie and Annette sing "Beach Party", Annette sings "Promise Me Anything (Give Me Love)" and "Treat Him Nicely", and Frankie does a rocking "Don't Stop Now". There's always a musical guest and in this movie that slot is filled by Dick Dale and The Deltones who perform "Swingin' and a-Surfin'" and "Secret Surfin' Spot". Also look for Dick in several other scenes where he plays the bongos and appears to be a member of the beach gang....maybe they had originally planned for Dick to be a regular in the series.
Other elements that you would continue to see as the series rolled along: Frankie talking to the camera/audience; Frankie and Annette having a spat, then try to make each other jealous, but they always get back together before the end of the movie; an older comedian who runs a business the kids frequent, Beach Party has Morey Amsterdam, this role would later be filled several times by Don Rickles; and Candy Johnson doing her wild shimmy dancing, she's credited in Beach Party as Perpetual Motion Dancer.
Beach Party also introduced us to the worst motorcycle gang anyone has ever seen - Harvey Lembeck as Eric Von Zipper with his gang The Rats and The Mice. He always made me think that his character was Brando from The Wild One run through the minds at Mad Magazine. In Beach Party, Eric Von Zipper also learns "The Finger", which somehow he always manages to work only on himself.
The main plot to hold all of the elements in Beach Party together is about an anthropologist (Bob Cummings) who with his assistant (Dorothy Malone) is studying the beach gang as if they were a wild tribe with their own language and mating rituals. If you think about it, Beach Party was made to appeal to young people, but the movie is actually making fun of them with this plot....but then this movie was written by Lou Rusoff who was 52 at the time.
I've watched several other beach movies in the recent past (reviews forthcoming) and so far I have found Beach Party to be the dullest of the bunch. I laughed only a couple of times during the movie and it also didn't seem to have the playfulness and light heartedness as some of the sequels that came later. One final thing to mention, Vincent Price makes a very small appearance in Beach Party, basically as a promotion for another American International picture he was starring in, The Haunted Palace.
Sam Katzman was well known for being able to get a fad (which rock and roll was considered to be at the time) to the big screen before the fad had faded away and also for being able to do it on the cheap. He is often criticized that a lot of the movies he produced had weak plots and bad acting. I personally think everyone owes him a debt of gratitude for capturing some of the early rockers and rhythm and blues singers on celluloid. Rock Around The Clock was Katzman's first music exploitation movie and after the success of Rock Around The Clock, he produced more music exploitation movies using "rock and roll" (Don't Knock The Rock, Jukebox Rhythm, Get Yourself A College Girl), "calypso" (Calypso Heat Wave), "the twist" (Twist Around The Clock, Don't Knock The Twist), "folk music" (Hootenanny Hoot), "British Invasion" (Hold On with Herman's Hermits) and even a couple of Elvis Presley movies (Kissin' Cousins, Harum Scarum).
Rock Around The Clock is generally considered the first rock exploitation movie by Katzman or anyone else. It was made to capitalize on the success that the song,"Rock Around The Clock" had received as part of the soundtrack in the movie Blackboard Jungle. Although it's hard for us today to look at Haley and see a "rock and roll" performer, he was huge during the years of 1954-56. Around 1957 his popularity declined when Elvis and other artists came along, who not only "looked like rockers" but also seemed to have "rock and roll" embedded within themselves.
Rock Around The Clock's plot revolves around the birth of "rock and roll" and points you to Bill Haley as the originator of the sound. While we all know that's not true, the plot of the movie can only exist by accepting that premise. Steve Hollis (Johnny Johnston) tells members of a Big Band that he has been representing that "big band music" is washed up. The band fires him, after which Steve and one member of the band, Corny (Henry Slate), decide to drive to New York. Along the way they stop in a small town where they find the town listening and dancing to Bill Haley and His Comets. They can't figure out what type music they are listening to "since it isn't boogie, it isn't jive and it isn't swing, it's sort of a combination of all of them". Once they find out it's a music called "rock and roll" Steve sees the next big thing and wants to sign the band plus a brother/sister dancing duo (who will be required to show kids how to dance to "rock and roll").
The rest of Rock Around The Clock revolves around getting the band and dancers signed and onto a national stage. There's a subplot about a romance between Steve and the female dancer (Lisa Gaye) that causes some trouble with a big booking agent whose daughter (Alix Talton) wants to marry Steve. Once Steve finds out that they have been blackballed by the booking agent, he turns to an old friend, Alan Freed, to help them get a foothold on entertainment bookings and of course everything works out fine by the end of the movie.
