MovieChat Forums > Go, Johnny, Go! Discussion > Exactly when was this movie made?

Exactly when was this movie made?

posted 18 years ago by efffee
4 replies | jump to latest

Though I read January 1959 as filming date in one of the comments,the omission of certain songs and even differences in perorming styles have led me to think early 1958 may have been more accurate. " "Lonely Teardrops" by Jackie Wilson was a big hit at the time, but not performed. He peforms "You Better Know It", A Coral recording that was made earlier in 1958 but reisssued in mid 1959,after Wilson had 3 consequtive hits. The soft singing "ballad "style of Ritchie Valens exibitted in " Donna" and even Come On Let's Go was missing. "Ooh My Head" perforemd in film, a la Little Richard, was an earlier recording of his. The Flamingos' two songs in film were up tempo. In early 1959, The Flamingos had two consecutive releases which were ballads: the now legendary " Lovers Never Say Goodbye " and "But Bot For Me". They topped that off with "I Only Have Eyes For You", thier biggest hit. Eddie Cochran had hits with "Summertime Blues" and "C'mon Everybody", the latter half of 1958. These songs wer not in the film. Jimmy Clanton did not perorm " Just A Dream" , his first and bigest hit , from mid 1958.

[–] The_Dying_Flutchman 17 years ago

I've read that Zasu Pitts was a huge fan of doowop and had salons with many early rockers. Needless to say, but I will anyway, this was very surprising to my bad self.

Nothing exists more beautifully than nothing.

[–] Akureyri 17 years ago

All of the songs presented in this film were recorded by the artists prior to May 1958. I do not know why this film was shelved for a year and not released in the Summer of 1958. It must have been a strange experience for teenagers in June 1959 to see this film in a cinema, featuring music that was popular more than a year before.

--Akureyri

[–] Chesterfield_Invincible 12 years ago

I know I am nearly five years late with this reply, but I had posted in the trivia section that Buddy Holly & The Crickets were offered guest performances in this film, but their manager turned it down. Had they been in the movie, then The Crickets would've probably done "Think It Over", while Buddy would've most certainly had done "Well...All Right". As for the picture sitting on the shelf for over a year, my educated guess is that Hal Roach had problems picthing his film from distributer to distributer, starting with the big boys like MGM and Warners, eventually after a year, making his way down to a small-timer called Valiant Films. I wonder if he offered it to AIP which could've exploited it better?

[–] fbm72751 10 years ago

Bad things happened to rock & roll in 1959 so that may have been one reason why it was shelved----in one way surprised that it was released at all. There was the Buddy Holly plane crash in February, the Jerry Lee Lewis scandal in late 1958 and the payola scandal in 1959 which ended Alan Freed's career & derailed Chuck Berry's for about 5 years. Elvis was in the Army & that didn't help matters although a few great songs of his would hit the charts that year.