Summer Holiday
1963
Directed by Peter Yates
Written by Ronald Cass and Peter Myers
Produced by Kenneth Harper
Choreography by Herbert Ross
Music by Stanley Black
Soundtrack produced by Norrie Paramor
CAST
Cliff Richard – Don
Lauri Peters – Barbara
Melyvn Hayes – Cyril
Una Stubbs – Sandy
Teddy Green – Steve
Pamela Hart – Angie
Jeremy Bulloch – Edwin
Jacqueline Daryl – Mimsie
Madge Ryan – Stella
Lionel Murton – Jerry
Christine Lawson – Annie
Ron Moody- Orlando
David Kossof – magistrate
Wendy Barry- shepherdess
Nicholas Phipps- Wrightmore
+
Brian Locking – self (The Shadows)
Hank B. Marvin – self (The Shadows)
Brian Bennett- self (The Shadows)
Bruce Welch – self (The Shadows)
The 60s Retrospective Series
Release Dates: UK, January 1963; USA March 1964
It was exactly a year after The Young Ones and shares its status as one of the most successful ever British music movies. Do read this in conjunction with the YOUNG ONES REVIEW.
They chose a January release for Summer Holiday, as for The Young Ones, because there was nothing else to do but go to the cinema at that time of year. On 26th December 1962, Britain started its coldest modern winter on record. Snow was in lumps on the pavement until the beginning of May. It was a joy for me, as I couldn’t cycle to school and had to take the bus, which was full of girls from the neighbouring school, and established friendships for the next two or three years. Nothing could have been better for those cold evenings trudging through the snow than the summer glow of Greece on the screen.
This time around, they’d accepted they weren’t going to break America. It’s pure pop with more good songs than The Young Ones, and got out JUST before The Beatles overwhelmed everything. It had an imprint on my generation. I remember coming down on a Students Union end of year bus from Hull to London in 1968, when we were all hip. Even hippies. Five years on from the film. A sing song occupied the journey and we all knew Summer Holiday and Dancing Shoes (and The Young Ones) word for word. It was like an Abba singalong show. We probably all knew Bachelor Boy too, but no one was going to start that one.
Again for North American readers, I have to stress how major its success was.
Original 1963 LP
- The Summer Holiday LP was #1 for fourteen weeks in the UK, eventually replaced by Please Please Me, the first Beatles album. That transition was the great switch in British music.
- The film broke all previous British box office records for a British made film. It was the second highest UK box office take of 1963 after From Russia With Love.
- The film generated three number one 45 records, Summer Holiday, the double header The Next Time / Bachelor Boy and The Shadows Foot Tapper.
- The Next Time / Bachelor Boy was the first release. Three weeks at #1 in the UK. It sold 250,000 in one week. Also #1 in India, Ireland, Israel. Bachelor Boy is far more famous and was regarded as the A-side and #1 in South Africa, Denmark, Netherlands. It was released in the USA and just cracked the Top 100 at #99.
- Summer Holiday / Dancing Shoes was #1 in the UK, Australia, Canada, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Spain, Ireland. It was delayed until late February- the week of the film’s release The Next Time was still #1.
- Foot Tapper was #1 in the UK.
- There were two EPs, Hits from Summer Holiday (June 1963) and More Hits From Summer Holiday (September 1963). The only reason the first did not get to #1 on the EP chart (which Cliff and The Shadows dominated) were the high sales of the LP. Hits From Summer Holiday was #4 and in the EP Top Ten for twenty weeks.
- The 40th Anniversary CD set from 2003 has lobby cards, alternate takes and the incidental Brass Band Opening / Summer Holiday.
- Summer Holiday grossed even more than The Young Ones at the box office.
New Musical Express. March 1963. Little did they realize how appropriate ‘Congratulations’ would be four years later.
They weren’t going to change the formula too much. They tried to have Sidney J. Furie direct, but he was already engaged on The Boys (with The Shadows). Ronald Cass and Peter Myers still got to write the MGM Musical style numbers. Herbert Ross choreographed again, Stanley Black did the incidental music. However, balances had shifted. They no longer needed to go to American songwriters for pop hits. The Shadows had two new guys on board, Brian Bennett and Brian ‘Liquorice’ Locking, both accomplished musicians too. Cliff and The Shadows recorded a live album in 1962, Live At The ABC Kingston which was shelved because the film release was so close. This still had Jet Harris on bass, but Brian Bennett had arrived on drums. It emerged in 2002 finally, and is as good as recording techniques get for the era, and they were a potent force live. I’ve had the CD played to me as a drumming masterclass too.
