Expresso Bongo (1959)

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• Baseado em: Expresso Bongo

Expresso Bongo is a 1959 British drama musical film directed by Val Guest, shot in uncredited black & white Dyaliscope and starring Laurence Harvey, Cliff Richard, and Yolande Donlan. It was written by Wolf Mankowitz adapted from the stage musical of the same name by Julian More, which was first produced at the Saville Theatre, London, on 23 April 1958.

Production

The film was made at Shepperton Studios, near London. Some scenes were filmed on location, in London's Soho district. The University of London website for December, 2015, states that 32, Hanway Street, London, was also used for some of the film's scenes. Formerly 'Dicken's Chop House', about 1955 it had become 'The 'Chiquito Club' and espresso coffee bar. Its first proprietor, K. D.

Director Val Guest engaged Kenneth MacMillan to choreograph the strip-club dancers who appear in the film. Struggling to get them to dance and sing to playback at the same time, MacMillan complained, "It's the simplest routine. They may have looks, legs and tits, but they have no co-ordination."

At first, Laurence Harvey was undecided on the kind of accent he would give his character, so Guest told him he was "part Soho, part Jewish, and part middle-class" and that it might be an idea to model him on the writer Wolf Mankowitz. Harvey arranged a couple of lunches with the unsuspecting Mankowitz to study the writer at close hand, so the character Johnny Jackson in the film sounds something like the writer of the film.

Harvey's character sports a melange of accents including his own South African. Wolf Mankowitz appears in the film's opening credit sequence, wearing a sandwich-board bearing his writer credit.

This was the second screen appearance for Cliff Richard and the Shadows in 1959, the first being Serious Charge.

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