Jamboree!

Jamboree! (1957)

17 GREAT RECORDING STARS! 21 BIG HIT TUNES!

Jamboree adheres to the usual formula of late-1950s rock & roll films: A plethora of musical numbers linked together by the wispiest of plotlines. Kay Medford heads the cast as manipulative showbiz agent Grace Shaw. Hoping to land pop singer Pete Porter, Grace connives to break up Pete's romance with female vocalist Honey Wynn. But who cares? The audience came to see such musical faves as Fats Domino, Count Basie, Jerry Lee Lewis, Jodie Sands, Ron Coby, Slim Whitman, Carl Perkins, Frankie Avalon, Charlie Gracie and the Four Coins. As a promotional tie-in, Jamboree also features appearances by 21 of North America's top rock-and-roll deejays.

Date of release
1957-12-07
TMDB
5.4 / 10 (7)
Runtime
1h 26m
Genres
Music, Romance
Director
Roy Lockwood

Casting

Interesting facts

Jamboree, known as Disc Jockey Jamboree in the United Kingdom, is a 1957 American rock and roll film directed by Roy Lockwood. Its story is about a boy and girl, Pete Porter and Honey Wynn, who become overnight sensations as a romantic singing duo who run into trouble when their squabbling managers, try to turn them into solo acts. Against this backdrop in cameo performances appear some of the biggest names of rock and roll in the 1950s lip-syncing to their recordings.

Production

The film was produced by Milton Subotsky and Max Rosenberg who had previously made the successful Rock, Rock, Rock!. Warner Bros had the foreign distribution rights for that film and decided to invest in another rock film. Rosenberg said "Jamboree was a studio picture. We had quote a plot unquote and we had recognizable actors. It was shot on the old Fox studio at Tenth Avenue and 56th Street. It was probably a three-week shoot.”

Subotsky said "The idea we had was to have a group of DJs across the US and Canada introducing as many of the top rockers as we could line up. It only meant a couple of days filming for most of the acts, and we just brought them into the studios and put them before the cameras and had them do their latest hit records." The producers wanted Buddy Holly but his manager turned down the offer.

Investors in the film included Bob Marcucci, Bermie Binnick and Dick Clark.

Subotsky later claimed the serious plot was insisted upon by Warner Bros. He reflected "Adding a serious plot like that to a musical can be deadly. I don't think Jamboree worked that well because every time a musical number occurred, it fought the story".

Warner Brothers Records made a small number of copies of the movie sound-track album, which were sent to disc jockeys as a promotional tool. However the artists were upset with the billing so Warner Bros decided to cancel plans to release the disc commercially. The promotional albums are the only copies left of the Jamboree soundtrack.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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