Most importantly, The Shadows had been scoring hits with self-written material. They had also written the music for The Boys another pop movie, starring Jess Conrad and directed by Sidney J. Furie who had directed The Young Ones.
Bruce Welch: The Shadows were more involved with the musical side of the film. We wrote three instrumentals – Les Girls, Round and Round and Foot Tapper – which had originally been designed for another movie (by Jacques Tati aka M. Hulot). Shortly afterwards (that) film project fell apart and we put the number in Summer Holiday instead. It gave us our fifth and final number one. I wrote the main title theme to Cliff’s movie with Brian Bennett in exactly twenty minutes, after reading through the provisional script. It became one of my most successful copyrights, along with Bachelor Boy, and both topped the British charts and sold a million copies each. Bachelor Boy was written toorder, several weeks after the movie had been completed and the crew and cast disbanded. The film was being edited at Elstree Studio, when the producer found to his dismay, that it was too short and under-ran by several minutes … The easiest solution was to include another song on the soundtrack. (Cliff) and I started work on the song and it was completed in two hours. (Bruce Welch: Rock ‘n’ Roll – I Gave You The Best Years of My Life)
Bruce Welch also co-wrote Dancin’ Shoes with Hank Marvin, so easily the three outstanding songs in the movie. The fourth, The Next Time was an import.
Bachelor Boy is a prime example of a B-side better known than the A-side, probably because for years, no decades, tabloid newspapers loved referring to Cliff as a “Bachelor boy”. It is also a catchier song.
CASTING
Cliff was now a mechanic called Don. For his pals, Melvyn Hayes was back, now Cyril rather than Jimmy. So was Teddy Green, now Steve rather than Chris. They wanted Richard O’Sullivan to return as Edwin, but he was otherwise engaged and replaced in “the team” by Jeremy Bulloch.
Lauri Peters as Barbara took over as leading lady. As in the Young Ones they cast an actress with Broadway experience (The Sound of Music) who could dance. They still had vague hopes of American success, hewnce her American mom, and she was cast because she could sing too. As with Carole Gray, the songs were over-dubbed by Grazina Frame. They tried originally with Lauri Peters and did test recordings, but felt she didn’t have the depth and power, so returned to using Grazina Frame.
As with Carole Gray in The Young Ones, some observed, she was not the glamorous lead that might have been expected.
Inside Summer Holiday, Peter Lewis & Nigel Goodall, 2003 CD Special Edition booklet
There was a double edge for the producers. They wanted Cliff to shine above his co-star, but they also didn’t want someone so gorgeous that Cliff’s female fans feared they’d lost him (and that they couldn’t compete). Without being gratuitously unpleasant, Lauri Peters was ordinary-looking. A good girl-next-door actor.
Una Stubbs was personally chosen by Cliff Richard and Melvyn Hayes at the casting audition for the role of Sandy, one of the three stranded singers.
Una Stubbs was a vivacious young dancer with a flicked-up bob haircut whose innocent freshness matched Cliff’s own uncomplicated image.
Steve Turner, Cliff Richard: The Biography
The Shadows had come out of the shadows to be seen as characters.
Bruce Welch: Summer Holiday was a lot of fun to make because instead of being stuck in a studio, bored out of our minds with the tedium of it all, we were sent out on location and away from Britain. A change of scenery did us good. We were also featured more extensively than in The Young Ones and we seemed to spend our time getting in and out of various outfits, which included dressing up in the Greek national costume- skirts and all- for a film sequence in Athens city centre. However we were musicians, and we didn’t expect to do a lot of acting. Cliff was on call for the full eight weeks of shooting, but we were only required for twenty-one days. (Bruce Welch: Rock ‘n’ Roll – I Gave You The Best Years of My Life)
OFF TO THE CONTINENT
The idea of setting the film in Continental Europe (or as the British say “Europe”) came from producer Kenneth Harper. He was aware of the growing interest in package holidays in a younger age group, and a shift of interest to Spain (which was considered) and Greece. Until then, European travel had been focussed on a middle-aged target market … bulb fields of Holland, seven countries in six days (passport stamps in Luxembourg and Liechtenstein), castles of the Rhine, and above all chocolate box Switzerland. The youth market wanted SUN. (Italy straddled both markets). Cliff was never shy of following an Elvis model, and Elvis had just shot two films in Hawaii and was on his way to Acapulco.
