Rock Rock Rock!
Directed by Will Price
Written by Milton Subotsky; story by Subotsky and Phyllis Cole
1956/USA
Vanguard Productions
First viewing/Amazon Prime
Hey hey, my my/
Rock and roll can never die/
There’s more to the picture/
Than meets the eye./
Hey hey, my my. — Neil Young
I expect everything else about these early rock musicals to be pretty bad, but not the music. Unfortunately …
Dori (an incredibly young Tuesday Weld) and Tommy are going steady. The new girl in school has set out to catch her man with a blue strapless evening dress she will wear to the prom. Dori’s only hope is to buy an even more spectacular dress. Her father is fed up with her spending and has cut off her credit cards. So Dori embarks on a complicated and ridiculous scheme to earn the $30 she needs. The action is broken up by numerous musical interludes both from the actors and from various rock and roll acts. With Alan Freed as himself and Connie Francis as the singing voice of Tuesday Weld.
The plot is really stupid and the acting, even from Weld, is pretty bad. When DJ Alan Freed started croaking along with one of the acts I knew I was in real trouble. I had never heard of many of these bands for good reason. There are some name acts – LaVern Baker and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers – but these did not sing their hit songs. (Lymon’s rendition of “I’m Not a Juvenile Delinquent” is pretty hilarious though.) If Chuck Berry and Maybelline had not shown up the movie would have been a total loss.
Clip – My candidate for the Godfather of Rock and Roll – now you don’t have to watch the movie
