1h 19min | Music | June 1958 | b/w, fs
Director: Harry Foster
Stars: Julius LaRosa, Phyllis Newman, Conrad Janis.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051856/
Watched online, poor print.
13 songs in the Soundtracks, some famous: At the Hop, Short Shorts.
Actual story and acting might occupy roughly half the screen time. Conrad Janis is (Mork and) Mindy's future dad, and Phyllis Newman was also an actual actress, married to Adolph Green.
JL was a real crooner, but doesn't have a distinctive voice here. He had his own TV show for a couple of years ('55-7) and lots of other TV appearances. This is his only film credit.
The time and energy spent by this guy resisting putting out a rock song is ridiculous. Fred Astaire did some singing & dancing to rock beats. So the script called for him to resist so that we'd have to listen to all these other rock songs besting him in the charts. Early on we get Paul Anka, and his singing is clearly balladic with a rock beat (and electronic echo/doubling), so why the heck is this guy so resistant? Not until new gf songwriter PN has one of her songs arranged and performed as rock, and with her added insistence (agent CJ has spent a lot of screen time in failed persuasion) does he attempt it. So we get 1 rock number from him and 2-3 ballads.
I'm bumping this up to a 6 because of the 2 familiar actors and the backstage plot of a crooner trying to adapt, plus having a couple of actual hit tunes that I knew.
Columbia, dir. Foster; 6-