The issue was that they wanted the same bright young cast as The Young Ones and getting to Greece by air was expensive.
Ron Cass (scriptwriter): If they were basically classless but without the money for expensive holidays, we needed a reason to get them abroad without losing their identity as the Young Ones. It suddenly occurred to me that if we couldn’t get them to Greece by air, why not get them there on a London bus which we could convert into living quarters.
Inside Summer Holiday, Peter Lewis & Nigel Goodall, 2003 CD Special Edition booklet
THE BUS
So, the concept this time was the road trip, but to Greece in a double-decker London bus. This was no Ken Kesey Electric Kool Aid Acid Test road trip.
The British hippie road trip in the late 60s was Istanbul, rather than Athens. Tangier and Marrakesh for the richer ones (The Rolling Stones, Graham Nash). Greece had fallen out of popularity when the Junta, or the regime of the colonels, took power in 1967 and started cutting tourists’ hair. Istanbul had other attractions.
I knew three people who did the Istanbul run separately … I couldn’t, because I had to work all summer. My mum was widowed, and when I was home from university, I was taking the room normally occupied by an EFL student, so I had to make up the lost revenue. I desperately wanted to go. The later vehicles of choice would be the VW bus or Bedford Dormobile / van. Or for one friend, a London taxi. He’d probably been inspired by Summer Holiday.
They needed three buses for the film – two were shipped to Greece in advance. You always need back ups on film sets. In a feature film there would be multiple copies of important costumes. It was not only that, they discovered that the bridges on the way were too low to get the buses under. In fact, the bus that left London never made it all the way there.
Melvyn Hayes drives. Allegedly Switzerland, clearly Greece.
Melvyn Hayes: Cliff and I had to learn to drive London double-decker buses, before going off to film Summer Holiday in Greece. They didn’t teach us for more than half an hour, so it would have been hard enough on British roads. Coming round bends on the cliffs of Greece? You can imagine! In fact, I remember driving this big bus round a bend, first day of shooting, and wondering what the insurance would cost, with Cliff, The Shadows and Una Stubbs in the seats behind me. I was heading for the cameras, as I knew we wouldn’t go over the edge that way! They told me if they waved their right arms, I was too near the wall, and if they waved their left, I was too close to the edge. Then, the director shouted that they were going to zoom in, and could I look scared? I shouted: ‘Scared? I’m terrified!’ (The Sunday Post 16 August 2016 interview)
On Cliff:
Melvyn Hayes: The ultimate professional, a lovely bloke, determined to make it big. And if they had come and said: ‘Cliff, forget the music and focus on films,’ he would have turned them down. The Young Ones was huge, despite no money being spent on it. We were just a bunch of kids having fun, and it was a smash! Summer Holiday had a few bob spent on it, but The Young Ones had that lovely rawness. What I remember is that Cliff was a singer, not an actor but, boy, he was the last one there every day, working hard on it. (The Sunday Post 16 August 2016 interview)
The plot
Like The Young Ones it has a strong high concept opening. It’s black and white with a brass band playing, cutting scenes of seaside England in continual rain. This is your summer holiday, a classic wet August Bank Holiday on the pier.
It stays black and white as it moves to the bus depot and the approaching bus gradually switches into colour.
Meet the gang ‘cos the gang’s all here, the boys to entertain you … (No, that song’s Melvyn Hayes as Gunner Beaumont in It Ain’t Half Hot Mum). Steve (Teddy Green), Cyril (Melvyn Hayes), Edwin (Jeremy Bulloch), Don (Cliff Richard)
They waste no time building up to the concept. Cliff drives the bus into the depot in pouring rain, and sets out the plot in the very first lines of the film. They can’t afford to travel abroad, but they can borrow a bus and do it up as living accommodation. We’re straight into converting the bus with sinks, beds and a shower, to the accompaniment of Seven Days To A Holiday, then thanking the assembled work force.
Seven Days To A Holiday (This is Day four)
Off we go and the title song is right in, Summer Holiday as they drive through France, Cliff in the driver’s seat, passing happy Gallic cyclists (who are The Shadows). They are soon stuck behind an open top vintage car (Oh, no! Not the vintage car! you want to shout at Elstree Studios).
