POPEYE 1980

“The sun’ll come out tomorrow.”  Annie - The Broadway Musical (1977)

“I am what I am an’ tha’s all that I am.”  Popeye - The Movie Musical (1980)

The eccentric, rebellious spirit that characterizes much of what I love about ‘70s movies is a trait I associate with the decade’s turbulent, smash-the-idols mindset that challenged societal norms through movements like the Sexual Revolution, Black Power, Women’s Liberation, and the fight for LGBTQ Rights. As anyone who lived through that decade can tell you, the ‘70s were A LOT. So, it’s also no surprise—considering the Vietnam War, Nixon, Watergate, the Energy Crisis, and a struggling economy—that another defining characteristic of ‘70s films is their pervasive sense of pessimism, disillusionment, and cynicism.

The 1970s: When No One Went to the Movies for a Good Time

But even pressure cookers have their limits, and by mid-decade, after years of near-unrelenting sturm and drang, a kind of mass battle fatigue had begun to set in. The result: like trauma survivors reverting to age-regression as a coping mechanism, the nation’s moviegoers started turning away from post-Watergate nihilism and began flocking (in precedent-setting droves) to reassuring, old-fashioned, almost juvenile entertainments like Jaws (1975), Rocky (1976), Grease (1978), Superman: The Movie (1979), and the unabashedly hopeful, “look to the skies” optimism of Star Wars (1977), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), and Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979).

The overwhelming dominance of these films at the box office ushered in the age of the blockbuster, the revival of the movie musical, and signaled the end of the New Hollywood reign of director-as-self-indulgent-auteur (Heaven’s Gate was detonated in November 1980). By decade’s end, it was confirmed: uplift and escapism were in, reflection and navel-gazing were out. 

Some were quick to label this sociocultural shift an avoidance tactic—a deliberate retreat into the past to escape the instability of the present and the uncertainty of the future. But it’s clear, at least on some level, that it was also an act of retrieval. A retracing of our steps to find out where, on the ‘70s road to America shedding its illusions about itself, we’d also lost the capacity for hope, optimism, and trust.

To discover, as David Bowie sang in his 1975 song, "Young Americans": “Where have all Papa’s heroes gone?”

We Could Be Heroes

This late-decade surge of pop-cultural positivity found an anthem and hero in the 1977 Tony Award-winning Broadway musical Annie. Based on the 1924 Harold Gray comic strip, Little Orphan Annie, the show and its signature song “Tomorrow” – an unironic paean to optimism – caught the eyes and ears of Paramount producer Robert Evans, who, ever on the lookout for another anticipating-the-zeitgeist hit like 1971's Love Story, had hoped to make it into a film, but was beaten to the punch by Ray Stark at Columbia Pictures (and we all know how that turned out). 

Undeterred, Evans raided Paramount’s vaults and in no time announced plans to mount a live-action movie musical around cartoonist E.C. Segar’s 1929 comic strip character Popeye the Sailor (Man). A rather canny choice on Evans’ part, for not only did Popeye have global familiarity and name recognition, but in Popeye’s catchline: “I yam what I yam (an’ tha’s all I yam),” Evans had landed upon the perfect ideological hook—individualism, self-acceptance, and being true to oneself—upon which to anchor the entire film (and to inspire, he hoped, a suitably “Tomorrow”-like optimistic musical anthem).

Popeye and King Blozo in E.C. Segar's Thimble Theater comic strip

Preproduction on Evans’ passion project got promisingly underway with the usual revolving door of actors (Dustin Hoffman, Lily Tomlin, Gilda Radner, Jason Robards [for Poopdeck Pappy]) and directors (Arthur Penn, Mike Nichols, Louis Malle) considered. 

But industry eyebrows were raised to the snapping point when it was learned that one of Hollywood’s most notoriously hands-on, old-school movie producers had selected as the creative team for his broad-appeal, family musical comedy based on a comic strip, not one but THREE of the industry’s most notoriously rebellious, independent-minded, and artistically temperamental substance abusers: Jules Feiffer (Screenplay), Harry Nilsson (musical score), and Robert Altman (director). 

