Beach Party
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
William Asher
Bob Cummings
Dorothy Malone
Frankie Avalon
Annette Funicello
Harvey Lembeck
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
Frankie takes his girl friend, Dolores, to a beach house in southern California for a surfing vacation. Upon arrival, he is dismayed to find a crowd of their friends there, invited by Dolores. From an adjoining house, their beach antics are observed by anthropology professor Sutwell and his secretary, Marianne, who are doing research on the sex play of teenagers. Meanwhile, Frankie has become angry with Dolores and plans to avenge himself by feigning a romance with voluptuous Ava, a waitress at the local beer and rock and roll establishment. When the professor rescues Dolores from the unwelcome attentions of Eric Von Zipper, a leather-jacketed motorcyclist, they become friends, and Frankie becomes jealous. As the apparent romances develop, the teenagers discover the professor's research papers and realize what he is doing. At the beer hall, Professor Sutwell is confronted by the irate youngsters and the cyclists. A pie-throwing brawl ensues which finally clears up the misunderstandings; Frankie and Dolores are reconciled, while Professor Sutwell realizes that Marianne is the woman for him.
Director
William Asher
Cast
Bob Cummings
Dorothy Malone
Frankie Avalon
Annette Funicello
Harvey Lembeck
Jody Mccrea
Morey Amsterdam
John Ashley
Eva Six
Dick Dale And The Del Tones
David Landfield
Dolores Wells
Valora Noland
Bobby Payne
Duane Ament
Andy Romano
John Macchia
Jerry Brutsche
Bob Harvey
Linda Rogers
Alberta Nelson
Candy Johnson
Roger Bacon
Yvette Vickers
Sharon Garrett
Mickey Dora
John Fain
Pam Colbert
Donna Russell
Mike Nader
Ed Garner
Laura Lynn
Susan Yardley
Brian Wilson
Lorie Summers
Meredith Macrae
Luree Nicholson
Paulette Rapp
Marlo Baers
John Beach
Bill Slosky
Brent Battin
Roger Christian
Gary Usher
Bill Parker
Vincent Price
Crew
Robert Agnew
Samuel Z. Arkoff
Samuel Z. Arkoff
Les Baxter
Al Berkson
Al Bird
Lew Borzage
Karl Brainard
Butler-glouner Inc.
Butler-glouner Inc.
Bartlett A. Carré
Jack Cash
John Cengia
Roger Christian
Marjorie Corso
Bill Creamer
Carl Daniels
Robert Dillon
Russ Faith
Chet Fowler
Ross Hahn
Daniel Haller
Daniel Haller
Guy Hemric
Cliff Hutchinson
Richard Kelley
Jeanne Lippman
Bob Marcucci
Joe Michelski
Lawrence Milton
Eve Newman
James H. Nicholson
James H. Nicholson
Elmer Norman
Kay Norton
Clark Paylow
Homer Powell
Scotty Rackin
Harry Reif
Dick Rubin
Don Rush
Lou Rusoff
Lou Rusoff
Al Simms
Bob Simpson
Jerry Styner
Carlie Taylor
Gary Usher
Tom Welsh
Roger White
Photo Collections
Videos
Movie Clip
Trailer
Hosted Intro
Film Details
Technical Specs
Articles
Beach Party
Beach Party opens as Frankie (Frankie Avalon) drives his girlfriend Dolores (Annette Funicello) - in a beat-up jalopy loaded down with surfboards - to a beachhouse on the Southern California coast. Frankie's plan to have some private time with Dolores is spoiled, though; she has already invited dozens of their friends to meet them at the getaway. At a nearby beachhouse, anthropologist R.O Sutwell (Robert "Bob" Cummings, complete with beard) has set up a telescope and listening device designed to observe the language and mating habits of the beach-going teenagers. Prof. Sutwell is writing a book called The Behavior Pattern of the Young Adult and Its Relation to Primitive Tribes, and is accompanied by his romantically frustrated colleague Marianne (Dorothy Malone). Away from the beach, the main hangout is Big Daddy's, a beatnik club presided over by Cappy (Morey Amsterdam) in the absence of the mysterious Big Daddy. Amidst much surfing, dancing, and merrymaking, the principals become entangled in a variety of romantic misunderstandings: Frankie attempts to make Dolores jealous, for example, by flirting with Ava (Eva Six), a waitress at Big Daddy's, while Dolores, in turn, considers taking up with Prof. Sutwell (or "Old Pig Bristles" as he is called by the kids). For his part, Sutwell decides that it may be better - and more enlightening - to be a participant in this youth culture rather than just an observer. Into this diverse mix of characters drives a motorcycle gang calling themselves The Rats and Mice, led by the pompous Brando-wannabe Eric Von Zipper (Harvey Lembeck).
