Nick Conover (Pat Boone), a Chicago youth, arrives at his aunt Henrietta (Jeanette Nolan) and uncle Jed Bruce's (Arthur O'Connell) Kentucky horse farm. Neither has seen Nick since he was a child. The move is part of Nick's parole condition after being convicted for joyriding in a stolen vehicle with his friends. Jed initially does not want Nick in his home, and Nick gradually realizes that the reason Jed is hostile to him stems from the loss of his only son, Jed Bruce Jr. who was killed in the Korean War.
Jed, who once raised, trained, and raced horses for harness racing, has neglected the farm. Only one horse remains, a spirited and largely unmanageable stallion named Tugfire, his son's favorite. Nick's disinterest and lack of knowledge of horses is first seen when he gets into the corral alone with Tugfire, who charges him.
Nick meets the Bruces' neighbors, the Templetons, after the younger Templeton daughter, Liz (Shirley Jones), arrives to invite Jed and Nick to their farm. Nick goes, and is amazed at how lavish the Templeton farm is compared to his aunt and uncle's. Liz is the tomboy and farm lover who has a crush on Nick, while her elder sister Fran (Dolores Michaels) is the sophisticate who is dating Al Turner (Bradford Jackson). While Liz rides a sulky out around the track, Nick, ignoring Liz, is attracted to Fran and her Austin-Healey sports car, and she allows him to inspect the engine. He declines Fran's offer to let him drive the car, avoiding explaining that his driver's license was revoked. His love of mechanics again becomes evident when he fixes Jed's tractor and, with Jed's approval, fixes the old jalopy sitting in the barn with the help of Liz.
Nick spends time with both Templeton girls and sees Liz as a "good sport" and Fran as girlfriend material, though she is with Al. The four get along well together, despite Liz knowing that Nick is attracted to Fran. At a barbecue, Nick boasts to Fran that his jalopy could outperform her sports car in a drag race. Fran suggests they race on a back country road. Even though it violates his parole condition, Nick agrees. During the race, Fran drives off the road, crashing her car through a fence, though she and Al escape unharmed. While driving his jalopy around the track, Nick spooks Tugfire, who jumps the corral fence and runs off. Tugfire, tangled in prickly brambles, is freed by Nick. Jed and Henrietta are surprised to see a calm Tugfire being led by Nick. Jed resolves to train a reluctant Nick to ride Tugfire in harness races, and Nick's training eventually improves.
Shortly before the harness races at the Bentonville Fair, Tugfire falls ill after Nick leaves him in the corral during a severe storm. The vet does what he can to treat Tugfire. Late into the night with Nick, Liz and Uncle Jed keeping vigil, Tugfire gets up. After a quick examination, Jed believes he will be able to race. In the excitement of Tugfire's improved condition, Liz gives Nick a quick kiss, which finally makes Nick see Liz in a more romantic light.
At the fair, Nick and Liz declare their romantic interest to each other, culminating with them almost kissing on the ferris wheel. About the races, Nick is told that he only has to win one of the two heats to make it into the finals. He and Tugfire do win the first heat, largely because he was an unknown racer, and thus no one paid any attention to him. In the second heat, he is boxed in by the Templetons' rider, their wheels locked. As the Templetons' rider will not let him pass on the inside, Nick hastily tries to muscle his way through. He crashes and the sulky is damaged. Jed decides to pull Nick and Tugfire from the finals, realizing that he placed too much pressure on Nick. Nick, however, wants to race in the finals, with a sulky donated by Mr. Templeton, and Jed watches from the sidelines as Nick uses his earlier training and drives down the stretch to win the race.
However, immediately after the race, the local sheriff arrives to arrest Nick and send him back to Chicago for parole violation. Not knowing it would cause any problems, Fran filed an accident report about her automobile crash, stating Nick was driver of the other vehicle. Liz steps in to say that Fran was mistaken, and that she was the driver, a story which Fran and Henriette falsely corroborate. Nick, wanting to do the right thing, confesses that Fran's report is correct. The sheriff decides to let Nick stay in Kentucky, having been told by Mr. Templeton to do so since it was a minor infraction and no one got hurt, much to everyone else's relief.
The movie was a remake of Home in Indiana (1944) and was originally called Young in Love.[4][5]
Filming began in June 1957, before the public had seen Boone's first move Bernardine.[6] It took place in Hollywood and on location in Kentucky.
