1h 24min | Comedy, Musical | 3 March 1967 | Color, ws
Director: David Butler
Stars: Bobby Vee, Jackie DeShannon, Eddie Hodges.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061434/
Watched online; only 1h 12min, comment says it's missing 2 songs of JD; blurry, cropped to fs.
10 songs in the Soundtracks, no performers, all written by Don Crawford, his only soundtrack credit.
From IMDb trivia: "Director David Butler said about this picture: "I don't even want to talk about that. I tried to do a favor for somebody, and we made it so fast that I don't know what happened . . . They ran short of money to finish the picture. I never got paid a quarter for it.""
Butler (b. 1894) directed a LOT of musicals (this is the 25th in this quest), all the way back to Shirley Temple's early days, and others back to '27, 68 credits total. He even acted in silents: 67 credits. This is his last director, or any, credit.
I think Butler's statement gives a big hint as to why this is not worth watching. The synopsis tells you everything about the plot, except that it's the dean's son who leads the rebellion. At the point that he stages a rally (prefaced by several music acts who don't even know they're fronting for a rabble-rouser), as he's speaking onstage, his father gets up and walks toward the stage, to the silence of everyone. (Some in the crowd had booed the son.) JD, his daughter, runs out of the room assuming he'll be humiliated, which made no sense to me at the time. Later we learn he was brilliant and reached a compromise with the rebels. So they left out what might have been a good scene, likely because they didn't know how to write it. I didn't really understand what the rebels wanted, except that the son wanted to offend his father for some reason. (BTW, the son was dressed as an Ivy League square, not a hippie. According to Wikipedia, the first draft card burnings occurred 5'64.)
The music is boring. I didn't count the numbers to see if the 2 songs skipped were among the 10 in the Soundtracks; probably so. JD sang once, but it was with BV, so nothing special. She had some electronically enhanced hits in the 60s, but I don't really know what she would sound like singing a regular, acoustic song.
distr. Paramount, dir. Butler; 5-