Lucas notes that the plot of Beach Party is remarkable for its "...enlightened sense of fair play: it not only (lightly) criticizes juvenile irresponsibility, but also the critics of juvenile irresponsibility, who are depicted as well-meaning people who, in getting older, have grown so alienated from life that they can only understand the concept of fun by abstracting it into cold, dead, analytical text."
Screenwriter Lou Rusoff had been a mainstay at AIP, having written several of Roger Corman's monster pictures for the studio (including Day the World Ended [1955] and The She-Creature [1956]) as well as a number of films featuring less wholesome groups of kids (such as Runaway Daughters [1956], Motorcycle Gang [1957], and Hot Rod Gang [1958]). In 1959, Rusoff wrote Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow, a slight little genre-bending film that sent up the earlier monster and dragster films, and featured a group of fun-loving "teenagers" that appeared to be more in their mid 20s. It is fairly easy to see this movie as a bridge between the AIP films of the 1950s and those of the later Beach Movie Cycle. In the early 1960s AIP had great success in tackling a more prestigious horror vehicle with their Poe adaptations, adding color, widescreen and a bona fide star (Vincent Price) to their standard economical filming methods. Writer and co-producer Rusoff took the gang from Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow, and adding color, widescreen and the then-current fad for the surfing lifestyle, had the makings of a new moneymaking formula. Rusoff's script, though, originally had more freewheeling references to sex and drugs. Director William Asher eliminated those elements because (as he told Mark Thomas McGee in Fast and Furious: The Story of American International Pictures) he wanted to show "kids not in trouble. These films are fantasies." Perhaps to drive home the point that these teenagers were indeed more clean-cut than the kids of earlier Hot Rod Gang days, AIP borrowed Annette Funicello from Walt Disney Studios to play the teen female lead. (Reputedly, Walt asked that the filmmakers cover up more of Annette's skin for the sake of her wholesome Mickey Mouse Club image).
Beach Party scores major points in credibility by presenting Dick Dale, the King of Surf Guitar himself, as the main musical presence. His two songs, "Swingin' and a-Surfin" and "Secret Surfing Spot", were penned by Gary Usher (soon to be a powerhouse writing and producing fixture on the L.A. studio scene) and local deejay and songwriter Roger Christian. Both Usher and Christian had already worked with Brian Wilson, leader of the Beach Boys and the chief architect of the "California Sound" then hitting national airplay in landlocked America. (Usher and Christian can be spotted in the background of beach scenes in the film as well).
Beach Party clicked with its intended audience and was a major box-office hit. Older critics weren't so impressed: the critic for The New York Times wrote, "Doom-Daddle, doom-daddle, doom-daddle. That's the swingin' beat, the dialogue flavor and just about the sum and substance of Beach Party." He goes on to say that "the early scenes are downright yummy," and that the film starts as "harmless, eye-filling and disarming....The real trouble is that almost the entire cast emerges as the dullest bunch ever...the co-producers, James H. Nicholson and Lou Rusoff, have kept the proceedings flat, contrived and neatly and serenely suggestive." This reviewer trashes any of his coolness factor, though, when he remarks that "a clanging group called Dick Dale and the Del-Tones look like praying mantises." Variety wrote that Beach Party "...has a kind of direct, simple-minded cheeriness," and that Bob Cummings "provides the picture with what real comic substance it has."
