Main Cast: Dolores Hart, George Hamilton, Yvette Mimieux, Jim Hutton, Barbara Nichols
Release Year: 1960
Country: US
Run Time: 99 minutes
Plot
Yvette Mimeux, Paula Prentiss, Connie Francis, and Dolores Hart star in this frothy teen romance-drama as attractive co-eds who take off from Midwest colleges on the annual spring break to land in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida -- where the boys are. There are plenty of parties, booze, and sex to keep minds off calculus for awhile. Merritt Andrews (Hart) and Ryder Smith (George Hamilton) manage to get together, Tuggle Carpenter (Paula Prentiss) manages to let her comedic talents shine, Angie (Connie Francis) sings the hit title song, but Melanie (Yvette Mimeux) becomes a casualty of too many good times. She will recover, and all the leads will go on to good, even great careers in some cases. Dolores Hart was the only featured player here to leave Hollywood behind -- she became a Benedictine nun in 1963. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
Review
More than four decades after it was released, it's easy to smile and wonder if college students ever really behaved as they did in the original Where the Boys Are, in which what's supposed to be a week-long bender of collegiate decadence in Florida looks like a fairly innocuous beer bust by contemporary standards. But the movie still gets by on its charm and the thankfully light touch of much of the cast. Dolores Hart has the good sense not to overplay her hand as the relative glamour girl of the South-bound foursome, and George Hamilton's wealthy dreamboat carries just the right balance of sincerity and tongue-in-cheek self-parody. If Paula Prentiss and Jim Hutton lay it on a bit thicker, they certainly play well off of one another, and went on to become a solid comic team in several subsequent pictures. If someone had to have a tragic event, at least Yvette Mimieux gives her character the proper degree of dignified gravity, and while Connie Francis can't really act, she seems to know enough to stay out of the way when she's not singing. (And has the screen ever beheld a dialectic jazz musician quite like Frank Gorshin? I believe not.) Director Henry Levin keeps the proceedings fun and frothy most of the time, and while the more serious turn in the final reel seems forced, the film was certainly ahead of its time in pondering the notion of sexual freedom for both male and female college students (even though, for the most part, our heroines ponder this as principle rather than reality). Hardly a masterpiece, Where the Boys Are still stacks up as pleasant entertainment that doesn't insult the intelligence, and time has been much kinder to this film than its misbegotten 1984 remake. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Where the Boys Are (1960) is a Americancoming-of-agecomedy film, written by George Wells based on the novel by Glendon Swarthout, about four Midwestern college co-eds who spend spring break in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The title song "Where the Boys Are" was sung by Connie Francis, who also co-starred in a supporting role. The film was aimed at the teen market, featuring sun, sand and romance. Released in the wintertime, it inspired thousands of additional American college students to head to Fort Lauderdale for their annual spring break.
Where the Boys Are was one of the first teen films to explore adolescent sexuality and the changing sexual mores and attitudes among American college youth. Given the censorship of the day, the audience is never sure of exactly what happened to Yvette Mimieux's character, but it is insinuated she was raped.
The main focus of Where the Boys Are is the "coming of age" of four collegiate girls during spring vacation. Merritt Andrews (Dolores Hart), the smart and assertive leader of the quartet, expresses the opinion as the film opens that premarital sex might be okay. Her speech eventually inspires the insecure Melody Tolman (Yvette Mimieux) to lose her virginity soon after the girls arrive in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Tuggle Carpenter (Paula Prentiss), on the other hand, seeks to be a "baby-making machine," lacking only the man to join her in marriage. Angie (Connie Francis in her first acting role) rounds out the group as a girl acting rather clumsily when it comes to romance.
The girls find their beliefs challenged throughout the film. Merritt meets the suave Ivy Leaguer Ryder Smith (George Hamilton) of Brown and realizes she's not ready for sex. Melody discovers the boy from Yale she thought loved her was only using her. Tuggle quickly fixes her attention on the goofy TV Thompson (Jim Hutton), but becomes disillusioned when he becomes enamored with the older woman Lola Fandango who works as a "mermaid" swimmer/dancer (Barbara Nichols). Angie stumbles into love with the eccentric jazz musician Basil (Frank Gorshin). Merritt, Tuggle and Angie's adolescent relationship angst quickly evaporates when they discover Melody in a distressed state.
Although not mentioned directly, the set up of the scene in which Melody leaves a hotel, with a torn dress and in a serious state of shock, strongly suggests she was sexually assaulted. She ends up in the hospital.
Now sobered up from the spring break joy, the friends realize the potentially serious consequences of their physical actions and resolve to act in a more responsible, mature manner. The film ends on a melancholy note, with Melody recovering in the hospital while Merritt looks after her, with promises to continue a long-distance relationship with Ryder.
The kind of cool modern jazz (or west coast jazz) popularized by such acts as Dave Brubeck, Gerry Mulligan, and Chico Hamilton, then in the vanguard of the college music market, features in a number of scenes with Basil. Called "dialectic jazz" in the film, the original compositions were by Pete Rugolo.[1]
MGM had bolstered the film's success potential by giving a large role to Connie Francis, the top American female recording star and a member of the MGM Records roster. Francis had solicited the services of Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield, who had written hit songs for her, to write original material for her to perform on the film's soundtrack including a "Where the Boys Are" title song. Sedaka and Greenfield wrote two potential title songs for the film, but producer Joe Pasternak passed over the song Francis and the songwriting duo preferred in favor of a lush '50s style movie theme. Francis recorded the song on 18 October 1960 in a New York City recording session with Stan Applebaum arranging and conducting.[2]
Besides the original English lyrics, Francis recorded "Where the Boys Are" in eight other languages and the different versions of the track would provide her with a #1 hit in some fifteen countries including Italy (as "Qualcuno mi aspetta") and Mexico (in Spanish as "Donde hay chicos"). "Where the Boys Are" was comparatively less successful in the English speaking world with peaks in the US and UK of respectively #4 and #5 and in the UK the track shared its chart position with te B-side "Baby Roo" (the B-side of the US single "No One" was ranked separately reaching #34). However "Where the Boys Are" is a convincing candidate to be Connie Francis' signature tune.[2]
Besides the theme song, Francis sang another Sedka-Greenfield composition: "Turn on the Sunshine", in the film.
The film's soundtrack also features "Have You Met Miss Fandango". The song was sung by co-star Barbara Nichols and featured music by Victor Young and lyrics by Stella Unger.[1]
MGM did not release a soundtrack album for Where the Boys Are.[2]
