User reviews

It's been said that Cliff Richard was the UK's equivalent of Elvis Presley. Personally I saw a lot more Ricky Nelson or Frankie Avalon in his musical style. Nevertheless he was and does remain a very big singing star in the British Commonwealth countries though he never was able to make it the USA market as the Beatles who symbolize the next generation of pop stars.

He plays what he is a young musical hopeful who gets discovered by Laurence Harvey, a fast talking British cockney version of Sammy Glick. Harvey gives a nice performance here though he's almost as 'on' all the time as Phil Silvers.

Sylvia Sims is Harvey's patient girl friend who works as a stripper in a Soho club and Yolande Donlon who was an American expatriate in London plays an American musical comedy star who takes a far more than motherly interest in young Richard. Donlon manages to best Harvey, but the man does come out of the battle none the worst for wear.

Expresso Bongo is a realistic look at the British music industry at the beginning of the sixties. Richard sings a couple of songs and does them well in the manner of Ricky Nelson.

Best scene in the film when Harvey gets on a panel discussion show with a minister and psychologist about today's youth and their musical taste. Those two and the moderator were certainly not expecting the shtick Harvey gave them. Worth seeing for that alone.

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.

I wasn't sure what to expect from this film, not having seen it back in the day, or since. In some ways it is perhaps better than I had hoped and in another less so. The problem, for me, seems to lie in the stage musical origins. Never having been a fan of such fare, it is those elements, the all singing, all dancing with lush orchestration that I don't enjoy. The more 'street' sections with the lads getting established, the strip club and marvellous Soho location shooting is fine by me but I don't need fat impresarios singing and 'dancing' especially the incredible, 'Nausea' supposedly about the very youngsters he is promoting. Cliff is fine, strangely enough his wavering and erratic singing voice seeming his biggest problem. He must have sorted that out later by sticking to what he was able to deal with. So, I loved the London streets, the decent enough representation of Soho back in the late 50s, the slightly cheeky strip scenes and although the film is not very even, still harping back to its stage roots, it is very watchable.

I saw Expresso Bongo on cable TV back in 1979 and thought it was marvelous. So I was thrilled when I learned that it would finally released on VHS, though only in the UK, in the mid-1990s. My favorite scene, of course, was the comical highlight. Laurence Harvey is in the record producer's office, he drops the needle on a disc, the gramophone starts playing music, and the two of them strike up a song called 'Nausea'. They get so carried away that they take the song with them out onto the street, where they dance down the sidewalk. Now that I could at last own my own copy and luxuriate in lovely memories, I ordered a copy right away (I had PAL equipment even back then), it arrived by overseas air mail, and I was mortified to see that the 'Nausea' song was entirely missing. I was astonished at how bad the movie was without that sequence.

Since the video derived claimed copyright by the Rohauer Collection, I called Tim Lanza of Rohauer (it was one of two times I ever contacted him) to ask what had happened. He was surprised by the news. He had not seen the VHS, but he assured me that he was familiar with the film and that the song was certainly included in his 35mm prints. He told me that Kino had also licensed VHS rights, and he wondered if they would include or delete the song. He surmised that perhaps there was a rights tie-up issue with 'Nausea' that prevented its use on video, but he really didn't know.

So I wrote to Wolf Mankowitz (yes, I knew him personally, and his wife Ann) and asked if he could intervene. He wrote back saying that the film's producer, Val Guest, had in his old age acquired the only vice he had not known in his youth: stupidity. He had sold all rights to the film for a pittance and now neither Val nor Wolf had any control over it whatsoever.

At the Syracuse Cinecon shortly afterwards, I asked Jessica Rosner if the Kino edition of Expresso Bongo was complete. Of course it was, she said, as if by reflex. But then she stopped for a moment, and remembered that Kino had received a letter from an irate customer complaining about a missing scene, but that nobody at Kino took that letter seriously, because there was no hint of any deletion in the 35mm print they had used, and the running time exactly matched the running time as originally announced in 1959. My heart sank. I told her about the British VHS, and she said, yes, Kino had used precisely the same 35mm source that the British VHS had derived from. I told her and others at Kino that Tim Lanza of the Rohauer Collection had that scene and that they should go to him for any reissues. Other Kino staff by then had become fed up with me, saying that sales had been poor and that any further restoration would not be financially viable. End of story.