As mentioned, the Beach Party movies reflect (and comment on) a variety of popular culture references, and certainly this initial outing offers 60s Pop junkies an eyeful. In addition to the aforementioned appearances, sharp-eyed viewers can spot cult favorites like Yvette Vickers, Bobbi Shaw, Meredith MacRae, and Candy Johnson among the cast. In a hint of things to come for the series, AIP regular Vincent Price also makes a memorable cameo.
Beach Party also sets up visual and editing patterns for the rest of the series. Gary Morris writes in Bright Lights Film Journal that the Beach Party films "...are a patchwork quilt of motifs and formal strategies, alternatively distanced and in-your-face, heavy with subplots and random songs, cartoon characterizations, slow-motion and speeded-up visual effects, and even blatant audience acknowledgements, all of which show that structurally the films are practically anarchic."
Director William Asher came from a TV directing career, where he worked on dozens of series including the powerhouse I Love Lucy. Among his few feature film credits is the low-key and thoughtful (and unabashedly right-wing) science-fiction drama The 27th Day (1957) from Columbia Pictures. Following his stint directing five Beach movies at AIP, Asher returned to television, where he was creative consultant and primary director of the long-running series Bewitched, starring his wife Elizabeth Montgomery.
Executive Producer: Samuel Z. Arkoff
Producer: James H. Nicholson, Lou Rusoff
Director: William Asher
Screenplay: Lou Rusoff
Cinematography: Kay Norton
Film Editing: Homer Powell
Music: Les Baxter
Art Direction: Daniel Haller
Costume Design: Marjorie Corso
Cast: Robert Cummings (Prof. Bob Orwell Sutwell), Dorothy Malone (Marianne), Frankie Avalon (Frankie), Annette Funicello (Dolores / DeeDee), Morey Amsterdam (Cappy), Harvey Lembeck (Eric Von Zipper), John Ashley (Ken), Jody McCrea (Deadhead), Dick Dale (Himself).
C-101m.
by John M. Miller
Beach Party
TCM Remembers - Samuel Arkoff
Producer Samuel Z. Arkoff, who died September 16 at the age of 83, made a dent in film history by co-founding and running the legendary American International Pictures (AIP), a key player in the drive-in and exploitation markets during the 50s, 60s and 70s. Arkoff was born in Iowa on June 12, 1918, served as a military crypographer during World War Two and ended up as an entertainment lawyer. Life changed in 1954 when he and former theatre owner James H. Nicholson founded American Releasing Corporation, a name changed two years later to American International. Their first film was The Fast and the Furious (1954), a road race melodrama starring John Ireland as a fugitive from justice, which cost $75,000 and earned double that amount giving the company a healthy start. The film also kicked off the career of screenwriter Roger Corman who would later become a key B-movie producer and director himself, and provided the title for one of 2001's biggest hits of the summer.
AIP tapped into a previously nonexistant teenage market, the same one fed by rock 'n' roll but not well served by the large Hollywood studios. Arkoff and Nicholson split duties with the colorful, cigar-chomping Arkoff doing the business end and Nicholson handling the creative end (including those unforgettable titles). AIP films included such titles as Attack of the Crab Monsters(1957), I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957), Beach Blanket Bingo (1965), Black Caesar (1973) and close to 200 others. AIP also imported European and Asian films of commercial potential such as Mario Bava's moody masterworks (Black Sunday, 1960) but also pure schlock like Jess Franco's Attack of the Robots (1966) or the giant monster Gamera series from Japan. These films were usually money makers because of their low costs and built-in market and remain entertaining to this day. AIP also gave a start to then-struggling actors and directors like Robert De Niro (Bloody Mama 1970), Peter Fonda (The Trip 1967), Martin Scorsese (Boxcar Bertha 1972), Jack Nicholson (The Terror (1963), Brian De Palma (Sisters 1973) and Francis Ford Coppola (Dementia 13 1963). By the 1970s the major studios had moved into the market and AIP itself was making more expensive films like The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977) and The Amityville Horror (1979). That combination put AIP in financial trouble; they were sold to Filmways in 1979. Arkoff founded his own Arkoff International Pictures but it made few films; Larry Cohen's Q (1982) was one of the few notable titles.
