Palm Springs Weekend

Palm Springs Weekend (1963)

IT'S WHERE THE BOYS ARE AND THE GIRLS ARE...that swingin' vacation weekend when American youth descends on America's swankiest playground!

Set in Palm Springs during a long, fun-filled weekend where several Los Angeles college students flock to spring break, centering on Jim who finds romance with Bunny, the daughter of Palm Springs harred, stressful police chief. Jim's bumbling roommate, Biff, tries to get Amanda, a tomboyish girl's attention with a so-called love gadget. Meanwhile, Gayle Lewis is a high school senior posing as a wealthy college girl who is pursued by Eric Dean, a wealthy and spoiled college prepie, while Gayle has eyes for a cowboy from Texas, named Stretch. Also Jim and Biff's basketball coach, Campbell, tries to romance Naomi, the owner of the motel where all of the gang is staying at, which is interfered by Naomi's young, trouble-making, brat son who's dubbed, Boom-Boom.

Date of release
1963-11-05
TMDB
5.0 / 10 (19)
Runtime
1h 40m
Genres
Comedy, Romance
Director
Norman Taurog

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: California

Palm Springs Weekend is a 1963 Warner Bros. bedroom comedy film directed by Norman Taurog. It has elements of the beach party genre and has been called "a sort of Westernized version of Where the Boys Are" by Billboard magazine. It stars Troy Donahue, Stefanie Powers, Robert Conrad, Ty Hardin, and Connie Stevens.

Production notes

Jack L. Warner was impressed by the success of Where the Boys Are (1960). He wanted to make a similar film about the influx of teenagers into Palm Springs during the Easter vacation break, using the large number of young actors they had under contract. The studio had the title, Palm Springs Weekend even before they had a script.

In June 1962, Warner gave the job of producing to Michael A. Hoey, who had never produced before, but had impressed Warner through his work as an editor at the studio over four years, most recently The Chapman Report. The studio signed Hoey to a contract as producer and Palm Springs Weekend was going to be his first movie.

Earl Hamner Jr., whose novel Spencer's Mountain had just been bought by Warners, was hired to write the screenplay. Hamner:

They gave the screenplay duties [on Spencer's Mountain] to someone else, and I think Mr. Warner thought that he owed me one. He called me one day and asked me what I thought of Palm Springs. I was just newly arrived from New York, and I told him that I'd never been there. He said, 'I want you to go there over Easter Weekend and poke around and see if you come back with a movie.' ...

When Norman Taurog signed to direct, he felt the script needed some work, so the studio hired David Schwartz, who had just adapted Sex and the Single Girl. They did not like his work so another writer was hired, Danny Arnold, to do a weekly polish.

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