{"id":11687,"date":"2015-06-25T13:31:29","date_gmt":"2015-06-25T17:31:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=11687"},"modified":"2017-05-01T13:21:55","modified_gmt":"2017-05-01T17:21:55","slug":"film-bernadine-1957","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=11687","title":{"rendered":"Film: Bernadine (1957)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\"BLANK\"<\/a>Film<\/strong>: Good<\/p>\n

Transfer<\/strong>: \u00a0n\/a<\/p>\n

Extras<\/strong>:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0n\/a<\/p>\n

Label:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0n\/a<\/strong><\/p>\n

Region:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0n\/a<\/p>\n

Released:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0n\/a<\/p>\n

Genre:<\/strong>\u00a0 Musical \/ Comedy<\/p>\n

Synopsis:<\/strong>\u00a0In order to graduate, a speedboat racing teen must study hard and set aside romance for two solid weeks.<\/p>\n

Special Features:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0n\/a<\/span><\/p>\n

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Review:<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth noting that while issues of juvenile delinquents and gangs had begun to crop up in films like The Blackboard Jungle<\/strong> (1955), Rebel Without a Cause<\/strong> (1955), and The Wild One<\/strong> (1953), there remained in production quaint visions of idyllic, highly WASP high school life, with genial characters portrayed by twentysomething actors.<\/p>\n

Mary Chase\u2019s play Harvey<\/strong> (1950) had been adapted for the big screen, and apparently Fox\u2019s scouts decided her new play Bernadine<\/strong> would make for an ideal film \/ teen musical \/ debut vehicle for their latest contract star, squeaky clean crooner Pat Boone.<\/p>\n

The irony is that while known as Boone\u2019s feature film debut, his character isn’t the lead, and there are stretches where Boone isn\u2019t seen on film, or just pops up in short scenes on the phone, since his character of Beau is really an advisor to best friend \/ bongo-loving Fo-Fo (Dick Sargent) as girl troubles and poor studies threaten his graduation status.<\/p>\n

The screen story is kind of muddy: \u201cBernadine\u201d is the name of an ideal girl that each member of a small club of jocks hope to meet, making crank calls to a local phone company until one day an operator named Jean (Terry Moore) gambles on a date with Fo-Fo, whose sports passion includes handling a speedboat named Bernadine in races in the nearby bay.<\/p>\n

Fo-Fo\u2019s dilemmas are his grades – they<\/em> stink!<\/em> \u2013 and he has one chance to graduate, but the cost is heavy: set aside all social life and romancing for 2 weeks and study hard, after which he can return to being just a good kid wanting to date a slightly older working girl.<\/p>\n

Beau\u2019s solution is to get his older brother to \u2018safeguard\u2019 Jean from other guys, playing chaperon until an official hand-off after Fo-Fo\u2019s positive grades are confirmed. Problem a) Beau\u2019s brother, on military leave, is too successful in the romance dept.; and b) it\u2019s inevitable Beau\u2019s longtime friendship with Fo-Fo will come to a potentially crashing halt.<\/p>\n

Worked into the story are odd junctures where Boone leads peculiar songs that sort of centralize the boys\u2019 feelings about the ideal \u2018Bernadine,\u2019 and a calypso-styled ditty where the lyrics quite plainly decree \u2018women are dim upstairs,\u2019 a playful tune in 1957 that\u2019s more awkward in 2015.<\/p>\n

Boone\u2019s Beau is merely an advisor, consulting issues of women and trying to correct Fo-Fo\u2019s innately clumsy approach with girls, and juggling his own family crises when his older brother (James Drury) returns unexpectedly from the service.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s much to dismiss in this very dated take on teen life \u2013 the actors are absurdly old for their roles (Boone was 23, and Sargent 27!), the music is rather clumsily inserted into scenes, and the friendship crises is wrapped up pretty fast and neat \u2013 but contemporary audiences might find some slight similarities to the teen world of John Hughes. Bernardine<\/strong> isn\u2019t Ferris Bueller\u2019s Day Off<\/strong> (1986), but Boone is very much a Bueller, albeit reduced to a secondary character.<\/p>\n

Beau remains calm and fast-thinking in any kind of circumstance, always grinning, and delivering words of wisdom in a calm voice. Like Bueller, he\u2019s also well-off, although many of the kids in Bernadine<\/strong> come from pretty snazzy homesteads. Fo-Fo may have to sell his boat to local dweeb Vernon (unbilled Hooper Dunbar) for cash and buy a car to impress Jean on their first date, but his home still comes with a standard black maid who\u2019s equally concerned \/ overjoyed when Fo-Fo\u2019s social and pedagogical lives undergo some ups & downs.<\/p>\n