Poised to be Paramount's big holiday season release of 1980, Popeye arrived—over budget, behind schedule, and amid reams of negative press about its troubled production—on Friday, December 12, 1980, at Mann’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood. 

Robin Williams as Popeye the Sailor Man

Shelley Duvall as Olive Oyl

Wesley Ivan Hurt as Swee'pea

Paul L. Smith as Bluto

Paul Dooley as J. Wellington Wimpy

Ray Walston as Poopdeck Pappy

As was my wont back then, on Popeye’s opening day, I was among the first to arrive in the long line of keyed-up ticketholders that serpentined down Hollywood Boulevard from the Chinese Theater forecourt. The overall atmosphere felt like being at an “event," and the early bird section I was in seemed to be made up entirely of Robin Williams/Mork and Mindy fans who were completely unaware of Robert Altman but were eager as all get-out to see Williams in his film debut. 

In fact, for fear of instigating a real-life reenactment of the last scene from The Day of The Locust, I found myself lying to my line-mates—the strangers one bonds with while waiting in a movie line for two hours—that I, too, was a fan of Williams (I wasn’t…at least not back then) and loved Mork and Mindy (a show I seriously could not stand).

Popeye and his Pappy
Mork meets My Favorite Martian 

However, as a fan of Robert Altman since my high school days, everything about Popeye represented such a departure for the director that I was practically chomping at the bit with anticipation, wondering what the “strange bedfellows” partnership of Altman & Evans would yield. By reputation, Evans seemed to be precisely the kind of profits-driven producer Altman had railed against his entire career, yet it was also clear that from a professional standpoint, Altman was in no position to stand on principle. As Altman’s third release of 1980 (Quintet was a flop, H.E.A.L.T.H was shelved after a brief L.A. run), Popeye represented #3 in a three-strikes-you’re-out comeback bid for Altman’s return to the kind of mainstream success that had eluded him since Nashville (1975).

Duvall's letter-perfect Olive Oyl deserved an Oscar nomination,
but Popeye was overlooked entirely at Awards Season.

Popeye was Shelley Duvall's 7th collaboration with Robert Altman. May of 1980 saw the release of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, marking her first major role in a film by another director (she had a brief but amusing part as a Rolling Stone reporter in Woody Allen's Annie Hall, 1977).

Donald Moffat as The Tax Man

As an end-of-the-year release, Popeye, through no fault of its own, arrived shouldering all the anxieties of the industry’s disappointments of the previous months. The summer of 1980 had seen a spate of expensive musicals flop stupendously (Can’t Stop the Music, Xanadu, The Apple), indicating that, despite Grease's success, the movie musical might not truly be “back” after all; the boxoffice underperformance of the comic-book-based Flash Gordon (playing next-door to Popeye in the Chinese Theater’s add-on twin cinemas) had producers biting their nails; and just three weeks earlier, the megaton detonation of Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate had symbolically signaled the end of the New Hollywood era of directors as free-rein auteurs. 

And we haven't even gotten to Popeye's own issues yet. As mentioned earlier, Popeye's release was dogged by negative press. Most of it focused on the film's troubled production history: filmed in Malta on an initial budget of $12 million, reports of inclement weather, stormy personalities (Altman, Feiffer, and Nilsson clashed throughout), and technical problems, led to rumors of Popeye running over schedule and hemorrhaging money like bilge water; its final cost, more than twice the original budget. 

But a good deal more press coverage was reserved for the grossly inopportune timing of Popeye's publicity-hound producer (Evans, of course) being charged with cocaine possession and trafficking just months before his family-friendly Disney-Paramount co-venture was set to hit theaters. 

I, for one, wasn’t worried about all the bad press. In fact, if I’m being honest, the very real possibility that Popeye could turn out to be an epic disaster factored positively in my opening day excitement. As a longtime aficionado of Cinema de Merde I ignobly admit that rarer and more exciting than being among the first to see a future movie classic is the opportunity to be one of the first to see a genuine, history-making stinker…a bomb on the scale of something that provides “I was there!” stories to dine out on for decades to come. 

