Stuff and Moonshine

 A few weeks back I heard John Cooper Clarke’s “Post War Glamour Girl” on radiooooo.com, and I’ve been listening to it ever since. Something about the Lancashire accent makes it feel like an R-rated version of “Albert and the Lion” or “Sam Goes to It.”

Yesterday I looked up the lyrics, and googling the opening words “Expresso (sic) Bongo” revealed this as the title of a 1959 film directed by Val Guest and starring Cliff Richard, which I’ve now watched on YouTube.

Apparently even several years before The Beatles became famous, the British music industry’s search for home-grown teen rock idols was already heated enough to prompt this sharp musical satire in which a never-lucky, ever-hopeful agent (Laurence Harvey) discovers a handsome kid (Richard) playing bongos in a Soho coffee shop. Cynical hijinks ensue.

Everybody’s accent, but especially Harvey (born Zvi Mosheh Skikne in Lithuania, according to Wikipedia)’s slides around fascinatingly depending on the situation or whether they’re singing the usually-brief musical numbers or speaking ad the speed of Hollywood Pre-code comedy. Sylvia Syms is adorable as the agent’s long-suffering girlfriend desperate to be a British Judy Garland (The first line we hear her say once she’s off the burlesque stage is “How’d you like my new voice?”). Yolanda Donland is oddly touching as an aging American star desperate to hitch her wagon to Richard’s “Bongo Herbert” but also, I think genuinely fond of the innocently heartless youth. I know everyone for decades has assumed Richards to be closeted, and I’ve no idea what his orientation is in real life, but here he really comes across as a beautiful young man who much to everyone’s confusion is genuinely aroace. Meier Tzelniker is a record-producer with an ulcer, who really wishes classical music were still where it’s at but knows which side his bread is buttered. I think Bert Kwok is a teenage passerby in the opening credits sequence.

Andrew recently acquired a copy of Just Imagine (1930), a movie he last saw in 1980, the years it is set. I can see why he's always going on about it - this movie feels like the perfect early-'Thirties movie: Singing! Dancing! Rockets! Art Deco sets! Comedy Swedish accents! Women in extremely pre-Code costumes! Props and FX scenes that would be re-used in every SF movie or serial for at least a decade afterwards! Cocktails in pill form!

As the first sound SF film, it's..... kind of a cross between Metropolis and a Marx Brothers comedy, with maybe a bit of The Bedbug. Single-O/Ole Petersen (El Brendel) is a man revived from a state of suspended animation that was somehow induced by a lightning strike in 1930.

El Brendel's Swedish-immigrant schtick ought to be annoying, but somehow, maybe through sheer goofy good humour, it works. Unfazed by his situation, he is befriended by J-21(John Garrick) and RT-42 (Frank Albertson), who want to appeal the Marriage Tribunal's refusal to let J-21 marry LN-18 (Maureen O'Sullivan). Somehow this leads to the three of them going to Mars, where the natives are friendly but all have evil twins. No, I don't get it either. There is a drinking song on a dirigible. This movie may have been filmed especially for sovay.