A few years later, in 2002 I think, I met with some movie-buffs at a restaurant in Manhattan. One fellow at the table, whose name I can no longer recall, was an employee of Kino's new DVD division. I asked him if the recent Expresso Bongo DVD was finally complete. He smiled from ear to ear and said that he and others had crawled through all the archives in England but could not find a print with the 'Nausea' song, and so, no, sadly, the DVD was the same as the VHS. I shouted back: 'TIM LANZA HAS IT!!!! WHY DIDN'T YOU ASK TIM LANZA? HE'S THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER!' My outburst made no impression.

According to rayshaw44 who posted a query to the IMDb bulletin board, there are two other songs missing as well: 'I Never Had It So Good' and 'Nothing Is for Nothing'. He could well be right!

Face it. Now with two VHS editions and a DVD edition that are all butchered, Expresso Bongo has a new 'definitive' version, and chances that more than a handful of people will ever see the complete edition are vanishingly small. Unless, of course, we want to pool our resources, license the film, and issue our own DVD when the other video licenses expire. Anyone interested? rjbuffalo@rjbuffalo.com

This was actually much better than I thought it could have been. And for a younger viewer it provides a snapshot of how Cliff really was once hip, belying his now ubiquitously and perennially uncool image. However, not being any sort of director or producer, it is very rare I ever have an insight of how I would remake a film. In the right hands, though, you sense the germs of a story that could have been executed with far more pathos - in the manner of say, a 'Darling' or even an 'All About Eve'. Entertaining as it is, it falls far short of being even the best Cliff film.

Lawrence Harvey is - for the first time that I've seen - badly miscast as the sleazy agent with a heart. He never quite gets to grips with the deeper layers of the amoral Johnny Jackson and the accent flits around hopelessly compounding the problem. You imagine what a Dirk Bogarde or even a young Peter Sellers might have done with such a role? Yolande Donlon portrays 'American star' on autopilot and the sexual tension is far too underplayed (although probably a fear of the censors more than anything else). Cliff is reasonably endearing, but is laughable as any sort of 'British Elvis' - one watch of King Creole (which this film surely owes a lot to) demonstrates Elvis as a far superior actor, albeit one who was never really given a chance to shine. He also inevitably always managed to wear his outfits - however outlandish - with far more panache than the embarrassing costumes Cliff is forced to don (check out the swimming trunks/shoes/socks combo!). Only Sylvia Syms is amiably convincing, but is never really given adequate chance to shine in the role of stripper-with-a-heart Maisie King.

At the root of the problem is a makeshift script which suffers from not knowing what it wants to be? Is it a morality tale? Light entertainment? A document of a short era of London's youth culture? Or simply a quick buck being made off what I imagine was expected at the time to be Cliff's fleeting popularity? Whilst there are flashes of wit and the odd great scene, these are counterbalanced by irrelevant unfunny scenes (such as those involving the inexplicable buffoon children of Donlon's publicist?) and insufficient background characterisation of all the leads. It also lacks sufficient songs of a quality which could help carry it - only Voice In The Wilderness even vaguely stands up as credible, and even then it's not exactly 'edgy'.

In short it's not by any means the worst way to spend 90 mins on a Sunday afternoon or suchlike, but you may end up wishing for what could have been so much more...

Laurence harvey was a huge film star in the 1950s and 1960s. Cliff richard really was a heart-throb singer, and was supposed to be the elvis of england. When hustler/agent johnny jackson spots bert rudge singing and playing bongos in a joint, jackson is sure he can make him into something huge. And make plenty of dough for himself! But dixie collins has plans of her own! And she's willing to cut bert in for a bigger percentage. It's pretty good! A little campy... apparently this started as a musical show, so every now and then they break out in song. The synchronized dancing of the three teen couples in the nightclub was just silly and awkward. A fun bit where they sing "nausea", and take it out on the sidewalk! It takes a little while to catch on to the heavy brit accents. And some pretty adult material in the stripper stage show about ten minutes in! Directed by val guest. Story by wolf mankowitz. Laurence harvey died so young at age 45.