Popeye, like Superman: The Movie (1979)—Warner’s comic-book-to-screen hit whose success Paramount aspired to emulate—is an origin story. It introduces the mononymous seafaring loner (prolonged solitude accounting for his habit of talking to himself in muttered, sarcastic asides) as a storm blows him into the seaside shantytown of Sweethaven, where he hopes to find his long-lost Pappy. 

As Altman described it, his Popeye is the story of a human sailor who shipwrecks in a cartoon town and finds himself in a kind of two-dimensional limbo. The longer he stays amongst these eccentric cartoon characters, the more he begins to resemble them. In finally finding a place where he belongs, the sailor gradually transforms until "He becomes the Popeye of the cartoon.” In the film’s finale, after vanquishing Sweethaven’s dictator, gaining self-acceptance ("I am what I am"), and discovering the joys of family—both found and biological—the heroic, spinach-loving Popeye of the 1930s Max Fleischer cartoons is born. Hence, the introduction and sole appearance of Samuel Lerner’s iconic “I’m Popeye the Sailor Man” theme song.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Well, blow me down…

I’ll be darned if Robert Altman didn’t go and make the most charming, sweet-natured movie of his career. Quirky and whimsical, Popeye bears the stamp of Altman's influence in ways both beneficial (he's a wonderful ensemble director) and detrimental (the film is almost recklessly singular in its vision). However, as a true collaborative work of many talented individuals, both in front of and behind the cameras (production design: Wolf Kroeger, costumes: Scott Bushnell, cinematography: Giuseppe Rotunno), what is achieved with Popeye—at least in terms of faithful visual representation—is nothing short of dazzling. The characters are brought to life in a colorful (if not always vivid) manner, effectively crafting a cohesive, fully realized, live-action cartoon world that's true to the visual and tonal spirit of the original E.C. Segar comics.

So, why didn’t I like it more? 

Bluto sees red when Olive shows up late to their 
 engagement party with another man...and a baby!

A movie this good-natured and with its heart in the right place is difficult to thoroughly dislike; yet, I can’t say I entirely fell in love with Popeye, either. Instead, my feelings align with this quote from LA Times critic Charles Champlin: “[Popeye] … is a film that is rarely uninteresting but seldom entirely satisfying, except when young Wesley [Swee’pea] is beaming his radiant innocence on all about him or when Shelley Duvall is being Olive Oyl to absolute high-voiced perfection.”    

The Toughs
Actor Dennis Franz is visible 2nd from the right.
The other Toughs are members of Popeye's production crew 

I can only guess that the audience I watched it with felt something similar because the response throughout the evening was attentive but mild. The film's biggest laugh came from a growling fox fur, and the most vocal reactions happened every time there was a close-up of Swee'pea.

Absolutely nothing is lacking in the film’s production values or anything related to the visual transfer of the Popeye comic world to the screen, which is part of the problem. In focusing so heavily on getting the neo-realist, material aspects of Popeye right, I think Altman & Co. missed the boat by not investing at least as much meticulous attention to figuring out how to make us care about these characters.

The world created is so richly textured, the look of the characters so striking in their eccentricity, I couldn’t help feeling they all deserved a better story, better music, and certainly better jokes than the ones they’re given.

A sure bet for Popeye's all-around crowd pleaser was literal nepo-baby

(the director's grandson) Wesley Ivan Hurt 

"Keep A-Goin' " (the title of one of Haven Hamilton's songs in Nashville) is the name of one of the horses considered when Wimpy takes the "clairvoyink orphink" Swee'pea to bet on the races

As a comedy, Popeye’s gently absurdist tone elicited more smiles than outright laughs from me. And as a musical, I thought it had some truly sublime moments—I adore Olive’s “He Needs Me” and Popeye singing “Swee’pea’s Lullaby”—but I remember waiting for the magic to kick in. It never really did.

I’m grateful Popeye never succumbed to the kind of deadening, forced exuberance and “bigger is better” bombast that sounds the death knell for so many big-budget movie musicals. But what’s served up in its stead (a lot of inert slapstick and surprisingly joyless, curiously earth-bound circus tumbling) is bewildering. It’s not like the world of Popeye didn’t offer Altman plenty to work with…even with that consciously crackpot musical score of Nilsson's.

