The Girl Most Likely (1958)

In The Girl Most Likely, Jane Powell stars as Dodie, a young woman who dreams of marrying a millionaire and living "the life." Her current steady Buzz (Tommy Noonan) loves her dearly and vows to give her the high life as soon as he makes it big in real estate so Dodie accepts his proposal of marriage even though kissing him doesn't set her on a "pink cloud" like she thought it would. 

The next day she meets handsome Pete (Cliff Robertson) whom she thinks is yacht-owner and millionaire Neil Patterson Jr. He's not.... he's simply Pete, the mechanic. However, kissing him puts her on the pink cloud so when he proposes to her the next night, she accepts! 

The following day she finds herself in a greater pickle when she actually does meet the Neil Patterson Jr. (Keith Andes) and he takes her on a whirlwind trip to Mexico and proposes to her as well. She caught the millionaire she always wanted! Dodie's got three fiancées now and one big decision to make. 

The Girl Most Likely (1957) is not likely to be a title you've heard of because it is rarely shown on television and is not written up as one of the great 1950s musicals - probably because it isn't. The film starts off pleasantly, slowly climbs up the roller coaster in the middle, and then quickly takes a big dip before it ends with a slight jerk. The story is amusing, Jane Powell and Kaye Ballard (as her friend Marge) are fantastic, as are all the fellas, and the musical numbers are fun too, it is just the script that took a dive 2/3 of the way in. Keith Andes entrance as Neil Patterson Jr. could have been better and his whole segment on the yacht and in Mexico pulled the film down. Keith Andes was a great actor but this was just poor material to work with. 

Does that mean the film isn't worth watching? Certainly not! It's great fun to watch and the music, beginning with the Hi-Lo's fantastic opening song "The Girl Most Likely," compliments each scene nicely. Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane penned most of the songs while Gower Champion created some clever choreography (that it seems inspired Onna White's dances for Bye Bye Birdie in 1963). 

Jane Powell elevates the picture immensely. She brought a touch of the MGM class to the RKO studios. Also in the cast is Una Merkel and Frank Cady as Dodie's parents, Judy Nugent (from Disney's Annette serial) as Dodie's sister, and Kelly Brown, who should have become another Russ Tamblyn. 

The Girl Most Likely was filmed on location in Balboa Island, California, and at RKO's Hollywood studio at 780 Gower Street, where it was the last picture made before the studio was demolished. Filming completed in 1957, but the picture was not released until 1958 (by Universal-International) where it failed to make a dent in the box-office. Jane Powell once quipped (in a 1987 "Films in Review" profile) that Universal-International didn't release the film, they simply allowed it to "escape". Ouch! 

Film Albums: Rene Touzet Goes to the Movies (1962)

This is a fun album! It not only boasts that great album cover with the director's clapboard and all the titles listed, but the sound is fantastic - Rene Touzet mixes the musical style of Les Baxter with Peter Nero to get a uniquely Touzet sound. 

Rene Touzet was a Cuban bandleader and pianist so these covers of popular movie themes of the early 1960s definitely have a Latin rhythm to them. Can you imagine "Small World" in the style of Perez Prado's "Patricia"? That's what it does sound like. "Maria" is delightfully Spanish-sounding, "Exodus" becomes danceable, and "Moon River" was turned into a bossa nova - neato! Best of all - "Till There Was You" was transformed into a cha-cha!

Ready to listen to Touzet? Click here to hear the entire album on Youtube. 

Track Listing

Side One:

Theme from The Wonderful World of Brothers Grimm

Tender is the Night

Small World

Maria (West Side Story)

Baby Elephant Walk (Hatari)

Moon River (Breakfast at Tiffanys)

Follow Me (Mutiny on the Bounty)


Side Two: 

El Cid

My Romance (Jumbo)

Never on Sunday

Till There was You (The Music Man)

Tonight (West Side Story)

Invitation

Exodus

Top Picks: Brothers Grimm Theme, Small World, My Romance, Till There Was You, Exodus

The Impossibly Difficult Name that Movie Game

This man talked so fast, it was hard to get a non-blurry image of him - but here he is! Doesn't he look familiar? Possibly....possibly not, depending on if you saw this movie...

As always, if you are not familiar with the rules to the Impossibly Difficult Name that Movie game or the prize, click here.

Rewind Review: Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961)

"Dive! Dive!"

Film producer/director Irwin Allen let audiences dive deep into the waters of adventure with Voyage of the Bottom of the Sea, his second of three feature films that he made at 20th Century Fox studios in the early 1960s. Prior to gaining a reputation as "The Master of Disaster" because of his disaster-themed films of the 1970s, Allen tried his hand at writing, producing and directing adventure pictures. His first production for Fox - Lost World (1960) - was co-written by Charles Bennett and its success at the box-office led to the two men collaborating on another Jules Vernes-like story. They took some inspiration from "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" and created a clever story about a modern era atomic submarine 

Walter Pidgeon stars as the cigar-chomping Admiral Nelson, inventor and commander of the newly built atomic sub Seaview. The Seaview is on diving trials in the Arctic Ocean when they discover boulder-size pieces of ice crashing into the sea around them. They surface and find that temperatures are over 100 degrees and the sky is aflame. A meteor shower had pierced the Van Allen radiation belt and caused it to catch on fire. Admiral Nelson and his right-hand man, Commodore Emery (Peter Lorre) believe that the Earth can be saved from burn-up if a missile were to be shot into the Van Allen belt to create an explosion. According to their calculations, this missile can only be launched from the Mariana Islands, and so the Seaview races to the south to reach the islands before the entire world burns. 