A British radio show asked for people to ring in to tell them what they thought was the worst film ever made. Several people mentioned Expresso Bongo. This might not be the best film ever made, but let us be fair: I can think of at least a couple of hundred films worse than this.

The story tells of the exploits of an unscrupulous theatrical agent (Laurence Harvey) and how he tries to exploit a young rock 'n' roll singer (Cliff Richard).

Even if you don't like the film, you can play "spot the uncredited performers." Burt Kwok is in there, as is Susan Hampshire. Carole Ann Ford is supposed to be there, but I am yet to detect her. If you think you have seen the TV psychiatrist somewhere before...it's Patrick Cargill.

Some parts of the film are right. It gets the atmosphere of the 2i's coffee bar from which the British rock scene sprouted more or less right. But the show is stolen not by Harvey or Cliff Richard but by Cliff Richard's backing group The Drifters (later to become The Shadows.) There is a scene in a coffee bar where they rock out an instrumental. That's worth watching in itself. This scene also includes some rare footage of Jet Harris's Framus bass guitar. Rock historians take note.

Watching any film 50 years after you last saw it is, at any time, a mildly unnerving experience. A film that boasts the dubious title 'Expresso Bongo' and features a not-greatly post-pubescent Cliff Richard should have provided a strong warning that turning back the clock is not always a good idea but, actually, this was a great pleasure. Based on a successful stage musical and set in the heart of the Soho music industry of the late 1950s as it comes to terms with rock and roll , 'Expresso Bongo' retains a salty edge even now. Laurence Harvey plays a chancer who happens to come across a young rocker (Cliff Richard) who he seeks to exploit shamelessly but who then proves more than a match for him. With a sharp, pungent and funny script (by 50s star writer Wolf Mankowitz) and plenty of night location shooting in Soho, the film fizzes along for the most part, resembling 'Sweet Smell of Success', but with songs and a slightly softer edge. The version on this DVD has been shorn of its extrinsic musical numbers (including one sung by old-style musical promoter Maier Tzelniker that I remember well, starting 'When I compare these little bleeders to the chorus from Aida….nausea!') but still has time for the wonderfully cynical 'Shrine on the Second Floor', as Cliff is propelled into religiosity to further his career. Harvey's weaselly good looks are just right and Sylvia Sims is very sexy as his long-suffering stripper girlfriend. Even Cliff acquits himself well, with just the right amount of ambivalence as to his complicity (including being asked, not for the last time, why he has no girlfriend). In a film where everyone is either on the make or being exploited, sometimes at the same time, there is at least one poignant real-life parallel. The distinguished stage actress Hermione Baddelley here plays a veteran street tart. She has a couple of affectionate scenes with Harvey, with whom, despite their age difference, she had a relationship in the early 1950s just as his career was getting under way. Now, Harvey was on a roll and would shortly go to Hollywood on the strength of his next film, 'Man at the Top'.

An unusual mixture of musical and melodrama, principally set in the expresso bars and strip clubs of contemporary London, this is an unusually candid snapshot of life amongst the lower echelons of society struggling to make a life in the shadows of the big city's bright lights.

As the movie opens, after its novel title sequence with the credits amusingly displayed on everyday items like a cafe's food menu or a sandwich-board man's hoardings, we immediately encounter Laurence Harvey's spivvy go-ahead agent, trying to find the next best thing who'll make his fortune. He and his pretty girlfriend, Sylvia Syms, live openly together in a crummy flat, just up the road from where she works nightly in a strip club. She too wants to escape her rat-hole existence as a respectable singer and dancer but Harvey doesn't see it and instead focuses his full wide-boy attention on a talented young singing bongo-drum playing youngster he encounters in an expresso bar, hence the film's unusual title.

This of course is evergreen U.K. pop star Cliff Richard in a very early role, at the time being promoted as Britain's rocking equivalent to Elvis although he later in the 60's came to publicly wear his Christian and Conservative beliefs on his sleeve and became an anodyne all-round entertainer. Here, he still has his teenage quiff and pout as he attempts a James Dean / Elvis type broodiness. However while he's fine in the few songs he gets to sing, including his big hit of the time "A Voice In The Wilderness", his acting is terribly callow and wooden.