By Lang Thompson
PAULINE KAEL 1919-2001
Pauline Kael, who died September 3rd at the age of 82, was one of the handful of film critics who made a noticable impact on the way we view movies. Her mix of personal feelings with more abstract aesthetics inspired numerous other critics (sometimes called "Paulettes") and in a few cases even made big hits of movies like Bonnie and Clyde (1967). She claimed to never see a movie more than once or to change her mind about it later. Several collections of her work are available, most with mildly risque titles like I Lost It at the Movies, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Going Steady.
Kael was born June 19, 1919 in Petaluma, California but moved with her family to San Francisco during her teens. There she majored in philosophy at University of California at Berkeley though she didn't graduate (the school later gave her an honorary degree). That's when she started to develop a serious interest in movies. In addition to the usual writer's assortment of jobs (seamstress, cook, retail clerk) she started writing about film in 1953; her first review was of Charlie Chaplin's Limelight which she disliked. She wrote for several small publications and did a radio show on the groundbreaking network KPFA before finally landing a job at the high-profile McCall's only to be fired shortly after she panned The Sound of Music (1965) (which she called The Sound of Money). During this period she was also managing and programming Berkeley Cinema Guild Theatres (one of the country's earliest repertoire cinemas despite being basically small rooms above a laundry), and was briefly married to avant-garde filmmaker James Broughton.
The turning point came in 1965 when I Lost It at the Movies not only attracted major critical attention but became a strong seller in book stores. Two years later legendary editor William Shawn hired Kael as film critic for The New Yorker, completing her jump into the limelight. Kael never shied away from controversy as two other events proved. In the early Sixties she engaged in an infamous and surprisingly bitter debate with critic Andrew Sarris among others about the merits of auteurism, the French-born philosophy that believes the director is the chief creative person behind any film. Kael's anti-intellectual streak came forward but since auteurism wasn't meant to be a genuinely rigorous theory (such attempts came later in the 70s) this was a sort of Brer Rabbit vs. tar baby fight that Kael could never win. The other notorious controversy occured in 1971 with her essay "Raising Kane" which was intended to show that screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz deserved as much if not more credit for Citizen Kane (1941) than Orson Welles. While Mankiewicz's contribution had clearly been underappreciated, most of Kael's conclusions and even some of her factual basis have been disproven though she never bothered to revise the essay.
In 1979, Kael made a detour to Hollywood by the urging of Warren Beatty. She was meant to be an "executive consultant" at Paramount but actually making movies is quite a different matter than writing about them so Kael lasted only five months. She went back to The New Yorker, eventually retiring in 1991 partly as a result of Parkinson's Syndrome. She still kept up with movies though, loving such smaller films as Vanya on 42nd Street and actors like Jim Carrey (who "has practically kept movies alive the past few years" she said in 1998).
By Lang Thompson
Troy Donahue 1936-2001
Troy Donahue died September 2nd at the age of 65. He was a fixture in movies during the 1950s, playing an assortment of heartthrobs and borderline tough guys. Donahue was actually Merle Johnson Jr, born in New York City on Jan 27, 1936. He went to Columbia University and started acting in small theatrical roles which eventually
led to film appearances, the earliest ones uncredited. His first was Man Afraid (1957) but Donahue also made brief TV appearances at the time on shows like Wagon Train. He signed with Warner Brothers in 1959 and immediately jumped to stardom in films like A Summer Place and Imitation of Life (both 1959). He was busy in a variety of films during this periods - notably Parrish (1961) and Rome Adventure (1962) - but also starred in the TV series Surfside 6 (1960) and Hawaiian Eye (1962 and predating Hawaii Five-O by several years). Donahue's career declined as the Sixties became more turbulent but he still made notable appearances in The Godfather Part II (1974), playing a character with Donahue's own real name, and Monte Hellman's Cockfighter (1974). Most of Donahue's later films were direct-to-video efforts like Nudity Required and Omega Cop but trash aesthete John Waters, a huge fan, used him for Cry-Baby (1990).