Una Stubbs as Sandy, Pamela Hart as Angie, Jacqueline Daryl as Mimsie
They blast the car with their horn and make the obligatory “funny” remark about women drivers.
Cyril: Everything they say about women drivers is true!
The girls take it (reasonably enough) as male aggression, but actually the boys are warning them about a wobbly wheel. They overtake, and the result is the bus crashing into a tiny road sign and the girls’ car going into a ditch. The lads are all mechanics and offer to assess the car, which takes us to the song Let Us Take You For A Ride
Let Us Take You For A Ride
Cliff has had a mighty long career, but I doubt he’s had odder or harder lyrics to sing than this Myer-Cass composition:
The bush upon the rotor pump
Is pushed into the floater sump
It’s wearing out the grunion teeth
By bearing on the cog beneath
Which means in terms of tension swings
The seams of your suspension springs
In cyclic thirds are set apart
In very simple words, dear ladies
Your car won’t start
They persuade the girls the car has had it and offer them a lift in the bus. As chance would have it, the girls are singers on their way to an engagement in Athens. The lads think, ‘Athens? Why not?’ Then the obvious thing is to go into a dance routine off and on the bus. It ends with the vintage car exploding leaving all the lads with sooty faces. You may not have seen that joke before.
The bus drives into Paris, and we’re in a club where The Shadows are playing Les Girls. See, les is the French for the, but girls is English. What a wordplay! They continue into Round and Round and Steve (Teddy Green) joins in on bongos.
The Shadows plus Teddy Green.
At this point, Teddy Green and Una Stubbs demonstrate why they were booked as dancers by doing a dance routine on the floor. They’re both very good. I might have skipped the animal masks.
The stowaway ‘Bobby’ (Lauri Peters is a convincing boy)
Back on the bus, they hear a noise upstairs! Note the gender division in those days.
Don: I think we’d better find out who’s up there, Girls! Stay down here. Boys! Let’s take a look.
A stowaway! They discover a “boy” in a red cap named Bobby. He’s starving so they invite him to eat. It’s Sandy (Una Stubbs) who guesses his age at fourteen. They give him food.
Sandy: Have you run away from home?
Boy: I haven’t got a home.
Sandy: Did you want to ride on the bus?
then
Cyril: How old are you?
Boy: Fourteen.
So they invite him to go along with him … 1962/3 was a different era. Fourteen? A runaway? And they just take him along to Athens? Cyril may be the only sensible one:
Cyril: Maybe we can drop him off at the next police station?
Don: No. If we do that we’re sure to be tied up in French red tape for at least a month.
So they get ready for bed. The girls sleep on the upper deck. The boys on the lower deck. This is a wholesome film. None of that! The boys are surprised to find Bobby getting in a sleeping bag with all ‘his’ clothes on.
Stranger in Town. ‘Bobby’ is looking at Don with increasing admiration.
Time for a song! They’re in a park the next day and Cliff sings Stranger in Town another Myer-Cass song about a new town where Every chick looks cute and slick, which involves him singing to and dancing with a succession of lovely girls who suddenly turn into old women in black.
So ‘Bobby’ slips off to a news stand to make a phone call (very French). Bobby is calling wealthy mom, Stella in Paris.
Stella (Madge Ryan)
Mom instructs her maid to get on the other line and trace the call. I think (no guarantee) that we discover here that ‘Bobby’ is really Barbara, a famous American pop singer and not a fourteen year old boy at all. Barbara is … gasp … a girl! And not fourteen. (Sighs of relief from lawyers and indeed many of the audience).
Back at the bus, Don (can I just call him Cliff? It’s so much easier) is having a shower on the upper deck (I’m not going to discuss water pressure, or header tanks here). ‘Bobby’ goes to talk to him, and Cliff, thinking him just one of the boys is happy to talk clad only in a towel. If that. ‘Bobby’ is highly embarrassed. Cliff asks Bobby to pass him his undershorts.
Have you seen my shorts? I’m not wearing them.
On they go. A bloke in black is sitting in the middle of the road. He turns out to be The Great Orlando (Ron Moody) a mime artist. You thought we’d do a film in France without a mime artist? Marcel Marceau was not available, I guess.
Cliff / Don, The Great Orlando, Cyril.