Rock Around The Clock not only had performances throughout the movie by Bill Haley and The Comets, who it appeared did have a pretty good rockin' stage show, but also The Platters who sing "Only You" and "The Great Pretender", Tony Martinez and his band do four Latin numbers, and Freddie Bell and His Bellboys sing "We're Gonna Teach You To Rock" and "Giddy Up Ding Dong".
A last note about Freddie Bell and His Bellboys, they recorded a version of "Hound Dog" in 1955 and in 1956 Elvis (who was doing a not very successful Las Vegas appearance at the time) saw Freddie Bell and His Bellboys singing it in their Las Vegas show and was moved to record it himself. This is interesting to me on two levels: Freddie Bell and his group have always looked more like a lounge act than a "rock and roll" act to me, and also the fact that Elvis would eventually wind up many years later in Las Vegas singing "Hound Dog", the song that he had "discovered" there and made famous.
This movie is the sequel to Live It Up, which I have previously reviewed. Be My Guest picks up with Dave (David Hemming) Martin's parents moving to Brighton Beach where they have inherited a guest house. They take the train, but Dave wants to drive his own car and plans to meet them there. Unfortunately, on the way his car conks out on him and he winds up taking the train the rest of the way into Brighton. On the train he meets a young American girl, Erica (Andrea Monet), who is going to Brighton to audition as a dancer. Her audition falls through and Dave, without the approval of his parents, brings her to the guest house as a non-paying guest. Even though Dave is going to work for the local newspaper, he still has a desire to be a musician; but his parents have convinced him that's not the career track for him.
We get our first musical performance in the movie when Dave and Erica are watching TV and we see Jerry Lee Lewis backed by The Plebs (whose members included Terry Crowe and Mick Dunford of The Nashville Teens and Danny McCulloch who would later join The Animals) singing "My Baby Don't Love No One But Me" I believe this is an unreleased song that can only be heard in this movie and I have included a youtube clip at the end of this review.
In the meantime, Dave's two buddies, Ricky (Steve Marriott) and Phil (John Pike), have taken a job in the food/beverage car of a train. They do such a bad job that they get kicked off the train at the end of the line which, of course, just happens to be Brighton Beach. Dave lets them stay in one of the guest house's cabanas, but this is against the law and causes trouble for Dave's father. They eventually wind up staying in the guest house....as you can tell, the guest house isn't doing very well, since it's just filling up with non-paying guests! Erica, Ricky and Phil try to help drum up business for the guest house, but everything they do seems to go wrong: from hanging a big sign that violates the local ordinance to Erica handing out flyers that are misconstrued as a come-on for sex.
A music promoter has come to Brighton to discover new talent with a plan to replace Liverpool's Mersey Beat with The Brighton Beat. The boys re-form their group The Smart Alecs and write a song called "Be My Guest" so they can enter the talent contest. The talent contest has been rigged by the promoter and his girlfriend, but the boys find out about the plan and foil the duo. Everything winds up on a happy note with the boys' song becoming a hit and the guest house being full of paying guests....who are all coming to town to check out The Brighton Beat.
The talent show part of the plot allowed for the inclusion of different musical performers throughout the film: The Nightshades do "Be My Guest", The Zephyrs perform "She Laughed", Joyce Blair sings "Gotta Get Away Now", and Kenny and The Wranglers do "Somebody Help Me" plus the Nashville Teens (photo above) sing " Whatcha Gonna Do" . It was a big surprise when the first group we see in the movie: Slash Wildly and the Cut-Throats (actually The Zephyrs), appeared on screen to see how much longer the hair styles were in 1965 than in the previous movie, Live It Up, which was made in 1963 Just like Live It Up, I really enjoyed this British Teen Music Comedy, with Be My Guest being a little more polished in its execution and plot structure. The commentary for this movie and Live It Up are the same on both discs. The commentary covers Live It Up for the first 45 minutes or so and then there's about 20-25 minutes of commentary about Be My Guest...strange setup...but a good commentary that is well worth a listen. I would recommend these two films to anyone interested in this period of UK music/fashion/teens and would also suggest watching both movies as a double feature.
This movie is like many that came before it and many that would come after it: existing primarily to showcase a group of rock and roll performances, that are surrounded by a plot to hold things together. The best part of Go, Johnny, Go! is that Chuck Berry not only gets to perform but also gets to act. The film never makes it clear, but as far as we can tell, he is either Alan Freed's best friend or partner, since they are always hanging out together. Another plus is the lead actor, Jimmy Clanton, who can actually sing (not always the case in these movies); however his acting ability and character's attitude is on par with Elvis' in "Wild In The Country". Jimmy was from Louisiana and you can hear the influence of his home state in a couple of his songs in the movie, while his other songs in the movie are done in a typical teen ballad style.