By Lang Thompson
TCM REMEMBERS CARROLL O'CONNOR 1924-2001
Carroll O'Connor - who died June 21st at the age of 76 - will be best remembered for portraying Archie Bunker on TV's All in the Family but his career actually was much more extensive. Born in New York on August 2nd, 1924, O'Connor served in the merchant marine during World War II before attending the University of Montana where he worked on the school newspaper. Before graduating, he followed his brother to another college in Ireland (he would later get a Masters in speech from Montana). It was in Ireland that O'Connor started acting in several local productions. He returned to the U.S. for his Broadway debut in 1958 and shortly after started to appear on numerous TV shows like The Untouchables and Naked City. His first film was Parrish (1961) though he eventually acted in over a dozen films during the Sixties including Cleopatra (1963), Marlowe (1969), Hawaii (1966) and Point Blank (1967). O'Connor even auditioned for the part of the Skipper in the TV series, Gilligan's Island, but it was his role as Archie Bunker in a 1971 sitcom that made him a star. All in the Family was an American version of the British sitcom Till Death Do Us Part that met some initial resistance (ABC rejected the first two pilots) but quickly captivated American audiences and became the country's top-rated TV show. Archie became such an icon that his chair is now preserved in the Smithsonian. The series lasted until 1979 and brought O'Connor four Emmys, even leading to a four-year spinoff Archie Bunker's Place starring O'Connor. (It also produced one of TV's oddest spinoffs in1994's 704 Hauser about a multi-racial family living in Archie Bunker's old house. It had no cast members from the earlier series and only lasted six episodes.) In 1988, O'Connor took the role of a Southern sheriff in a TV series based on the movie In the Heat of the Night and found himself in another hit, this one lasting until 1995. He also occasionally played Helen Hunt's father on Mad About You. By all accounts, O'Connor was nothing like Archie Bunker; in fact, O'Connor was an active anti-drug crusader, partly the result of his son's drug-related suicide.
By Lang Thompson
TCM REMEMBERS JACK LEMMON 1925-2001
Whether playing a cross-dressing jazz bassist or a bickering roommate, Lemmon has kept his fans in stitches for fifty years. But beneath that comedian's facade, the actor had a very serious side, which occasionally surfaced in such films as Days of Wine and Roses (1962) or Costa-Gavras' political thriller Missing (1982). Lemmon was truly a one-of-a-kind actor and his track record for acclaimed performances is truly remarkable: 8 Oscar nominations (he won Best Supporting Actor for Mister Roberts (1955) and Best Actor for Save the Tiger (1973), a Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute, 8 British Academy Award nominations, 4 Emmy Award nominations, numerous Golden Globe nominations, a two-time Best Actor winner at the Cannes Film Festival, the list goes on and on.
Lemmon entered the world in a completely novel fashion; he was born prematurely in an elevator in Boston in 1925. The son of a doughnut manufacturer, Lemmon later attended Harvard University but was bitten by the acting bug and left the prestigious college for Broadway. Between theatrical gigs, he played piano accompaniment to silent films shown at the Knickerbocker Music Hall in New York. Later, Lemmon claimed that he learned more about comic technique by watching these Chaplin, Keaton and Harold Lloyd two-reelers than acting school could have ever taught him.