It’s becoming clear, as with that note about the auditions for the film, that Melvyn Hayes deserves a co-starring rating. He didn’t get it. Ron Moody in the cameo as Orlando did. Orlando mimes requesting a lift, and mimes are like a London bus. You wait for ages, see one, then suddenly the road is full of them. Yes, he has a whole mime troupe hiding (silently of course) in the bushes. They will all join the bus.
Stella and Jerry
Back in Paris, a distraught Stella is with her manager (Barbara’s manager?), Jerry (Lionel Murton). They phone ahead to get the whole bus arrested for kidnapping Barbara. What a lot of fun they have being American and mispronouncing French words!
Here comes the judge …
The crew are up before the magistrate (David Kossoff). Kossoff gets major co-star billing along with Ron Moody. I think unfairly. It’s a small part. Anyway he doesn’t believe that they’re artistes … so, what d’you? We gotta show again.
David Kossoff as The Magistrate
Magistrate: You have ten minutes to get ready and either you begin your show or your jail sentence.
Backdrops, make-up, costume? Ten minutes? Luxury! This is an extended mime sequence, replacing the vaudeville sequence in The Young Ones but along the same premise of lots of costumes and backdrops, and cheesy routines. The music is Orlando’s Mime by Stanley Black, so we are spared more strained lyrics.
Una Stubbs is previewing her famed role as Aunt Sally in Worzel Gummidge by several years.
The mime sequences end with an explosion wrecking the court, just as the car got wrecked earlier. They must have got the face soot at a discount.
Back on the bus, Barbara reveals that she is female:
I’m a girl. I’m not a fourteen year old boy. Look at the frock. Live with it.
Having met a girl, what do they do? They go into Bachelor Boy. It’s a lighter more C&W version than the single. As we know, it was added after main filming, so at Elstee with a back projection landscape, a bus … and as they couldn’t assemble the original cast (without additional fees?) The Shadows turn up with Cliff. Why? They’ve never been part of the bus troupe before. Melvyn Hayes is there too. It feels shoehorned in.
Bachelor Boy: Cliff, Brian Bennett, Bruce Welch, Hank B. Marvin
The bus heads into Switzerland, pursued by Stella and Jerry. The Americans overtake and remove a sign saying that a mountain road is unsuitable for heavy vehicles so the bus heads up it … this is Melvyn Hayes nightmare bit and is obviously filmed in Greece, not Switzerland.
Greece or Switzerland? Supposed to be Switzerland … but …
It looks genuinely hairy. I was once on a double decker bus on a steep hill in Bournemouth, fully-laden in rush hour, pouring rain, when it started to slide slowly backwards. These buses were not designed for steep hills. Everyone has to get out to lighten the bus so it can climb the road. We had to do that.
You’re on the bus, or you’re off the bus
They find a St Bernard dog which Cyril has to carry to the bus. By this point, Steve’s habit of addressing all and sundry as “Charlie” is beginning to grate. The dog is also Charlie.
By a lake in Greece Switzerland, Cliff sings another Myers-Cass song to Barbara (Lauri Peters) called A Swinging Affair. He introduces it:
Don: I have nothing against love. But it ought to be easy … and casual.
I found this song misguided for Cliff. It’s pastiche Rat-Pack Frank Sinatra, even down to Ring-a-ding-ding line. Cliff said on The Young Ones that he was hoping to broaden his appeal. True, the religious and asexual image had not cemented by the end of 1962, but Cliff was always fresh and wholesome in his appeal from about five minutes after Move It. This was a seedy old swingers song. It simply doesn’t suit him.
We won’t be tied; we’ll be as free as air …
… And we’ll have fun, others time to spare
For we’ll all enjoy our swingin’ affair
We’ll enjoy the magic
But we won’t fall in love
Ours will be a ring-ding-ding
Just for kicks we two will have our fling
A Swinging Affair
It was exacerbated by Lauri Peters dancing around sitting on men’s laps – it wasn’t her image either. A low point musically too. Grazina Frame sings behind her in an American accent. They knew that was going to happen because they avoid close ups on mouth movements.
Off to a chocolate box village. Stella and Jerry are plotting the rescue … but not until they have a couple of hundred photographers to witness it.
On the bus, Barbara has an idea:
Barbara: We all owe the boys so much, next time we come to a town, why don’t we take them out for a huge feast!
Sandy: With dancing and champagne!
