Beach Ball

Beach Ball (1965)

BABES, BOYS AND BIKINIS

Edd Byrnes tries to get an ethnic-music-studies grant to buy instruments for his rock and roll group.

Date of release
1965-09-29
TMDB
4.4 / 10 (15)
Runtime
1h 23m
Genres
Comedy, Music
Director
Lennie Weinrib

Casting

Interesting facts

Beach Ball is a 1965 American beach party comedy film directed by Lennie Weinrib and starring Edd Byrnes and Chris Noel. It was partly financed by Roger Corman. It features appearances by the Supremes, the Walker Brothers, and the Righteous Brothers.

Production

The film was produced by Bart Patton, an actor who did some production work for Roger Corman. Corman paid Patton $100,000 to make a beach party film, of which $22,000 (or $25,000, accounts differ) was already earmarked to Edd Byrnes. Patton wanted to direct but Corman did not let him having already hired comic Lennie Weinrib to make his debut as director. (Patton and Weinrib would later form a production company.)

According to FilmInk, "Roger Corman was never a great one for making musicals – he disliked the genre on the whole, and there are few on his CV. However, the profits made in the mid-‘60s by beach party movies were too alluring for him to ignore and he kicked in a few bucks for some of those."

Stephanie Rothman worked on the movie as a production assistant, shooting second unit for the car chase scene with Aaron Kincaid. Gary Kurtz was assistant director. Patton thought Corman hired Weinrib to direct "because he was a comic and it was a comedy. That was Roger's thinking."

In November 1964, Tommy Kirk was originally announced as male star along with Noel Edmonds. In December 1964, Chris Noel signed and Kirk was still attached. Kirk eventually dropped out of the film and was replaced by Edd Byrnes.

Byrnes called it "a typical mindless beach movie in the spirit of Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello" and said he was "continually offered this type of film after I was released from my contract at Warner Brothers. However, the producers of Beach Ball were going to give me so much money, it would have been ridiculous to turn down Paramount's generous offer." Byrnes enjoyed making the film calling it a "romp" but he refused to make any more beac…

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