The Walfleur Sisters
Played by the a cappella quartet The Steinettes, who appeared in Altman's H.E.A.L.T.H.

It has been said of Altman that his dedication to his creative vision tends to make him a director who can be indifferent to the audience’s experience and enjoyment. Aspects of Popeye bear this out. For instance, conceptually speaking, it’s all well and good to decide, since they’re simple townsfolk, no one in Sweethaven should know how to sing or dance. But since it was SOMEBODY’s idea to make Popeye a musical, didn’t it occur to anyone to consider what the audience is being asked to sit through? The concept proves far more fanciful than the reality when parts of Popeye inspire the same squirmy discomfort as those scenes of tone-deaf Sueleen Gay singing in Nashville.

Olive and the Oyls
Olive's Miss Bossypants posture clearly shows the family’s power dynamics.

And why wasn’t all of this more fun? One reason musicals ARE musicals is their potential for emotional transcendence. A musical can be as small, subtle, and offbeat as it wants to be…but that shouldn't mean it can't also be a little joyous and magical. Though “Swee’pea’s Lullaby” always gives me waterworks (which I credit to Robin Williams' endearing performance), it's the rare musical that fails to provide me with at least one good “goosebump moment.” 

There's enough that Popeye does right for me to see it as a triumph of adaptation (and if you’ve seen the live-action versions of The Flintstones, The Cat in the Hat, or How the Grinch Stole Christmas, you know how truly dreadful Popeye could have been), but it's more a movie I'm fond of than a movie I love. 

As much as I still feel Popeye never quite gelled into the movie it had the potential to be, with each passing year, I become more appreciative of its uniqueness and eccentricity. Especially when taking into account it was made at a time when the film industry was starting to embrace the kind of cookie-cutter mediocrity that guaranteed blockbuster multiplex weekends.

It turns out there was real wisdom in Evans’ gamble on Feiffer, Altman, and Nilsson, and in his belief that a movie emphasizing the virtues of individuality should be created by artists who embody those qualities. Altman is a risk-taker, and in his way, a humanist visionary who fought to do right by Popeye by doing it HIS way. 

It's in this way that Popeye feels very much a product of the post-‘70s zeitgeist of optimism and hope. And as an adult-friendly flick geared towards kids, I love that it champions self-acceptance and the nobility of heroism rather than—like the blockbuster Grease—the triumph of conformity and the safety of buckling to peer pressure. 

Spinach Power Couple

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall are the ideal Popeye and Olive. Both are cute as a button and impossibly young here, and since their deaths, their effortless chemistry has taken on a nostalgic poignance. Williams subdued is my kind of Williams, and his Popeye is appealingly naïve and decent. Duvall, doing wonders with her voice, gawky grace, and extravagant eyelids, gives Olive Oyl a comic-lyrical beauty resulting in her being the very best thing in the film. I don’t think Popeye would have worked at all without Duvall in, as Altman put it, “The role she was born to play.”

Although the character of Poopdeck Pappy doesn't make a lot of sense--he's a redeemed villain whose villainy served him no real purpose--Ray Walston is perfect, and this is one of my favorite scenes

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Popeye shares several amusing similarities with Robert Altman’s revisionist Western, McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971). Both are set in small, makeshift settlements built specifically for the films. Both tell stories about loners whose fates are tied to an indifferent town. Shelley Duvall appears in “McCabe,” as does Robert Fortier (Edgar in 3 Women ), who plays the town drunk we see dancing on the ice. In Popeye, Fortier wears the exact same costume in his role as Sweethaven's drunk, Barnacle Bill.

The church in "McCabe" inspired Sweethaven's house of worship, while, in Popeye's wittiest allusion, a woman in an opium haze can be seen staring at a ceramic vase in the "House of ill repukes" that Popeye enters to save Swee'pea.

And both Popeye and "McCabe" are subtle anti-fascism parables. Citing a lyric from the Sweethaven anthem " We're people from the sea, free from democracy," Altman stated: “The thing we're doing in 'Popeye' is showing a microcosm of an oppressed society. The people of Sweethaven are not what they are, they are what people tell them to be.” As one journalist noted, until Popeye stands up to the tax man, the citizens of Sweethaven are happily oblivious to their entrapment and oppression. 