Could this possibly be the cue for a song? We’ve passed an Osterreich sign and hear an oompha band in 3:4 time, so they stop at a restaurant and … we’re into a long dance piece, Really Waltzing, heavily featuring Teddy Green. Some blokes in lederhosen join in.
Really Waltzing
Cliff / Don takes Barbara on one side into a dark garden to remind her of what he said about love in Swinging Affair. He doesn’t want to be free any more, I am in love, he confesses.
Cue: All at Once. Such a lost opportunity. Cliff does great ballads. It’s his strong point. But instead of getting pop writers, it’s an old-fashioned Myers-Cass dirge. They interrupt the song. This is NOT how we expect to see Cliff. It would have been thrilling in 1963.
Don: How do you feel?
Barbara: Just for the record, I’ve loved you since I was a little boy!
While all this is going on, Stella and Jerry arrive outside and creep onto the bus to plant a something. It’s worth a fortune! Jerry says. Now they have to inform Yugoslav border guards that a valuable diamond pendant is missing.
Funny foreign soldiers
The Yugoslavs stop them and all them out in spite of protests from Cyril (I’m British!) and a wry comment from Don, The natives are restless. Though Tito was in control, and disaffected from Russia, Yugoslavia was still exotically communist in 1962, so the guards are comic foreigners.
Melvyn Hayes gets searched. He then searches the guard, finds cigarettes and they share one. I admit I laughed.
They find the pendant. Barbara rushes forward:
Barbara: It’s mine. Look! It’s got my picture in it!
It’s handed back and the guards turn out to be a friendly bunch and wave them off.
Stella and Jerry’s Ford Thunderbird passes them yet again.
Don: Did you see that?
Cyril: Yes, everybody seems to be driving Thunderbirds over here.
Don: I’m not sure they do. It looks like the same one to me!
Stella and Jerry repeat the road sign trick to divert them onto a minor road. The bus is filthy with dust. They stop in the middle of nowhere for tea and sandwiches, but need bread. They see a shepherdess (Wendy Barry) in a field of olive trees (what with it being filmed in Greece) and decide to ask for help. Fortunately they have a “Yugoslavian” phrase book (that would be Serbo-Croat.)
The shepherdess is remarkably grubby and unwashed, what with not being English. The shepherdess runs away to a village and they chase her into a haystack. They can’t understand why she should be scared of four foreign men chasing her and pushing her into the hay. Pidgin English might be the answer!
Don: Don’t be afraid. We no hurtee.
She bursts into tears, so Cyril suggests that Don sings something friendly. Dancing Shoes! It’s instant 1963 youth club for me and could have been a worthy A-side. They twist and gyrate in front of her. Finally she starts twistin’ too.
Twisting to Dancing Shoes. I too have twisted to Dancing Shoes in 1963.
You must have heard of Little Bo-Peep
She was the one with all the sheep …
The song works better without the shepherdess link, actually.
Edwin has the phrase book and tells him the word for ‘bread.’ Don says it to her. She is thrilled. They find themselves pulled into the village. Everybody is hugging and congratulating Don, kissing him on the cheek. Being peasants the locals carry rifles and are festooned with gunbelts.
Cliff with Yugoslav dad and shepherdess
Edwin finds the phrase book. Cliff wasn’t saying BREAD to her, he was saying BRIDE! They think he has proposed marriage.
Cliff with blushing bride (Wendy Barry)
The dance is to Yugoslav Wedding. I fear they’re confusing Cossacks and Yugoslavs here. It’s a vigorous sequence, though the peasants then produce whips and one crack reduces poor Cyril to his undershorts. They do a whip dance which Teddy Green joins. It is the most athletic and dramatic dancing in the film. If the story were set in the 19th century you’d admire it. But it was filmed in 1962 and is pretty offensive to Yugoslavs.
Cyril has a knife and for some unknown reason decides to chop off one of the shepherdess’s pigtails while Don dons a Cossack waistcoat.
The lads are under the table at this Yugoslav feast.
The lads manage to find some “Yugoslav hats and goatskin waistcoats to lose themselves in the melée and hide under the festive table. They manage to knock heads together, and escape pursued by gunfire.
Exit, pursued by rifle bullets. ‘I’ll see you …’ was Don’s parting line to his bread bride.
Fiery people, these foreigners! A speeded up sequence gets the bus into Greece. They stop in the centre and find photographers running towards them.