Along for the ride is Dr. Susan Hiller (Joan Fontaine), a psychologist who is studying crews for their reaction to stress, Vice-Admiral B.J. Crawford (John Litel), and Congressman Parker (Howard McNear). The voyage progresses smoothly until doubts begin to arise in the mind of Captain Lee Crane (Robert Sterling) as to whether the admiral is making a sound and safe decision. Lt. Connors (Barbara Eden) has complete faith in the admiral but cannot explain the unusual happenings onboard the Seaview... acts of sabotage that appear to be of Admiral Nelson's doing. 

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea is a fun adventure flick packed with action. The race-against-time element makes the story exciting enough, but Allen threw in a touch of mystery with the added story of the saboteur. There are also two octopus attacks and a great mine-field sequence. 

The Van Allen radiation belts had only recently been discovered when Irwin Allen began writing Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and so much about them was still unknown. The idea of the Van Allen belt catching on fire was later proven to be impossible, but at the time, it probably sent shivers down audiences thinking about it being an actual possibility. 

Even though most of the film takes place within the confines of the Seaview, the film never feels stagebound. The sets, created by Herman Blumenthal, were very imaginative (they were later reused for the television series). The Seaview itself is an especially good design. 

Irwin Allen plunged $1.5 million dollars into the making of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and it paid off handsomely. Critics gave the picture mixed reviews but audiences loved it and the movie raked in over $8 million dollars. 

Teen singing-sensation Frankie Avalon helped to lure in the young female audience. His part was not very dramatic and, surprisingly, he didn't sing in the film but you can hear his voice crooning the opening credits. 

Also in the cast was Michael Ansara (who fell in love with and married Eden after making the movie), Regis Toomey, Henry Daniell, Skip Ward and Mark Slade. 

From the Archives: Three Guys Named Mike (1951)

Watch that coffee, stewardess!! Evidently, Jane Wyman didn't watch Fate is the Hunter otherwise she would have known not to bring coffee into the cockpit! Oh wait, that movie wasn't released until thirteen years after this film, I guess she is excused.  Three Guys Named Mike is exactly what you would expect from such a title - one woman debating about the three men in her life all named Mike. One of them is played by the always dependable Howard Keel (right). 

From the Archives is our latest series of posts where we share photos from the Silverbanks Pictures collection. Some of these may have been sold in the past, and others may still be available for purchase at our eBay store: http://stores.ebay.com/Silverbanks-Pictures 

Surf Party (1964)

We all know Frankie Avalon and Fabian made beach movies, but who would have guessed that Bobby Vinton "The Polish Prince" made a beach movie? Believe it or not, he was a pretty good actor, too.... definitely a notch above Fabian. 

Surf Party follows the adventures of three young women who travel from Arizona to Malibu in a trailer with the sole purpose of hitting the beach and learning to surf. They picked a certain stretch of Malibu coastline because the older brother of Terry (Patricia Morrow), one of the girls, lives in Malibu and is a local "surf king." They meet Len (Vinton), who works at the local surf shop, and he gives them private surfing instructions... which naturally leads to Terry falling in love with him. Trouble ensues when they discover that Terry's brother isn't the hotshot others make him out to be and instead is a sponger and a bad influence of the surfers. When Len warns Terry about him, she walks away from him which makes Len "Mr. Lonely" with a capital L. 

Surf Party was released in 1964 and, judging from its title, was hoping to capitalize on the fame of Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello's first sunshine success Beach Party. This movie should have been called Surf Tension instead because it doesn't have much of a party-feel to it and is more dramatic than most drive-in surf flicks. The acting from most of the youngsters is on the bland side but they were doing the best they could with the minimal script they were working with. Bobby Vinton's acting ability was surprisingly good. Too bad he wasn't given more film roles and better scripts. 

Most of Surf Party is made up of musical interludes from the record-charters of the day including The Astronauts, The Routers and Jackie DeShannon, who plays one of the three girls. Surf Party took only a month to film and a week to forget. It could definitely have benefited from color filming. You don't have to go out of your way to track this picture down unless you are a Bobby Vinton fan and, even then, you may be disappointed as he only sings one song in the film - If I Were an Artist.  

Film Album: Love Themes from Cleopatra (1963)

Most film albums feature a variety of themes from different films and title their album with the key theme, such as "Theme from the VIPS and other Film Hits".... but this album struck me as unique because Ferrante and Teicher decided to focus strictly on the music of Cleopatra (1963). Or so one would think with the title "Love Themes from Cleopatra" but if you read the back liner notes you will find that there are really just two songs from the 1963 Elizabeth Taylor epic ("Caesar and Cleopatra Theme" and "Anthony and Cleopatra Theme") with the remaining songs being "an assortment of romantic melodies steeped in an exotic orientation." What a lovely way to phrase this! 

The dueling pianists Ferrante and Teicher had a major hit with their version of the love theme "Anthony and Cleopatra," so it is no surprise that it headlined an album of its own. What is a surprise is that Ferrante and Teicher's names appear as composers on two songs in this album - "Sirocco" and "Sands of Time". Very interesting. 

Check out this album and, even if ancient orient themed music isn't your cup of tea, you may be surprised to find out how entertaining this album is! Listen to it in full on Youtube here. 

Track Listing

Side One:

Anthony and Cleopatra

Caravan

Moonlight on the Ganges

In a Persian Market

Sirocco

Sheherazade


Side Two: 

Caesar and Cleopatra

Samson and Delilah (not the film theme)

Devotion

Orientale

Sands of Time

Procession of Sardar

Top Picks: Sirocco, Caesar and Cleopatra, Orientale, Sands of Time