Sounds familiar.

BONUS MATERIAL

THINGS DON'T ALWAYS GO BETTER WITH COKE

The above wheatpaste poster ad for WHITE HORSE hair cream is likely an in-joke added by one of Popeye's craftspersons, poking fun at (or paying homage to) the abundant drug use during filming on Popeye's remote Malta location. In speaking of the shoot, Robin Williams claimed, "We were on everything but rollerskates." While Robert Altman conceded, "There was a lot of cocaine and a lot of drugs going around. Everybody was shipping stuff in."

I won't go into it here, but you're interested in knowing more, just Google: Popeye 1980 Cocaine—the internet is seriously flooded with info about the Maltese Snowstorm.

Clip from "Popeye" - 1980

Copyright © Ken Anderson    2009 - 2025

BACK TO THE BEACH 1987

I've always been a huge fan of those Annette Funicello / Frankie Avalon Beach Party movies. As a staple of Saturday afternoon TV growing up, I looked forward to them for their terrific music, minimal clothing, rhythm-challenged dancers, and engagingly silly plotlines. Essentially live-action cartoons, these lowbrow, low-budget musical comedies were a great deal of mindless fun enlivened by a knowing, slapstick playfulness and an utter lack of pretension. 

Funnier and far more clever than they tend to get credit for, those Annette & Frankie films appealed to me because they always seemed to be in on the joke. Loaded with satirical pop culture references and characters who broke the 4th wall to address the audience, the scripts for these movies knew that they were just soggy, song-filled teen nonsense and seldom passed up an opportunity to poke fun at themselves.

Plus, for a budding cinephile like me, the bonus was having folks like Yvonne De Carlo, Buster Keaton, Elsa Lanchester, Dorothy Malone, Mickey Rooney, and Timothy Carey turn up in minor roles.  

Even as a kid (which wouldn't have been more than a few years after these films were made), I knew that the stiff-haired, clean-cut, parent-free, all-white world of sun, sand, and surfboards these movies took place in was wholly untethered to anything resembling a recognizable reality. (Indeed, the entire Beach Party series borders on absurdist.) But as far as I was concerned, the patent artificiality of it all was just another part of what made these charmingly corny movies so endearing. 

"Are we the corniest couple you've ever seen, or what?|"

In their solo movie appearances, preternaturally boyish Frankie Avalon and eternal girl-next-door Annette Funicello were charismatic as all get-out, but neither had me reaching for my dark glasses to shield me from their megawatt star quality. Annette, whom I've been in love with since her Mickey Mouse Club days, always seemed to level off at "favorite middle-school teacher in a pageant" appealing competency, while Frankie, as a solo screen presence, tended to give facetious, all-surface performances that oozed a vaguely smarmy vibe. 

But together, they were beach blanket magic.

There's an oft-repeated quote attributed to Katharine Hepburn relating to the onscreen chemistry of  Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers: "He gave her class, and she gave him sex appeal."

I wish I could come up with something equally terse and succinct about Annette and Frankie's unique chemistry, for they were truly the heart of those Beach Party movies. They grounded the slapstick antics in something human. You liked them, you cared about them, and you were always rooting for them to end up walking off into the sunset together.  

Why did Annette and Frankie click? I dunno. The best I can manage is that Frankie took some of the starch out of Annette, and Annette made Frankie come across less (to borrow a line from Back to the Beach): "Like an Italian loan shark."

Hip To Be Square

Annette & Frankie made six Beach Party movies together, their final pairing in 1965. For many, this signaled the end of an era. But who would have guessed our suntanned sweethearts were saving the best for last? 

More than two decades after they wrote their last love letters in the sand, Funicello & Avalon reteamed in what both stars have called their favorite and best Beach Party movie: Back to the Beach. 