At the beginning of the shoot in Kentucky, Boone was in a car accident while filming a scene. He was a passenger in a car which was to be overtaken by a car driven by two local girls; the cars collided but Boone was uninjured.[7] Boone did not kiss Shirley Jones on screen for fear of upsetting his wife.[8]
Reception
The film was a hit at the box office.
Kinematograph Weekly listed it as being "in the money" at the British box office in 1958.[9]
Critical
Most critical notices of the film tended to be mixed. Leonard Maltin described it as an "engaging musical"[10] while The New York Times'Bosley Crowther said it had "two of the nicest-looking young singers to be found anywhere, a batch of pleasant tunes, some nifty Kentucky scenery in good color and absolutely no plot."[11] Harold Whitehead of The Montreal Gazette observed that it was a "long, slow musical romance", and in particular noted that Boone, "the respectable hero of the teen-agers, seems to have worked so hard at gaining his reputation that he has turned himself into a rather pompous young man."[12]
Boone regards it as one of his favorites, "the kind of movie I wish I could have made 20 more of: a musical, appealing characters, some drama, a good storyline, a happy ending, it's the kind of film which makes you feel good. I never wanted to make a depressing or immoral film."[13] Reviewing this, Diabolique magazine later wrote "Why didn't he? The film was a hit...And it wasn't as if Fox lacked Americana stories in their back catalog that they could remake: Kentucky (1938), Maryland (1940), Margie (1946), Smoky (1946), Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay! (1948), etc. The only other remake he'd wind up doing was State Fair and that wasn't even a star vehicle. Why didn't someone put him together with Jones again?[14]
Patrick Charles Eugene Boone is an American singer, actor and composer. He was a successful pop singer in the United States during the 1950s and early 1960s. He sold more than 45 million records, had 38 Top 40 hits, and appeared in more than 12 Hollywood films.
Shirley Mae Jones is an American actress and singer. In her six decades in show business, she has starred as wholesome characters in a number of musical films, such as Oklahoma! (1955), Carousel (1956), and The Music Man (1962). She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing a vengeful prostitute in Elmer Gantry (1960). She played the lead role of Shirley Partridge, the widowed mother of five children, in the musical situation-comedy television series The Partridge Family (1970–1974), which co-starred her real-life stepson, David Cassidy, son of Jack Cassidy.
Three Comrades is a 1938 American drama film directed by Frank Borzage and produced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz for MGM. The screenplay is by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Edward E. Paramore Jr., and was adapted from the novel Three Comrades by Erich Maria Remarque. It tells the story of the friendship of three young German soldiers following World War I, during the Weimar Republic and the rise of Nazism.
Strictly Ballroom is a 1992 Australian romantic comedy film directed and co-written by Baz Luhrmann in his feature directorial debut. The film is the first in his "Red Curtain Trilogy" of theatre-motif-related films; it was followed by 1996's Romeo + Juliet and 2001's Moulin Rouge!
Douglas Osborne McClure was an American actor whose career in film and television extended from the 1950s to the 1990s. He is best known for his role as the cowboy Trampas during the entire run from 1962 to 1971 of the series The Virginian and mayor turned police chief Kyle Applegate on Out of This World.
Herbert Alonzo "Lon" McCallister Jr. was an American actor. According to one obituary, he was best known for "playing gentle, boyish young men from the country." Another said he "had an ingenuous appeal that made him a favourite of family audiences, and was particularly at home in outdoor settings featuring dogs and horses. Ultimately his perennial boyishness and slight stature became a handicap for more mature roles."
John Herrick McIntire was an American character actor who appeared in 65 theatrical films and many television series. McIntire is well known for having replaced Ward Bond, upon Bond's sudden death in November 1960, as the star of NBC's Wagon Train. He played Christopher Hale, the leader of the wagon train from early 1961 to the series' end in 1965. He also replaced Charles Bickford, upon Bickford's death in 1967, as ranch owner Clay Grainger on NBC's The Virginian for four seasons.
"April Love" is a popular song with music by Sammy Fain and lyrics by Paul Francis Webster. It was written as the theme song for a 1957 film of the same name starring Pat Boone and Shirley Jones and directed by Henry Levin.
Kevin Wicks is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera EastEnders, played by Phil Daniels. Kevin made his first appearance on 17 February 2006, when he was introduced to the show alongside his two children, Carly and Deano. He is presented as the nephew of a long-running character, Pat Butcher.
