The Cool Ones

"The Cool Ones" is a very bad film. Yet it's an unusual bad film because it's unintentionally funny and offers an odd little window into the strange and exciting late 60s.

The story begins on the set of a show much like "American Bandstand" or "Hullabaloo". A young obnoxious lady, Hallie, is tired of just being one of the professional dancers on the show and she tries (in the worst possible way) to get the producers to listen to her sing, as she has a VERY high opinion of her skills. The worst of it is she insists on all this moments before the show goes on the air. When she doesn't get their attention, she decides to do something insane...she attacks the guy singing on the show (Glen Campbell...before he became famous as a country music singer...when he was a member of the famed 'Wrecking Crew'). She steals his microphone away from him and begins singing...and the two struggle and shake and make fools of themselves. Oddly enough, after she is fired, the producers are shocked to find the audience watching this live LOVED the interlude and thought it was planned! Soon, Hallie is a pop star singing with the talented Cliff and they are being managed by the strange and charismatic Mr. Krum (Roddy McDowell). What's next?

The film is funny because it tries very hard to be young and hip...and fails miserably at every turn. The hip modern music sung by Hallie and Cliff is pretty bland and the sort of stuff old people thought was hip...and which wasn't. Additionally, several old squares (such as Phil Harris) played hip folks...and their trying to be cool was hilariously uncool. Also really uncool was Mr. Krum...who just came off as silly and a parody of the Phil Spector-type producers. Overall, tragically unhip...the sort of thing oldsters thought hippies and other teens would love...but they clearly didn't!

Despite the title, there are other aspects of this movie that got me interested in it. One main reason the movie didn't do so well at the box office was because they were making a 1965 movie in 1967. By the time this movie was released, The Beatles had finished doing official concerts in under a year, the hippies were beginning to organize the "Summer of Love" in San Francisco, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" had pushed sleaze into Oscar territory, and "The Graduate" did more to speak for the kids than any leftover wannabe beach party movie.

Cliff Donner (Gil Peterson) was an early '60's swinging sixties pop singer whose career went into the toilet when some managers suggest he performs some old 1940's music. Think Ricky Nelson going Bing Crosby, and you'll get the idea. Years later Cliff is driving to Palm Springs and stops at a night club owned by Stanley Krumley (Robert Coote), a man he knew from England who ran a club there, and talks him into singing along with The Leaves.

Would-be pop singer Hallie Rodgers (played by the uber-cute Debbie Watson), is struggling to make it big in the music business but has to settle for being a go-go dancer on "Whiz-Bam," an obvious imitation of "Hullaballoo." Frustrated with having the powers that be stall her career, she breaks out of her cage and has an unauthorized duet with the lead signer of Patrick and the East Enders (played by Glen Campbell). The producers are pissed at her, but the kids dig it, and the Whiz-Bam dancers noticed this. Even Patrick notices it, and when a stagehand insults their audience, and the girl is fired, both the Whiz-Bam dancers and the band threaten them "West Side Story-"style (I wish I were kidding!).

Though despondent over being fired, some of her fellow Whiz-Bammers take her to that bar in Palm Springs where Cliff and The Leaves are performing. Suddenly, a guy in his late-20's who looks a lot like Iggy Pop (No, really!) decides he wants to put the moves on her, and he won't take no for an answer. The commotion this guy causes stops the show, Cliff comes to the rescue and throws everybody out, until he recognizes her from the show. He decides he wants get her foot in the door with the dance that everyone on in the audience was doing which he dubbed "The Tantrum." However she wants him to make a comeback in return for his promotion of her.

Then there this whole elaborate number where Gil, Debbie and the Whiz-Bam dancers perform the song "High" in the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway. Leave it to a non-Californian such as myself to be flabergasted over the fact that such a transit system can exist in Southern California, and with a ski lodge too. After it's all over, Krumley tells them that he's about to give the two of them a big break through his brother Tony Krum, a wannabe Phil Spector played by Roddy McDowall. Naturally as expected from these movies, the two fall in love, but Tony Krum wants to be the one who decides when and how they do so. This creates a major kink in their relationship, but Krum doesn't care, and Donner sees what's going on, and poor Miss Rodgers wants to keep both her man and her career. He even goes so far into getting Gil to get involved in a demoltion derby as part of his promotion. One might think this might be more of an attempt to capitalize on movies such as "Fireball 500."