The WASPiness and archaic stereotypes are pretty standard in Fox\u2019s production, and the casting is strategic: the \u2018kids\u2019 are headlined by up & coming talent, while the parents are played by aging stars and character actors, including Janet Gaynor (A Star is Born<\/a><\/strong>), back after a long screen absence for one final movie; Dean Jagger (The Robe<\/a><\/strong>, Forty Guns<\/a><\/strong>, The Kremlin Letter<\/a><\/strong>), whose character actually doesn\u2019t appear until the mid-point as the older father figure that Fo-Fo\u2019s mother will ultimately wed for financial and emotional security; and Walter Abel (Night People<\/a><\/strong>, Raintree County<\/strong>) and Natalie Schafer as Beau\u2019s kind of dim-witted parents. (It\u2019s worth noting that years later in Gilligan’s Island<\/strong>\u00a0Schafer would play the \u2018luvvy\u2019 wife of Thurston Howell,\u00a0played by Jim Backus, a character actor who similarly played parent to a troubled teen in Rebel Without a Cause<\/strong>.)<\/p>\n

The relative cluelessness of parents in general is more typical of a John Hughes story; neither mean disciplinarians nor outright daft, but a little eccentric and sometimes smiling dopey in their perfect middle class lives. Fo-Fo\u2019s single mother is the exception, whereas Beau\u2019s family isn\u2019t all different from the Bueller clan, where the youngest child is the wry, smiling con artist, and the older child is wiser to Bueller \/ Beau\u2019s shenanigans.<\/p>\n

The film\u2019s best scene relies on a wordless character: Beau\u2019s conned his mother into letting him take his brother\u2019s gorgeous red roadster for a \u2018test drive\u2019 \u2013 loaning it to Fo-Fo for his first date \u2013 but unbeknownst to Beau, the stiff-lipped Lieutenant is back on leave. When he finds out Beau\u2019s snatched his car, he shows up at the boys\u2019 \u2018clubhouse\u2019 and silently drives the car away, leaving Beau standing there with his baffled friends. It\u2019s a great piece of fast, dry comedy, and perhaps an example of why Fox entrusted Henry Levin to helm three Pat Boone films.<\/p>\n

Able to handle musical numbers, light drama, and especially humour, Levin went to direct a number of high-profile films \u2013 Where the Boys Are<\/a><\/strong> (1960), another youth film headlined by a top-selling singer; and the last 3-panel Cinerama fantasy The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm<\/strong> (1962) \u2013 before ending his career in TV, and passing away in 1980.<\/p>\n

Among the cast of Fox contract players, Terry Moore had already appeared in several high-profile CinemaScope productions, including Beneath the 12-Mile Reef<\/strong> (1953) and King of the Khyber Rifles<\/strong> (1953) and would have a supporting role in Peyton Place<\/a><\/strong> (1957), but after a mix of mostly supporting roles, Moore moved to TV and worked pretty steadily in various genres.<\/p>\n

Dick Sargent, the de facto star of the film (but knocked way down in the billing), found greater success in TV, becoming famous as the patient husband to Samantha Stephens in Bewitched<\/strong> (1969-1972).<\/p>\n

Pat Boone\u2019s Fox films include the 1957 double-header Bernadine<\/strong> and April Love<\/strong><\/a>, Mardi Gras<\/strong> (1958), All Hands on Deck<\/strong> (1961), Journey to the Center of the Earth<\/a><\/strong> (1959), State Fair<\/strong> (1962), The Yellow Canary<\/strong> (1963), The Horror of It All<\/strong> (1964), and Goodbye Charlie<\/strong> (1964). His final feature film, The Cross and the Switchblade <\/strong>(1970), cast Boone as a minister tempering the actions of violent street gangs in 1950s New York City.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2015 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

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External References:<\/strong>
\nEditor’s Blog<\/a> — IMDB \u00a0<\/a>— \u00a0Soundtrack Album<\/a>\u00a0— Composer Filmography<\/a>
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\nVendor Search Links:<\/strong>
\nAmazon.ca<\/a>\"\" \"\" —\u00a0<\/span> Amazon.com<\/a>\"\" \"\" —\u00a0<\/span> Amazon.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s worth noting that while issues of juvenile delinquents and gangs had begun to crop up in films like The Blackboard Jungle (1955), Rebel Without a Cause (1955), and The Wild One (1953), there remained in production quaint visions of idyllic, highly WASP high school life, with genial characters portrayed by twentysomething actors…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[3734,3733,3736,1335,3737],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-32v","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11687"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11687"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15938,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11687\/revisions\/15938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}