When the teen star's career starts to take off after a guest appearance on a comeback TV special for an ageing glamour-puss blonde singer, Yolande Dolan, the film becomes a Faustian battle for the poor boy's soul, taking in Harvey, an older rival record company executive, Meier Tzelnicker and Dolan who becomes the lad's sugar mummy.

Surprisingly cynical for the time, it's also unusually adult too with some adult language thrown in, while the first major scene lasciviously takes in a bunch of scantily-clad young strippers performing their mildly titillating routine to salivating old men in dirty raincoats. Then it cuts to Harvey and Syms in her down-at-heel flat where his intention is only too plain while Richard's Bert Rudge / Bongo Herbert character lives in a crowded flat with his grasping mother, drunken dad and the rest of his many younger brothers and sisters.

It's a grubby, distinctly unglamorous, backstreet world, full of hustlers and wannabes, which is later contrasted with the fake glitter of showbiz glamour and is vivaciously directed by Val Guest. I preferred the dramatic elements to the musical interludes especially when the largely unexceptional songs are spread around the main cast who infrequently burst into song. Harvey is manic in the lead role, although "Oy vey!" his Jewish accent is hopelessly exaggerated and out of place. Syms and Dolan are better in their more sympathetic roles but Richard at this early stage, his singing apart, is really just eye-candy for his teen fan base, especially when required to pose in a pair of skimpy shorts for Dolan's delectation. One wonders what the octogenarian mum and indeed grandmum's favourite thinks now when he looks back at this sometimes racy, amoral film.

For me the musical and dramatic elements more often clash than mesh, but with its madcap energy and unvarnished depiction of life at the bottom, it often overcomes its cliched storyline and patchy acting to beat out an interesting and entertaining movie.

Laurence Harvey gives an agonizing performance in the agonizing "Expresso Bongo," a British film from 1959.

A fast-talking low-life agent, Johnny Jackson (Harvey) discovers a young bongo player/singer (Cliff Richard) from a poor family, renames him Bongo Herbert, and brings him to stardom by wheeling and dealing. Shades of Colonel Parker, especially when he takes half of Bongo's earnings.

When the singer meets an American star, Dixie Collins (Yolande Donlan) who is making a triumphant return to London, Jackson starts to lose control of his talent.

I have no idea what Laurence Harvey, normally a very fine actor, thought he was doing in his portrayal of Johnny Jackson. He comes off like an imitation of Phil Silvers, except when Phil Silvers did this kind of shtick he was hilarious. He's way, way over the top.

I watched this film because I wanted to see the young Cliff Richard. Richard was not in this film enough, nor did he sing enough. The speaking voices of some of the other actors, such as Avis Bonnage as Bongo's mother, and Sylvia Syms as Jackson's girlfriend Maisie) were so annoying and incessantly high pitched and screamy, at one point I nearly stopped watching. Richard himself is very natural, not really acting, and he did well in the musical numbers.

Sir Cliff Richard was the U. K.'s answer to Elvis and has more top 10 hits than any other artist, spanning a remarkable 50 years. He has the third-highest number of #1 hits in the UK, behind Elvis and The Beatles.

He's an institution. And I hated this movie. Like some of Elvis', it's pretty unwatchable. It's a shame we couldn't do better by our national treasures.

The missing Nausea sequence was included in the version shown on the British TV channel 'Taking Pictures'. It's an amusing interjection, with very little in common with the rest of the film. The film is a genuine period piece, and worth watching, despite Laurence Harvey's exuberant performance with its range of accents.

A baby-faced Cliff Richard drinks and smokes (less than convincingly) and hates his mother in this lively satirical musical from Val Guest. He's the find of hustler-cum-manager Johnny Jackson (played with a manic, exhausting energy by Laurence Harvey that's quite exhausting) who grabs every opportunity to spotlight his young star and line his own pockets. Sylvia Syms plays his sweet, long-suffering stripper girlfriend. The songs are a bit hit and miss, and tend to arrive like buses, but the film is surprisingly entertaining.

