Possible kitchen sink Brit musicals

[stuart.uk]

This may sound daft, but I was thinking about the likes of Look Back In Anger, This Sporting Life and Saturday Night Sunday Morning and wondering if British musicals also reflected the change in social culture. In the 40s we had the Anna Neagel/Michael Wilding musicals that were hugely popular and provided post-war Britain with escapisim. However, I have stated many times before I think those films are now boring to watch and have dated badly.

In the 50s and early 60s we had the Tommy Steele and Cliff Richard muscials, some of which were classics and are still hugely popular today like The Duke Wore Jeans (Steele) and Summer Holiday (Richard) However, as Cliff recently said those films and perhaps an unrealistic innoncence. One of the reasons given for the failure of his 1964 film Wonderful Life, was that it was made after the start of Beatlemainia

I was wondering if 4 musicals maybe reflected what was happening with the introduction of the kitchen sink drama. Though they played themselves The Beatles in A Hard Days Night gave the impression that they came, as in reality they did, from the working class city of Liverpool. In the film we see John Lennon, as a bit of a hard man, who knew to take care of himself. Then during the This Boy sequence when Ringo Starr went walkout, missing the final run through of a tv show, he's see mixing with kids bunking of school and in a working class pub.

In The Dave Clark Five movie Catch Us if You Can, Dave plays an ordinary bloke, who helps a famous celebrity, escape from her fame. However, when she goes back to her job, he feels dumped and let down.

When he did the pop show Oh Boy in the 50s. one of Cliff Richard's fellow performers was Marty Wilde, who had a hit with Teenager In Love (Marty is also the father of Kim Wilde, who once had a U.S number-one) Marty in the begining appeared to have more talent than Cliff, but while the peter-pan of pop as had a hugely sucessful career, Marty as been kinda forgotten about.


Marty to my knowledge made two films, the dramatic air disaster movie Jet Storm, dealing with Richard Attenbourgh taking a bomb onto Stanley Baker's plane. However, it's the other film I wanted to mention. It's A Crazy World We're Living In. The film was about young men and women growing up in what I presume was London. Joe Brown was the other pop star in the movie with respected actor Harry H Corbett as his dad. In the end Joe sends a demo to a recording company and strikes it lucky.

While writing this I thought about the Anthony Newley movie Jazz Boat, where he sings I'm Gonna Need Someone To Care For Me. It was like a gangster movie with James Booth as a bully and Lionel Jeffries as the cop, who teaches him lesson

[mrsl]

Stuart:

I'm sorry I can't remark on the movies you've mentioned because I haven't seen them, but I must offer you large kudos and great thanks for educating me on British cinema. Until I started reading your posts, I thought British cinema was all done at that one studio in London (I'm sorry, the name escapes me right now), and a few, which were considered 'equal' to our offerings were sent 'over the pond' to us for viewing. If not for TCM, I would never have seen the wonderful Brief Encounters, or known of Celia Johnsons great work, also like in This Happy Breed. I said something long ago, when you first joined us, and again I reiterate. Thank you for your posts on British movies, music, and TV. It's so great to get not only a foreign perspective, but also just another perspective.

Anne

[stuart.uk]

Thanks Anne