'BYE BYE BIRDIE'.......THE LAST INNOCENT MUSICAL.......

Bye Bye Birdie (1963)   The America depicted here is as sweet, dreamy and fantastical as as any compact little landscape inside a snowglobe......

             Did the America of 'Bye Bye Birdie' ever really exist?  Maybe not as beautifully perfected as a Hollywood musical would have you believe,  but certainly as wide eyed and innocent......

              We trusted our government to do the right things.........we smiled and shook our heads at the antics of teenagers and their crazy 'rock and roll' songs.......we all gathered 'round the TV on Sunday nights to watch the unintentionally cadaverous Ed Sullivan introduce everything from Chinese acrobats to Russian ballerinas to Elvis Presley and the Beatles......

               And we lined up for movie versions of hit Broadway shows. Especially this one, a bubbly confection that mixed old fashioned Hollywood tropes with vibrant energy of new young performers. .......while poking the gentlest of fun at what constituted 1960's pop culture.

              Then 6 months after the release of this film, we watched John F. Kennedy's brains blown out, splattering his wife with gore........and changing our lives and America forever.

              American innocence dissolved and the worst was yet to come.......Vietnam, more assassinations, race riots, Richard Nixon, Watergate........

              No wonder we love watching "Bye Bye Birdie" over and over again.......with its squeaky clean scrubbed teenagers whose only flaws are their addiction to afterschool telephoning and swooning at the swiveling hips of a pseudo-Elvis named Conrad Birdie......

             We've long ago forgiven this movie its many flaws.......primarily coming from director George Sidney's strenuous effort to bend the film into a showcase for rising star Ann-Margaret. Much has been written about Hitchcock's weird obsession with Tippi Hedren,  but for pure unadulterated on-screen ogling, nothing compares to George Sidney's meticulous cinematic travelogues of A-M's scenic wonders.

              Supposedly playing a 16 year old, Ann-Margaret hurls herself into her musical numbers as if auditioning for a Vegas nightclub review......(how appropriate, since both she and director Sidney next moved on to "Viva Las Vegas", with none other than the real Elvis. And Sidney continued his enormous A-M adoration with 1966's "The Swinger", a miniscule vehicle in which Sidney constantly has his favorite starlet stripped, humiliated and rolling around in psychedelic paint........more on that misbegotten epic in a future post, we promise......)

              The Elvis caricature here, as played by Jesse Pearson, reeks of the mocking, condescending attitude that middle-aged filmmakers took toward rock 'n roll singers and their music......he's mostly depicted as a no-talent lunk. But in a movie so lightheaded, harmless and frothy, Pearson's side -o beef heartthrob fits perfectly into the cotton-soft satire of American values.......including the song spoofing the Ed Sullivan show as holy ritual for U.S. families.  (Even the real Ed thought it was all in fun, since he shows up playing himself.....)

                We couldn't finish this review without mentioning the other driving creative force on full display.....choreographer Onna White. With "Bye Bye Birdie", "The Music Man" and "Oliver", White proved herself as the Busby Berkley of 1960's movie musicals, fully decorating the Panavision frame with her platoons of dancers tirelessly bouncing through her memorable moves.  (High school drama clubs everywhere still try to duplicate her intricate funny dance from 'Gotta Lot of Livin' To Do')

                   Living in the unspeakable nightmare of Trump makes us yearn more than ever for that long lost Never Never land of the summer of l963. We can only think our lucky stars we've still got movies like "Bye Bye Birdie" to return to. Forever 4 stars (****)......as the song goes, 'We love you Conrad, we really do....'