The Love Bug is a 1997 American adventure comedy television film directed by Peyton Reed and written by Ryan Rowe. The fifth installment in the Herbie film series, the film is part remake and part sequel, in that the events of the original 1968 The Love Bug film are repeated while the storyline plots to follow Herbie Goes Bananas (1980). It premiered on ABC in the anthology television series The Wonderful World of Disney on November 30, 1997. The film stars Bruce Campbell and includes a special appearance by Dean Jones, star of the original The Love Bug, tying it to the previous films, while introducing an evil, black Volkswagen Beetle named Horace, the Hate Bug, giving the film a much darker tone than the other films.
Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay! is a 1948 American romantic comedy-drama film written and directed by F. Hugh Herbert, based on the novel of the same name by George Agnew Chamberlain. Released by 20th Century Fox, the film stars June Haver, Lon McCallister, and Walter Brennan. Marilyn Monroe has a bit part and a young Natalie Wood also appears in the film.
In Old Santa Fe is a 1934 American Western film directed by David Howard, starring Ken Maynard, George "Gabby" Hayes and Evalyn Knapp and featuring the first screen appearance of Gene Autry, singing a bluegrass rendition of "Wyoming Waltz" accompanied by his own acoustic guitar with Smiley Burnette on accordion. Autry and Burnette were uncredited, but the scene served as a screen test for the duo for subsequent singing cowboy films, beginning with The Phantom Empire (1935), in which Autry had his first leading role.
Bernardine is a 1957 American musical film directed by Henry Levin and starring Pat Boone, Terry Moore, Dean Jagger, Dick Sargent, and Janet Gaynor. The 1952 play upon which the movie is based was written by Mary Coyle Chase, the Denver playwright who also wrote the popular 1944 Broadway play Harvey. The title song, with words and music by Johnny Mercer, became a hit record for Boone.
"Love Is Here to Stay" is a popular song and jazz standard composed by George Gershwin with lyrics by Ira Gershwin for the movie The Goldwyn Follies (1938).
Home in Indiana is a 1944 Technicolor film directed by Henry Hathaway. The film, that stars Walter Brennan, Lon McCallister, Jeanne Crain, June Haver and Charlotte Greenwood, is based on the novel The Phantom Filly by George Agnew Chamberlain (1879–1966). The film was remade in 1957 as April Love.
The Love Specialist is 1958 Italian-French movie directed by Luigi Zampa and starring Diana Dors and Vittorio Gassman.
Frederick Hugh Herbert was a playwright, screenwriter, novelist, short story writer, and infrequent film director.
Jalopy is a 1953 comedy film starring The Bowery Boys. The film was released on February 15, 1953 by Allied Artists and is the twenty-ninth film in the series. Jalopy represents the first Bowery Boys film to be released by Allied Artists, previous were by Monogram Pictures.
Mardi Gras is a 1958 American musical comedy film directed by Edmund Goulding and starring Pat Boone and Christine Carère.
Off to the Races is a 1937 American comedy film directed by Frank R. Strayer and written by Robert Ellis and Helen Logan. The film stars Slim Summerville, Jed Prouty, Shirley Deane, Spring Byington, Russell Gleason and Kenneth Howell. The film was released on February 5, 1937, by 20th Century Fox.
↑ Schallert, Edwin (June 13, 1957). "Harvey Gets Headliner; Krueger Plans Record Saga; O'Connor in Deal". Los Angeles Times. p.C13.
↑ Pryor, Thomas M. (June 3, 1957). "FILM PACT SIGNED BY GREENE, ROUSE: They Will Work Separately and as Team in Exclusive Associat'ed Artists Deal Of Local Origin". The New York Times. p.30.
↑ Hopper, Hedda (June 11, 1957). "Romantic Pair Cast in 'Girl of Summer'". Los Angeles Times. p.A8.
↑ "Pat Boone Escapes Injury in Crash at Film Location". Chicago Daily Tribune. June 18, 1957. p.a4.
↑ Dorothy Kilgallen (August 1, 1957). "Film Bid Weighed By Princess Grace". The Washington Post and Times-Herald. p.C11.
↑ Billings, Josh (December 18, 1958). "Others in the Money". Kinematograph Weekly. p.7.
Solomon, Aubrey. Twentieth Century-Fox, A Corporate and Financial History (The Scarecrow Filmmakers Series). Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1989. ISBN978-0-8108-4244-1.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