From Broadway and early TV appearances to Hollywood, Lemmon moved West to make his screen debut in It Should Happen to You (1954), opposite Judy Holliday in a variation of her 'dumb blonde' persona that had won her an Oscar for Born Yesterday (1952). In It Should Happen to You, Holliday plays a struggling actress who soon wins fast fame as the product of promotion. Lemmon plays her levelheaded boyfriend but finds himself on the sidelines when the suave and sophisticated Peter Lawford appears on the scene. It Should Happen to You, directed by George Cukor, was a popular success and Lemmon and Holliday were quickly teamed again in Phffft! (1954), another lightweight romantic comedy. A year later, Lemmon hit the major leagues when he supported Hollywood heavyweights Henry Fonda, James Cagney and William Powell in Mister Roberts (1955). As Ensign Pulver, a deckhand who avoids work whenever possible, Lemmon won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar¿.
Onscreen, Lemmon's characters often found that they were the wrong men for their jobs. In Cowboy (1958), Lemmon plays a city slicker venturing out on the wild frontier. His romantic visions of the West are soon changed by the hard-living, hard-drinking reality. Cowboy is based on the autobiography of Frank Harris, and, like the author, Lemmon found himself adapting to the rough and tumble lifestyle on the trail.
Lemmon brought a new comic persona to Hollywood films. He combined elements of screwball and slapstick comedy with his own self-deprecating humor to create satiric portraits of the contemporary American male. The sometimes cynical comic sense of director Billy Wilder provided Lemmon with the perfect complement. Together they made seven films, but it was their first, Some Like It Hot (1959), that captured the sheer comic genius of their collaborations together.
From sexual antics to social critique, Lemmon and Wilder sharpened their comic knives on the hypocrisies they saw in American culture. The Apartment (1960) focused on a working stiff who lends his home to his supervisors for their extramarital affairs. Problems arise when Lemmon falls for his boss's paramour - it gets even more complicated when she tries to kill herself in his pad! Though The Apartment was a comic success, with each passing year the film's serious side seems even more dark and derisive. Illicit love and the corruption of big business might not seem to be the stuff of hit comedies, but Wilder and Lemmon found humor in the most unlikeliest of places. Director and comic star went on to make five more films: Irma la Douce (1963), The Fortune Cookie (1966), Avanti! (1972), The Front Page (1974) and Buddy Buddy (1981).
Billy Wilder and Lemmon's lifelong comic foil Walter Matthau (nine collaborations with Lemmon in 32 years, including their most popular film, The Odd Couple, 1968) brought some of the comedian's finest funny moments to the screen. But there was a serious side too. Lemmon waived his salary to act in Save the Tiger (1973), the 'great American tragedy' of a businessman at the end of his rope. Lemmon won his second Academy Award for the film. In Missing (1982), directed by the uncompromising Costa-Gavras, Lemmon played a patriotic father searching for his kidnapped son in Latin America. The closer he gets to his goal, the clearer it becomes that a government conspiracy is behind his son's disappearance. Missing was inspired by a true story - the production was condemned by the Reagan administration and awarded the Golden Palm at the Cannes film festival.
Very few actors today can match Lemmon's range on the screen. He has acted in everything from lightweight sex farces (How to Murder Your Wife, 1965) to musicals (My Sister Eileen, 1955) to social dramas (Days of Wine and Roses, 1962) to political thrillers (The China Syndrome, 1979). Turner Classic Movies cherishes the memory of this remarkable talent.
By Cino Niles & Jeff Stafford
TCM Remembers - Samuel Arkoff
Quotes
I like you. And when Eric Von Zipper likes someone, they stay liked.- Eric Von Zipper
Bring me my pendulum, kiddies, I feel like swinging!- Big Daddy
Marianne, this book will be my triumph.- Professor Sutwell
And you'll never get it though the mail. But hang on to the picture rights. I'm sure American International will snap it up in a minute.- Marianne
Look, nobody tells Eric Von Zipper nothin'!- Eric Von Zipper
That's right, nobody tells Eric Von Zipper nothin'!- J.D.
Who are you?- Professor Sutwell
J.D.- J.D.
That's short for "Juvenile Delinquent."- Eric Von Zipper
Trivia
Notes
Filmed on the coast of southern California at Balboa, Laguna, Malibu, and Newport.