So who else among the dancers are in this movie besides the lovely Ms. Garr? Well, you have a short guy with a goatee, a guy who looks like Howdy-Doody, another guy with a Peter Tork haircut, an Asian-American woman, one token black guy, some other blondes, including one with roots, and a lot of other extras. Sadly I don't recognize them all, although I've heard some names of a few of those people, so maybe I should.

There's a line from the docudrama on the making of "Sweet Sweetback's Badassssss Song" where Mario Van Peebles (playing his father) claimed that in the late-1960's the times were changing, and Hollywood wasn't. Actually there were movies that reflected what was going on (or what people thought was going on), and how people felt about it, and even if this wasn't one of them, it was still farily enjoyable. Let's be honest though; this movie is not only not cool, it's corny, and doesn't know it's corny, unlike, say for instance, "Enchanted." Incidentally, Garr's career started to take off after this movie when she went from being a nobody dancer to roles in a certain episode of "Star Trek," and the 1968 Monkees movie "Head," and the rest is history. So a little art imitating life gives this movie a couple of extra points.

"The Cool Ones" is definitely a second-string musical but it's more entertaining than many of the A-list musicals of the decade and doesn't deserve the obscurity to which it's consigned. It's well-paced, with lots of song and dance numbers, directed by Gene Nelson, who has a great feel for these elements. The real standout in this film is Gil Peterson who greatly resembles Grant Williams. He has enough charisma and talent to pull the whole thing together with a convincing performance and wonderful vocals. If his songs were dubbed, it is incredible how synchronized they were and how appropriately they matched his speaking voice. It's a mystery why this talented, handsome and energetic performer didn't achieve a more successful career.

Unfortunately there is far too much screen time and energy devoted to Roddy McDowall's annoying and overly fey portrayal of the promoter. Could this be an earlier incarnation of Simon Cowell?

Would-be pop singer Debbie Watson inadvertently creates a dance craze on television, quickly dubbed "The Tantrum"; she pairs up with a has-been rock-and-roll star to form a new act that's sure to wow the teenagers! Gene Nelson directed this instantly-dated piece of overripe nostalgia from writer Joyce Geller, whose pale script was also worked on by Robert Kaufman and by Nelson. Eternally-girlish Watson and Gil Peterson (outfitted like a Ken doll) are a laughably tone-deaf pair. If you can believe them as teen-sensations, you may buy Roddy McDowall as a superstar music producer who has his own jet, sits on a purple throne, and has a lackey pick the dirt off his boots. The most bizarre aspect of the movie may be the depiction of young adults acting as direct copies of their own grandparents: they dance and sing, but what they're really pining for is love and the institution of marriage. ** from ****

The Cool Ones is about a pair of singers, Gil Peterson and Debbie Watson who are looking for different things from the music business. Peterson is an already passe rock and roll idol and Watson is a young hopeful. Some elements of A Star Is Born are present as you see.

An egotistical promoter Roddy McDowall gets a hold of them and decides to team them. McDowall's own manipulation cause the road to success and romance to be a bit bumpier than normal.

But McDowall gives a Whiz Bang performance and the goal for both is a debut as a duo on the rock and roll variety show Whiz Bang. Back in the 60s there were such shows as Shindig, Hullabaloo, and Where The Action Is on TV. The culture changed after Woodstock.

Some original rock and roll numbers are about half the soundtrack. But it also includes such standards like Cole Porter's Just One Of Those Things and What Is This Thing Called Love? are there too done in rock and roll style. What Cole Porter might have thought of it we won't know without a seance. But I'm of the opinion that any exposure to Cole Porter is good.

Peterson and Watson are an attractive couple and such other Hollywood veterans like Phil Harris, Robert Coote, Nita Talbot and Phil Arnold give good support. But this is Roddy McDowall's picture like no other.