The debut feature film of Australian telejournalist, photographer, and short film/music video director Lyndall Hobbs, Back to the Beach is a candy-colored, polka-dotted slice of waggish-on-wry that good-naturedly spoofs '60s pop culture and the entire Beach Party genre. Serving up ample doses of surf, sand, songs, and silliness, Back to the Beach is also an affectionate tribute to its stars, who gamely and hilariously send up their own squeaky-clean images.

Annette Funicello as Annette

Frankie Avalon as The Big Kahuna

Connie Stevens as Connie

Costing more than all six Beach Party movies combined, Back to the Beach has Annette and Frankie recreating their singin' & surfin' screen alter egos twenty-two years after their final beach blanket kiss fade-out in 1965's How to Stuff a Wild Bikini. Unable to secure the rights to the characters they created in the original films (most often named Frankie & Dolores, aka " Dee Dee"), for Back to the Beach, Funicello goes by Annette, and Avalon's character isn't given a name at all. Billed in the credits as "Annette's Husband," Avalon is only referred to by his surfer glory days nickname, The Big Kahuna. A running gag has no one being able to get it right, calling him everything from The Big Chihuahua to The Big Caboose.

Demian Slade as Bobby
Serving double duty as narrator and audience surrogate, his sarcastic asides
 give us permission to laugh at Frankie & Annette's outmoded, absurdly wholesome image      

Lori Loughlin and Tommy Hinkley as Sandi and Michael

Now middle-aged and married with two kids, our one-time sun-loving, fun-loving couple have moved far from the beaches of California to suburban Ohio, where they live a life of pink-hued, mid-century modern splendor. But their lives have slipped into a rut. Frankie is a stressed-out used car salesman, Annette self-medicates her middle-class ennui with obsessive shopping (mainly for Skippy Peanut Butter), and their 14-year-old son Bobby (Demian Slade) is going through a rebellious stage (punk, I think) where he dresses like Alan Arkin in Wait Until Dark.

The solution for everybody is a much-needed Hawaiian vacation, but first, a quick detour to California to visit their college-age daughter Sandi (Lori Loughlin, decades before her association with the word “college” got all icky and felonious).

The Friendly Skies

And so, on the sunny shores of Malibu where it all began, our sand dune sweethearts of the Sixties revisit the past (old flame Connie Stevens); confront the present (their daughter did what Annette and Frankie never dared, shacked up with her fiancé); and conquer old demons (surf-phobic Frankie squares off against the Humunga Cowabunga from Down Under). 

And along the way, to the rhythm of surf tunes, pajama parties, and celebrity cameos, love is rekindled, and a happy ending moral emerges: It's never too late to start creating your new "good old days," and when all is said and done, there's absolutely nothing wrong with being corny.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS MOVIE

As an unofficial Mouseketeer overenamored of '60s music, pop culture, Beach movies, and Annette Funicello, in particular, I would appear to have been the ideal demographic for Back to the Beach. But in truth, upon its release, I was among those who mistakenly thought they knew what to expect (i.e., something along the lines of those absolutely dreadful "nostalgia trot-out" TV-movie reunions for shows like Leave It To Beaver and Father Knows Best), so I avoided Back to the Beach like an oil spill. (My looss. I would have loved seeing this on the big screen.)

Joe Holland as Zed
A contemporary beach baddie to replace Eric Von Zipper
(the late, great Harvey Lembeck)

When I finally got around to seeing Back to the Beach on cable TV, I was overjoyed (and more than a little surprised) to discover how deftly this irresistible little gem of a movie subverted all of my expectations. Against all odds and statistical probabilities, Back to the Beach turned out to be this knowing, shrewdly clever, laugh-out-loud funny, musical parody of the entire Beach Party genre. A zany delight from start to finish, Back to the Beach somehow—without being cynical or superior—struck a tone that balanced affectionate nostalgia and mockingly self-referential humor in a manner that created a kind of comic bridge allowing folks who like Beach Party movies sincerely and those who like them ironically to both have a good time.

John Calvin as Troy
In what could be called the "Aron Kincaid" role, Calvin plays a beach lothario
who (in a welcome change from the traditional Beach Party fetishization
of the wriggling female backside) offers some equal opportunity eye candy
in his itsy bitsy, teenie weenie, yellow tiger-striped bikini.