Ignore anything or anybody that denigrates Espresso Bongo. It is loaded with period detail and attitude, is singularly risqué for it's time and sports great music and one of the best scripts about England's Tin Pan Alley, wisecracking and inside, besides an unprecedented performance by Laurence Harvey as you've never seen him, a hustler who recalls Sidney Falco in the "Sweet Smell of Success". Maier Tzelnicker is tremendous as the record company executive who calls it "rock dreck". Yolanda Donlan, Val Guest's wife, plays a "Sweet Bird of Youth" like aging diva Alexandra Del Lago who seduces Cliff Richard, whom many called the Pat Boone of England. See the opening strip number when the girls perform a burlesque version of the "Bonnie, Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond". It sets the tone for an overlooked gem. A "B" Movie Classic. Enjoy.

Fine. A 'time capsule' some reviewers say. I say you should rebury this as it has not aged at all and is way, way over the top and a complete joke.

If you think bongos are cool then this is your movie. Overacting hipsters? Check. Outdated music and lyrics? Check. Irony to the nth degree? CHECK CHECK CHECK.

You have to be in your mid-seventies at least to think this is watchable and actually enjoyable. For me, at age 65, it was like fingernails down a chalkboard.

Not having had the opportunity of seeing this film way back in 1959, I have traveled back in time to do so now. What a disappointment! It featured Harry Web, better know now as Sir Cliff Richard, whose name as he was then already known as Cliff Richard, did hardly do him any favor. It is a poor irritating movie even for its time. The only savior was him singing two of his early hits, which earned this film my 3 stars. The ending was even botched up. What a waste of time! Just for the record I was and still am a fan of Cliff Richard who subsequently produced many good songs backed up by his band, The Shadows.

Harvey's performance is akin to Cary Grant in His girl Friday which I term "Cary Grant unleashed" Like Grant, Harvey takes his character and far from overacting rather sets the screen on fire. As for the movie itself,it lags when Harvey is not on the screen and it needs another actress in the Dixie roll who can somehow match Harvey. Dixie drags down the last third of the film. For the legions who deem Harvey's career as a series of zombie-like performances, Bongo turns that opinion on it's ear. Cliff Richard does a good job in his first screen roll. Beware of the current DVD release. It does not have several musical numbers and this greatly mars the movie.

Featuring a veritable 'who's-who' of great actors Laurence Harvey, Eric Pohlman, Susan Hampshire, Sylvia Syms, Martin Miller (in a bunch of throwaway scenes), and many others), this film captures the 'changing of the guard', as it were, as the youth music - the then-burgeoning rock and roll was just being born in the UK. The dialogue - esp. Mr Harvey's - is rat-a-tat fast, like another commenter (rayshaw44) of this film noted, is akin to His Girl Friday's. As for another commenter (LHL12), I have a beautiful print of the filn, and it contains the 'Nausea' sequence, as well as the others mentioned. I'm writing this almost a decade after they wrote their comment (actually a long interesting story of this films butchering), and therefore I don't know if they're aware that a complete version of 'Bongo' isn't that hard to find (though I DO totally understand and commiserate, being a completest myself, I'm a stickler for the 'correct', unadulterated versions of things). To say this is a film by a great master, like a Fellini or a Kubrick, it isn't. But there was a wonderful period in postwar England that the film business percolated (a pun), and many wonderful small films of all varieties were made. This is one of them. It makes me (as one who wasn't yet born) both fond of, as well as a bit misty-eyed, as the homogenous days we are now in leave no room for an individual's voice. I highly recommend Espresso Bongo.

This is kind of an annoying low-budget film, but at least I, an American, got to see what the fuss used to be about the UK singer Cliff Richard, whom I had never seen before. I also have never seen Lawrence Harvey in a semi-comedic role. He seemed as if he were on speed, or coke; very annoying. I kept yelling, "Give the guy a Valium!" And his accent drifted from plummy English to South African to European Yiddish, and back again. Most disconcerting.

But watch the film for future celebs! There's Hermione Baddley (who was on "Maude"), playing a street-walking prostitute (!), there's Burt Kouwk (who played Cato in all those Pink Panther movies), playing a dissolute Soho youth, and Susan Hampshire ("Upstairs, Downstairs," and various TV movies).

The film's depiction of Soho reminded me of old American films' depictions of 42nd St. in N.Y. Really cheesy.

And apparently there wasn't too much censorship of British films then, because we see in this film lots of true female nudity (the strippers in the film). Man, I haven't seen breasts like those in ages! (All natural, all non-augmented.) See this as an interesting historical time capsule.