In Athens at last
Wrightmore (Nicholas Phipps), the British consul pushes through the crowd to greet them. The London bus had caused great press interest across the Continent. He hands them the Daily Mail. They read about themselves and the girls are thrilled to be mentioned as a singing trio. This is is odd. All the way through, I assumed they’d end up doing a song as backing vocalists to Cliff. But they never do. They never do a performance on their own either. Why not? If not, why have a plot with them as singers? Maybe it would be competition?
I’d say these are the four who should be listed as the stars: Lauri Peters, Cliff Richard, Melvyn Hayes, Una Stubbs.
They turn to page 3 … the headline? Barbara Winters Still Missing. Nationwide search for American singer continues. Big photo of Barbara. And there’s another thing. Yes, she duets with Cliff, but if she was a major American star, why do we never get to see her in a starring role as a singer? The same reason as the three girls … diverting attention?
(If it’s in several countries, why is it ‘Nation wide’?)
Enter Stella and Jerry with Greek police in shiny helmets, seeking their arrest for kidnapping. A million dollars worth of publicity! Stella whispers to Barbara. Don is led off by the police.
Barbara: I knew nothing about this!
Don: Oh, sure. Next time you want to travel, take a plane!
They all check into a hotel to await trial. Ah, we see the Acropolis at last!
The Next Time
Cliff sings The Next Time in the classic locations (in both senses of classic). A friend and colleague had an apartment directly facing the Acropolis. I remember sitting there on the balcony one evening, admiring the view. He said he’d never been there. He just liked looking at it.
How can I fall in love the next time
When I’m still so very much in love with you.
That would be about Barbara, then.
Wrightmore arrives at the hotel. He tells them Stella is staying there and holding a press conference in the ballroom at six. Don finds out where Barbara’s room is. He speaks through the door:
Don: I’m in love with you. I realize it was just a publicity stunt. I don’t know why you didn’t go the whole hog and marry me!
Barbara: Yes! I’d love to!
Snog through the door fanlight! She is locked in. The press conference begins while the others rescue Barbara from the locked room. Cyril climbs through the fanlight and she climbs out using him as a footstool. Ouch! In stiletto heels.
Stella and Jerry are starting the press conference in front of a huge blow up photo of Stella and Barbara. Cliff arrives and sings Big News. Written by Cliff, too.
Big News
Barbara gets there and announces she loves him. At the same time a reporter asks if it’s true that their new company will be taking two hundred London buses to the Riviera next year … Double Decker Tours. Stella realizes he will be rich and gives her blessing.
The Shadows in Syntagma Square (outside Hellenic Parliament)
The Shadows are dressed up in Greek costumes and start a Greek-inflected version of Summer Holiday complete with Shadows walk, which breaks into the real tune for the credits. This is NOT the single or LP mix, it’s Cliff, Grazina Frame and full chorus.
Overall
A lot happens. I take the whole Bachelor Boy story – that they needed more running time – as nonsense. What difference did a couple of minutes make? I’d guess they watched it and decided there was too much Myers-Cass forced retro pastiche musical, and not enough popular music for a younger audience. I’d say the addition of Bachelor Boy was redressing balance rather than extending time. It is so catchy as to become annoying after over-exposure, but it is incredibly catchy. If they simply needed two more minutes, I’m sure they would have had plenty of bus travel footage let alone outtakes.
They put a lot of effort into the big musical dance numbers … Really Waltzing and Yugoslav Wedding are highlights. A Swinging Affair is the nadir of the dance numbers. Teddy Green and Carole Gray were more impressive as dancers in The Young Ones than Teddy Green and Lauri Peters in Summer Holiday. Una Stubbs should have been cast as the female lead, clearly.
The whole Yugoslav section is offensive to someone like me who has done teacher training courses with Serbian, Croatian and Slovenian teachers. (The former) Yugoslavia is getting a racist and stereotyped very bad rap here.
The “we’ll have three Americans in the cast and we’ll crack America” ploy wasn’t going anywhere and they should have known that. Stella the stage mom, and Jerry the slimy publicist are hardly roles for American youth culture to identify with. It opened a full fourteen months later in the USA. It had been planned for November 1963, but pulled because of the Kennedy assassination. With The Young Ones, the Bay of Pigs had been the US problem. JFK was not lucky for their productions.
