The Cool Ones

This is a great movie - yes it is a bad movie, but it is great. A stellar cast, a great score and wonderful location shots all over Los Angeles and Palm Springs, circa 1966. Any movie that boasts a musical dance number in the Palm Springs Tramway can't be all bad.

The cast: Debbie Watson and Gil Peterson are perfect. Don't know where they came from, except that Debbie had her own TV series briefly, "Karen". And Gil has a great bod! Roddy McDowell - great as always. Phil Harris is wonderful. Nita Talbot all but steals the show as Roddy's Girl Friday. I mean, this woman is fierce! She shamelessly tries to steal every scene she is in - and does too. She should have been used much more in films. And you even get Terri Garr as one of the dancers. And I didn't even mention Mrs. Miller. This must be her only big screen appearance, so that alone is worth the price of admission.

The plot is a little hackneyed, but who cares. The original songs by Lee Hazelwood are fantastic. Hey, both Frank and Nancy covered "This Town" on their albums. As a spoof of the Hullaballo-type dance programs of the era as well as Roddys apeing of Phil Spector - this movie does try to say something. But that is not what it is about - it is just plain fun!!!

If you get the chance to watch this movie-just relax and enjoy-don't have to think hard here-just good clean fun! As you can see I LOVE THIS MOVIE.

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 ****

Blonde, impossibly handsome Gil Peterson was one of the stars of "The Cool Ones" (1967), a wacky teen movie that poked fun at the music industry and spoofed TV shows like "Hullabaloo" and "Shindig". Peterson, who plays a washed up singing idol in the film, actually began his own career as a singer. Born and raised in Winona, Mississippi, Gil was an outstanding high school athlete who lettered in four different varsity sports. He was voted Best All Around Athlete, Most Valuable Football Player and received the Winona Sportsmanship Award. After graduation, Gil accepted a football scholarship to Mississippi State University and became star halfback for the Mississippi State Bulldogs. It was during Gil's college days that he started singing professionally. Each summer, he would tour the nightclub circuit in the deep South, doing floor shows and working with combos. Gil has said that one of his most enjoyable experiences was working one summer with a modern vocal-instrumental quintet composed of himself and four other college students. Come fall , he would find himself back on the gridiron, but he'd gotten enough of the show biz lifestyle to decide upon it as his future career. After college, Gil headed straight for Hollywood to give it his best shot. He got some bit parts on TV and made guest appearances in night clubs around the Hollywood and Los Angeles area. His singing gigs were impressive enough that Gil was tapped by Ace Label to record his first LP album, "Gil Peterson Sings Our Last Goodbye" (LP1024).

Then came Gil's big break. He was plucked from relative obscurity and given what amounted to the starring role in "The Cool Ones". Roddy McDowell may be first billed, but his thinly disguised take-off on Phil Spector is more a supporting character. Even the tag line for the film reads: "It's the story of Cliff Donner (Peterson)….a teen-age singing idol who had it all….lost it…..and had to find it all over again".

"The Cool Ones" was originally developed as a showcase for Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood to capitalize on their recording success as a duo. Nancy even pre-recorded some songs, two of which are used in the film, before backing out of the project. Her instincts were right. For every bright, zany scene that would inspire future films like Tom Hank's "That Thing You Do!" (1996), there were awkward, embarrassing ones, and the end result is a mixed bag at best. The movie bombed big time at the box office. The era of the lightweight beach party movies was over, and a new wave of edgy, psychedelic films about hippies, LSD and motorcycle gangs was emerging. It didn't help Gil Peterson that he looked more like a member of The Four Freshman than the Grateful Dead. Reviewers were harsh and merciless, and Peterson was dismissed as the living, breathing prototype for the Ken doll.

After "The Cool Ones" flopped at the box office, Peterson essentially dropped out of sight and has become something of an enigma. He showed up every so often on television, but in small, bit parts. He did make two other movies, a very low-budget independent feature entitled "The Brain Machine" (1977) and, intriguingly, a Japanese film shot in New Caledonia, "The Island Closest to Heaven" (1984). It is known that he became a high school teacher and taught at Hollywood High in the 70's. I personally saw him around this time in a little theater play in Hollywood. I was stunned because I immediately recognized him from "The Cool Ones". I wanted to go backstage afterwards and talk to him about his career, but the actress I was with said he'd think I was making fun of him. The play wasn't very good, but Gil Peterson was. It was just a two-character play and the other actor's name, I think, was Frank Stell and he had some buzz going at the time, but Peterson was the better actor. Regrettably, I never went backstage, but saw the play again a second time, alone. A young actor myself back then, I was completely baffled that someone who had "absolute movie star" written all over him, hadn't made it big after "The Cool Ones", and was doing some dumb little showcase still trying to get noticed like the rest of us wannabes. It gave me some pause then, because he really was such movie star material, and it's still curious today that he had no substantial career after the film. Perhaps like Cliff Donner, the character he played in "The Cool Ones", Gil's brief brush with celebrity left him with a feeling of contempt for the business. "The Cool Ones" continues to attract new audiences today despite no official DVD release. IMDb Users are still commenting on it. You Tube is still playing video clips of it. The one consistent comment seems to be from older women who saw the film when they were young and have never forgotten Gil Peterson's remarkable, impossibly handsome, blonde Ken doll looks.

Jay/James McKenna best role, Policewoman "Merry Christmas, Waldo"

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.

"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!