20th Century Fox had a lot of success with movies starring Elvis Presley and Pat Boone so it's no surprised that they snapped up the remake rights to The Singing Idol, a TV play starring Tommy Sands. It wasn't a big hit but this isn't a bad drama about singing idol Sands feeling a pull towards his religious up brining.
The film makes some mistakes. It was in CinemaScope but not colour, which I feel was an odd decision. Apart from financial reasons maybe they figured that black and white suited the heavier drama of this (as opposed to something like say April Love) - but why do CinemaScope?
Even more importantly, the film holds off Sands visiting his dying grandfather until one hour into the film. That's meant to be the guts of the plot and they delay it. Instead they bring in this plot where Sands strikes up a friendship with a yokel delivery boy played by Nick Adams; and O'Brien gets testy about Adams and Sands and Adams hang out.
Why did they do this? Did they want to build up a part for Adams? If so why not cast Adams in the the role of O'Brien's off sider who is kind of a moral conscience figure? Instead we get all this screen time with Adams, who has nothing to do with the central theme; we have to sit through a big monologue where Adams has been arrested and talks about how hard life is. Why not make Adams Sands' brother at least? Have some reason for Sands to stick by him? From what I saw, Adams was basically using Sands (which actually would've been a lot more interesting dramatically) - there's no reason Sands should stick by him. It's a waste of screen time.
There's not enough romance either. There's a girl he knows from childhood but we don't really met her until an hour in. The role was sketchy in the TV play - she just sits and listens - but unfortunately it's not improved here, when it should have been.
And there's not enough granddad. The Jazz Singer starts off with the conflict straight away - we see the cantor and the kid, then the kid starts singing and he and the cantor have a big fight and the kid takes off. Why didn't they do that here? The grandfather here isn't much of a character - we never see him raising Sands or dealing with him before he's sick. He just turns up in bed. This was an issue in the TV play but it didn't matter that much with a 50 minute running time. It matters at feature length.
The film lacks star power. The girl, Lili Gentle, is okay but a bit minor league (in her defence she doesn't have much of a role to play). Edmond O'Brien sweats his way through his role as a manager - he's not that much better than Fred Clark but I guess O'Brien was coming off an Oscar win at the time.
Tommy Sands however is good - he can sing, he's got presence and can act. It's not his fault the film flopped though he was probably blamed for it. The fault is Claude Binyon, who wrote the script, and Henry Ephron, who directed it. And whoever idea it was to build up the Nick Adams part
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