Play It Cool

I don't know how many times I've see this during my life, but today watched it with as much pleasure as always. A light hearted rock 'n roll movie with some great music.

To the critic of the film Play It Cool starring the One & Only Billy Fury - Billy was the British King Of Rock'n'Roll and this film was appreciated by thousands of his fans (and still is). The storyline may be weak by todays standards but to have Our Billy on film for posterity is BILLYant. Your comments are disrespectful to Billy and his many fans worldwide. You don't know what you are talking about....and who will remember you 23 years after you have died! By the way, he's not died - he's just stopped breathing and will live on in the hearts of so many. Take a look at www.billy fury.com (Billy Fury - The Story) and see just how popular Billy Fury still is and join his fans'n'friends on the message board - I dare you! Rock On Like Fury!

Shown this and Helen Shapiro's only other movie 'It's Trad Dad' side by side you'd be hard pressed to say which director was to prove the one to watch - and it's hard to remember now that fifty years ago Michael Winner seemed promising.

But that WAS a very long time ago, when beatniks rather than hippies were parodied (Marianne Stone had recently played a similar role for Stanley Kubrick in 'Lolita') and 7/6d seemed like an extortionate sum to be billed in a nightclub.

Winner seems to have been working with a bigger budget but an even triter script than Lester, and the heroine (Anna Palk) is that old cliche from thirty years earlier: a runaway heiress! Winner nevertheless breezes with gusto through all this nonsense and it's all pleasantly enjoyable to sit through.

"Well that's it everybody! Keep twisting!!"

With 1962 being a strange time for rock 'n' roll in both America and England, it's a wonder that "Play It Cool" is as entertaining as it is. British rock star Billy Fury plays an Elvis wannabee named Billy Universe who curls his lip and moans just like his hero, but exaggerates his hand movements to the point where he looks like a spastic Bobby Darin. When Billy and his wacky band members get stranded in London with an heiress who's looking for her no-good boyfriend, they make the rounds of the city's pubs and clubs, stumbling upon a place where a trio is singing the squarest music imaginable, then heading on to a spot called The Twist where everybody's twisting (the latest dance craze when "Play It Cool" was being filmed, but stone dead by the time the film was released), then dropping in on a Chinese-themed restaurant called the Lotus Club where pop star Helen Shapiro is crooning in front of a phalanx of violinists. A visit to another club finds American teen idol Bobby Vee (who began his career as a Buddy Holly sound-alike) spooning drivel in front of another bank of violins. Through it all, Billy Fury gets to sing a handful of songs, including a sappy ballad, a twist, an uptempo number called "I Think You're Swell" and a fairly good rocker called "Play It Cool." In other words, this movie is musically all over the place, because the producers were trying to please everybody at a time when the music was rapidly changing. To bind all the musical interludes together, there are lots of little subplots and shots of Billy and his boys running through Gatwick Airport and Houston Station (more than a year before the Beatles did the same thing in "A Hard Day's Night"), but in the end it doesn't add up to much simply because the music is so uniformly unmemorable. Billy Fury is a sympathetic presence, but perhaps the most intriguing artist in "Play It Cool," at least for Americans, is teenage star Helen Shapiro, who sings two numbers, including one of her singles, "I Don't Care." America never really had anything like this bouffant contralto, unless you combine Annette Funicello with the foghorn voice of Timi Yuro. Helen is one of the most awkward performers I've ever seen (more so here than in her film debut, "It's Trad, Dad"), and yet I couldn't take my eyes off her strange beauty. Her career was fading fast by the time she appeared in "Play It Cool," but she's probably the best reason to watch it.

In 2003, I was responsible for having the one remaining print of this film repaired and shown in a full-scale, traditional cinema for the first time in about 35 years - appropriately the screen backed a stage on which Billy Fury actually performed twice. It is true that many very poor pop music films were produced in Britain in the early 1960s. Play It Cool is not, however, a poor film. It has a charm, drive and integrity that singles it out from the dross. Billy Fury never claimed to be a natural actor. In interviews, he said repeatedly that he was keen to take cameo roles that gave him the opportunity to focus with intensity on his character. However, Play It Cool placed on his shoulders the responsibility of accepting the entire focus of the plot, and he brought energy and imagination to the role. Michael Winner has often remarked on the respect he felt for Billy Fury in accepting a star role in a medium that was so foreign to him, and in delivering such an authoritative performance. I am more than happy to simply endorse Mr Winner's verdict.