When the Boys Meet the Girls
                                                                                      
Director: Alvin Ganzer
Year: 1965
Rating: 5.0
This musical has one of the oddest eclectic soundtracks I have come across. Were they trying to appeal to a youth audience or my grandparents? It starts off with Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs singing, but for some reason it isn't Woolly Bully which was a big hit for them in this same year. Next, we get the great Satchmo singing Throw it Out of Your Mind. Later on it is two songs from Herman Hermits but again questionable choices - no Mrs. Brown or Henry the VIII. Not to be outdone in the strange choice category, how about Liberace singing Liberace Aruba. In between these artists, there are songs from the stars of the film, Connie Francis and Harve Presnell.

 

Presnell was a musical star in theater who never made the transition to film successfully. Too toothy in my opinion. Connie Francis was the biggest female singing star in the world at the time. She is another lesson for those singers not being successful. Her first ten single releases went nowhere. She was about to quit and go to college when her father convinced her to record Who's Sorry Now, an old song from 1923. It went huge and over the next few years she sold over a million records in multiple languages. Here she sings three Ira and George Gershwin songs, Embraceable You, I Got Rhythm and But Not for Me. Not exactly hip music at the time. A second version of I Got Rhythm is a big ensemble dance number.

 


I love music from any time and any place. Even the Liberace number. But hard to figure out what MGM was up to. It was sort of a reworking of Girl Crazy that starred Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. Been years since I saw that. In this one Presnell plays a rich kid who has to leave town because a girl wants to sue him for broken promises. He enlists in a college near Reno and meets up with Francis whose father has gambled himself into debt. They will lose their ranch unless they can pay it. So Presnell turns her ranch into a Dude Ranch where women going through divorce can stay. It is ok, nothing to get excited about but Francis and Louie are great.