I’d echo Melvyn Hayes … The Young Ones sparkle isn’t quite recaptured. I’m not sure at all about the Mime Artistes Show. A touch too cheesy.
But it was huge in 1963. Nostalgia works. It was that blaze of bright sun and vibrant colour during the coldest British winter on record. A tonic.
Soundtrack
My copy. Bought 25 February 1963. Also the last Cliff Richard single I bought until the mid-70s revival … I bought We Don’t Talk Anymore.
The Next Time, Summer Holiday, Dancing Shoes, Les Girls and Round and Round were recorded before main filming in May 1962. Norrie Paramor played organ on The Next Time with The Shadows.
The traditional stage musical material was recorded in two sessions, August 1962 and November 1962.
As an afterthought, Bachelor Boy and Big News were both recorded in November. Big News was written by Cliff Richard and his road manager, Mike Conlin, in a few minutes in a washroom during a break at Elstree Studios.
Foot Tapper wasn’t recorded until 10 December 1962- just weeks before the film opened.
The 2003 CD reissue notes confirm what I suspected about The Young Ones. There was a film version of some tracks, and a separate LP / 45 version.
The 40th Anniversary CD edition from 2003:
Tracks 1-16 are the original album
Hits From Summer Holiday was held back until June, and recycled both singles:
Side one: Summer Holiday / The Next Time
Side two: Bachelor Boy / Dancing Shoes
That was the one to get. In September, EMI released More Hits From Summer Holiday. But they weren’t hits. They were the other stuff:
Side one: Seven Days To A Holiday / Stranger In Town
Side two: Really Waltzing / All At Once.
It didn’t chart.
Foot Tapping With The Shadows EP had all three tracks from the film, plus Atlantis and I Want You To Want Me. It was held back till September 1963, and reached #7 on the EP chart. It was on the EP chart for nine weeks.
There is a limited edition 2-LP “Full soundtrack” on the Elstree label, with the sound stage recordings from the film … the ones actually used differed from the LP release, and all the incidental music. Only 80 copies were pressed for cast and crew involved with the film. £800 to £1000 if you can find one.
POP EXPLOITATION FILMS
The Young Ones (1962)
Play It Cool (1962)
Summer Holiday (1963)
What A Crazy World (1963)
Live It Up! (1963)
Just For You (1964)
Wonderful Life (1964)
A Hard Day’s Night (1964)
Gonks Go Beat (1965)
Help! (1965)
THE 60s REVISITED REVIEWS …
A Taste of Honey (1961)
The Young Ones (1962
Some People (1962)
Play It Cool (1962)
Summer Holiday (1963)
Sparrows Can’t Sing (1963)
The Small World of Sammy Lee (1963)
Tom Jones (1963)
The Fast Lady (1963)
What A Crazy World (1963)
Live It Up! (1963)
Just For You (1964)
The Chalk Garden (1964)
Wonderful Life (1964)
A Hard Day’s Night (1964)
The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1965)
Gonks Go Beat (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
The Ipcress File (1965)
Darling (1965)
The Knack (1965)
Help! (1965)
Doctor Zhivago (1965)
Morgan – A Suitable Case For Treatment (1966)
Alfie (1966)
Harper (aka The Moving Target) 1966
The Chase (1966)
The Trap (1966)
Georgy Girl (1966)
Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
Nevada Smith (1966)
Modesty Blaise (1966)
The Family Way (1967)
Privilege (1967)
Blow-up (1967)
Accident (1967)
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
I’ll Never Forget What’s ‘Is Name (1967)
How I Won The War (1967)
Far From The Madding Crowd (1967)
Poor Cow (1967)
Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush (1968)
The Magus (1968)
If …. (1968)
Girl On A Motorcycle (1968)
The Bofors Gun (1968)
The Devil Rides Out (aka The Devil’s Bride) (1968)
Work Is A Four Letter Word (1968)
The Party (1968)
Petulia (1968)
Barbarella (1968)
The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)
Bullitt (1968)
Deadfall (1968)
The Swimmer (1968)
Theorem (Teorema) (1968)
Medium Cool (1969)
The Magic Christian (1969)
The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (1970)
Little Fauss and Big Halsy (1970)
Performance (1970)
kyonggimike
The Les Girls club may have been named after the 1957 Cole Porter-Gene Kelly musical film.
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Thanks – that hadn’t struck me, but of course in the same era you had Les Cousins (always known as Lez) and Le Kilt.
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