It couldn't have been easy spoofing a genre that spent so much of its time spoofing itself (as Back to the Beach's small army of 17 credited screenwriters most certainly attests), but the payoff is that the jokes--all playfully poking fun at the fashions, mores, music, and relentless cheerfulness of the Beach Party movies--are so varied in approach that they lend the film a loony exuberance. A movie ahead of its time, there's culture clash comedy that predates The Brady Bunch Movie (1995) and snarky riff humor of the sort that would make TVs Mystery Science Theater 3000 into such a hit the following year.

Guitar Legends
Dick Dale ("King of the Surf Guitar") and Stevie Ray Vaughn
Dick Dale & His Del-Tones appeared in Beach Party and Muscle Beach Party

PERFORMANCES 

It has always been something of a fool's errand trying to figure out where the real Frankie and Annette began and where their images ended. While both stars made token bids at counterculture relevance in 1968 (Funicello in the psychedelic Monkees movie Head, Avalon in Otto Preminger's paean to LSD, Skidoo), by and large, the two always seemed comfortable (or resigned) to forever being linked to their screen personas.

This comfort is evident in the fun they two appear to be having skewering their own images in Back to the Beach. The script declares open season on everything from Frankie's helmet hair to Annette's legendarily ample figure (never in a way mean-spirited or at the cost of making them look ridiculous ), and the pair get into the spirit of the things in a way that reveals them to be good sports and possessors of a hipper sense of humor than they've been given credit for. 

It has the cumulative effect of humanizing them, and both stars come off the best they ever have on screen. 

O.J. Simpson's cameo ups Back to the Beach's felon count 

THE STUFF OF FANTASY 

Whatever type it is or whatever it's called, the comic sensibility 

of Back to the Beach is right up my alley. I love my nostalgia on wry. 

(The terrific Demian Slade has most of the best lines.)

Speaking of nostalgia, Back to the Beach is a boomer bonanza of '60s cameos. (Clockwise from top l.) Bob Denver & Alan Hale of Gilligan's Island; Don Adams of Get Smart; Tony Dow, Barbara Billingsley, & Jerry Mathers of Leave it to Beaver; and Edd Byrnes of 77 Sunset Strip.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

What would a Beach Party movie be without music? In Back to the Beach, I like how the movie is a straight comedy until wound-tighter-than-mainspring Frankie drinks a Stunned Mullet at Daddy-O's and then launches into a rousing rendition of The Rivieras' "California Sun" with Connie Stevens. From then on, fun, colorful musical numbers pop up sporadically (but not nearly enough for my taste) throughout the rest of the film.

Frankie, Connie, and Annette all had Top Ten record  
hits during the late '50s and early '60s.

Annette updates her 1964 song "Jamaica Ska" with a  
little help from alt-rock band Fishbone 

Paul Reubens as Pee Wee Herman is joined by the cast to sing
 "Surfin' Bird."  Pee Wee's Playhouse had only premiered the year before. 
In 1988, Annette & Frankie were guests on the iconic Pee Wee's Playhouse Christmas Special

The cast sings "Some Things Live Forever," which failed to
make it to the film's soundtrack LP, but became a staple of 
Frankie & Annette's live concert "Back to the Beach Tour" 1989-1991

I blame it on our Culture of Closure, but there is an undeniable fantasy curiosity (among Boomers, especially) about the imagined futures of fictional characters from our pop culture past. Perhaps because these characters represented such wildly idealized visions of American life, gender roles, and traditional (conservative) values, pursuing the "Whatever became of?" is all about being reassured. 

If those eternal sweethearts Annette and Frankie finally got married and did indeed live happily ever after, then most certainly, those optimistic fantasies they promoted couldn't have been false. Could they?

A FEW OF MY FAVORITE JOKES

BONUS MATERIAL

Although I didn't see Back to the Beach until it began playing on cable TV, I recall at the time that it was heavily promoted with a soundtrack LP, TV commercials (with voiceover by Wolfman Jack), and ticket giveaways. Plus, as above-the-title stars and co-executive producers, Funicello and Avalon made themselves available for countless interviews and talk show appearances. But as director Lyndall Hobbs relates in the film's Blu-ray featurette, the eventual release of Back to the Beach was a virtual wipeout due to Paramount Studios' dwindling enthusiasm for their product. 