The opening credits roll as Chuck Berry plays "Johnny B. Goode" in the background. Go, Johnny, Go! opens with Alan Freed having a stage show going on and we see The Flamingos singing a scorching version of "Jump Children". Johnny (Jimmy Clanton) is hanging out backstage with Alan Freed and Chuck Berry and when Johnny goes on stage to sing "Angel Face", Chuck gets Freed to tell him the story of how Johnny almost landed in jail instead of becoming a big star.
Go, Johnny, Go! then flashes back to when Johnny had got out of the orphanage to perform in a gospel group (did Clyde Edgerton watch this movie and get an idea for Killer Diller?). When the choir director leaves the room, Johnny sings "Ship On A Stormy Sea" and you can hear some of his swamp pop roots even in this song. The choir director returns and says he'll have to send Johnny back to the orphanage (Man! they don't cut you any slack at this church). Johnny instead sets out on his own and gets a job as an usher.
We see Johnny doing some ushering, but mostly rocking along to the acts on stage and this winds up getting him fired from his job. They do let Johnny stay on and see the rest of the show and even give him his own seat. During this segment of the movie we have performances by Harvey (Fuqua of The Moonglows) doing "Don't Be Afraid To Love Me", Jo-Ann Campbell singing "Momma Can I Go Out" and Eddie Cochran doing "Teenage Heaven". Freed tells the crowd he's looking for a new star who he will name Johnny Melody. Johnny, thinking this will be his big break, waits for Freed out back of the theater where he meets Julie (Sandy Stewart) who was in the same orphanage as him. He brushes her off telling her he has just enough money for a demo and no time for dating. When Freed finally comes out, Johnny gets the brush off as Freed tells him that the whole thing is just a publicity stunt.
The movie switches to Julie, who is also an aspiring singer, and she's in the recording studio singing "Playmates". Johnny arrives at the same studio and barely has enough to pay for studio time and desperately needs a backup female singer which, of course, Julie agrees to be. Johnny/Jimmy Clanton then sings " My Love Is Strong" (this song would fit great on any Swamp Pop collection). Johnny gets his song to Freed's office, but the only information he includes with his recording is that he is the future Johnny Melody. Chuck pushes for Freed to find out who Johnny really is but Freed is tired of fooling with the whole thing and goes off with Chuck to watch him perform on a TV show and we get to see Chuck doing "Memphis, Tennessee".
Johnny is hanging out with Julie at her adopted parents house watching Chuck on TV. Julie is trying to assure Johnny that he has plenty of time to make it by pointing out that Chuck probably didn't make it until he was 27 or 28 and Johnny delivers one of my favorite lines in the movie "Who wants to wait until they're middle-aged". Johnny explains to Julie that he's barely been making a living by playing his trumpet and this leads to Johnny playing his horn while Julie plays the piano. Her adoptive parents come home and we find out they're "hip" squares as the foursome take off for the "The Krazy Koffee Kup" to catch some late night tunes.
Alan and Chuck are already at the club and we get to see The Cadillacs do two staged performances "Jay Walker" and "Please Mr. Johnson" and Jackie Wilson do "You Better Know It". Chuck is still pushing for Freed to find Johnny and as luck (or a convenient plot twist) would have it, when Julie finally convinces Johnny to go talk to Freed, he has just left.
Freed goes back to the radio station and plays Johnny's song every 15 minutes waiting for him to call in and identify himself. Unfortunately, Johnny is so mad at Freed that he refuses to listen to Freed's show and doesn't hear the announcement. Johnny wants to know what Julie wants for Christmas and she tells him that she wants him to have a hit record, but he pushes for a real present and she tells him about a pin she saw at a jewelry store. Johnny tries to pawn his horn but has no luck and decides to smash in the jewelry store window and steal the pin (conveniently there are a pile of bricks nearby).
Julie, alone in her room, is thinking about Johnny and sings "Heavenly Father", after which she turns on the radio and hears Johnny's song and that Freed is looking for him. She rushes to the studio, but Freed has left and gone to an "after hours" jam session at Henry's Hideaway. Here we get to see Freed on drums backing up Chuck singing "Little Queenie". After Freed gets off stage, Ritchie Valens (in his only film appearance) sings "Ooh My Head". Julie finds Freed and tells him about Johnny and they both go on a search for him. Freed convinces the police that he is drunk and is the one who broke the window. Instead of going to jail, Johnny goes on to become a big star and the movie returns us to the present where we also find that Johnny will be marrying Julie in the near future.
