Expresso Bongo

It's really about a hustler-turned-agent (Laurence Harvey) and how opportunity comes (and passes him by) via his finding (and losing) the kid-with-talent (Cliff Richard). A scene I liked was where the agent and the label exec (Meier Tzelniker) shamelessly discuss their plans for Bongo Herbert's future - i.e., what can he do for them, never mind what he can do for himself.

This might have been a much more memorable movie with a bit more backing and some rewrites. It starts (and ends) by taking us to the cruddier side of London ca. 1960 - strippers, noisy streets, the grime, the neon-lights - all of it filled with the never-was's and the never-will-be's hoping against hope for That One Break. No U.S. movie at the time would ever have thought of this, whereas this U.K. movie did so without any Hollywood-esque qualms about "how will it play in Peoria?"

Strange to think: when this movie, about a young rocker getting started, was released there was a band of Liverpool kids who got a gig in a dive on the Hamburg Reeperbahn ...

One last bit: check out an uncredited kid named Susan Hampshire. She has four lines but she ante-dates Monty Python's "Upper-Class-Twit-of-the-Year" sketch by 10 years - she does it to a t.