Polka Dot Paradise
You have to be a certain age (mine, apparently) to get that Sandi's friend Robin (far right -Laura Lanoil/Laura Urstein) is a throwback to Gidget's best friend Larue, who loved the beach but always wore a ton of clothes to protect her skin from the sun

Paramount (rightfully so, perhaps) saw Back to the Beach as a movie for the public, not the critics. The studio's eventual release strategy—declaring a media blackout and denying the press advance access to the film—may have succeeded in forestalling any anticipated bad reviews and granted their film an opening weekend driven by fan interest and word-of-mouth, but it also gave the impression that Paramount had given up on, or worse, was somehow embarrassed by, Back to the Beach.

Soundtrack LPs became essential movie marketing tools after Saturday Night Fever. The cover of the Back to the Beach album employs a tres-'80s Memphis Design whimsy to suggest the music's Old-School meets New Wave tone. My favorite track: David Kahne's "Sun, Sun, Sun, Sun, Sun," performed over the closing credits by Marti Jones. 

Further evidence of last-minute cold feet on Paramount's part is the fact that in Los Angeles, Back to the Beach was initially set to open on Friday, August 7, 1987, at the high-profile Mann’s Chinese Theater (as per the TWO full-page ads in the Sunday Times)in Hollywood. But opening day saw Mann's Chinese reluctant to relinquish its hold on the Ritchie Valens biopic La Bamba (then in its third week and the unanticipated sleeper hit of the summer) and bumping Back to the Beach to its less-prestigious sister theater, The Hollywood, just up the street. 

Director Lyndall Hobbs

It always surprised me that so little of Back to the Beach's advance publicity referenced its director. One would think that a woman making her feature film directorial debut (carrying her 4-month-old daughter on her hip, no less) with a $12 million musical comedy would be a made-to-order publicity angle. That is until I remembered how the $18 million 1978 Bee Gees musical Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band made its African-American director (Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame recipient Michael Schultz) its best-kept secret. (For his sake, in hindsight, perhaps that was a blessing.)

Lyndall Hobbs’ contributions to making Back to the Beach such a delight are incalculable (it was her idea to turn the script [co-authored by ex-husband Chris Thompson] into a musical), yet despite the film's emerging status as a cult hit, it has remained Hobbs’ sole feature film directing credit. 

For proof of what a miraculous feat and balancing act of nostalgia, music, and humor Back to the Beach truly is, one need look no further than the 1978 unsold TV pilot Frankie & Annette: The Second Time Around. Produced by Dick Clark, this labored, excruciatingly sincere 60-minute episode cast Annette as a Vietnam war widow working as a housemother at a girl's college dorm who reunites with her old flame, Frankie, now a failed pop singer.  A bid to cash in on the nostalgic goodwill ignited by Avalon's recent stint as Teen Angel in the hit movie Grease (1978), the program is 100% of what those Beach Party movies never were: boring.   

Annette and Frankie's final feature film appearance together was in the comedy Troop Beverly Hills (1989). It's a visual gag cameo that has the couple jogging outside The Beverly Hills Hotel, Annette breezily running along (in a hot pink tracksuit calling to mind Lisa Kudrow's "Aunt Sassy" in The Comeback)  singing her 1959 Top Ten hit "Tall Paul," while a winded and trailing Frankie calls out, "Annette, wait up!"  

The highlighting of Annette's effortless athleticism adds a note of bittersweet charm to this amusing coda to the duo's 26-year onscreen association, for in just three years, Funicello would go public with her MS (multiple sclerosis) diagnosis. The first symptoms of which she began to experience while making Back to the Beach. Annette Funicello passed away in 2013 at the age of 70. 

Annette Funicello was the eternal girl-next-door. She first married at age 22 on
Saturday, Jan. 9, 1965. On that day, this comic appeared in newspapers nationwide.

Sure, maybe Annette & Frankie may have been the corniest couple I'd ever seen. 

But they were also one of the most endearing.   

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2023