Palm Springs Weekend (1963) Decided on impulse to re-visit this one for a much needed injection of 1960's nostalgia.......
Released a few weeks before John F. Kennedy's assassination, I think of it in the same way as the bubbly teen musical "Bye Bye Birdie", which arrived earlier in the spring of that pivotal year of '63...(check out the BQ post of 3/22/18 on 'Birdie')
Both films, fashioned by Hollywood middle-agers, imagine a never-never land of innocent youth existing in a kinder, gentler America.....but these technicolored, cheerful fantasies were on the on verge of being upended.....by assassinations, Vietnam and the revolutionary upheavals in politics, generational clashes and the arts of movies and music.
But before all this new stuff hit the fan, you could sit back and watch the Warner Brothers JV roster of hunks and cutie-pies they still kept under contract.....top slabs 'o beef Troy Donahue, Ty Hardin and Robert Conrad, along with Connie Stevens, Warner's fun-sized Miss Congeniality.
From Columbia Pictures, they borrowed rising starlet Stephanie Powers, probably the only cast member within the supposed 18 to 21 range of the principle characters.......(in the standard tradition of youth movies, everybody else in the cast resided in their upper 20's or low 30's..
Though taking place in the desert luxury resort of Palm Springs California, the film mostly unfolds on cheap backlot Warner Brothers sets that look borrowed from their many TV shows. A rowdy busload of college basketball players, led by Donahue arrives to party hearty. Befitting 1963, this gang appears well-scrubbed, crew cutted and all white.....
And the seriously all-white Donahue wastes no time at all falling for Powers, whose stern father (Andrew Duggan) happens to be the Palms Spring Chief Of Police.....(you'd better believe Daddy hits boiling point rapidly at the very thought of beer soaked spring breakers.)
Meanwhile, a spoiled playboy (Conrad), tormented by the neglect of his wealthy father, puts aggressive moves on Stevens, playing a high school senior masquerading as a drinking-age college girl. And Conrad's obnoxious entitlement doesn't sit well with his rival in the wooing of Stevens, a good ole Texas boy (Hardin) who's a vacationing Hollywood stuntman.
Nothing else much worth talking about here.....I'll not waste time on the cornball, dismal comedy relief provided by Jerry Van Dyke, but 'Twilight Zone' fans will love the presence of 9 year old Bill Mumy, already an instant icon for playing the terrifying God-like brat of the classic "It's A Good Life" episode. (He causes no end of chaos here, but doesn't get to wish anyone away to the cornfield...)
Everybody else competently performs, with the exception, as ever, of Donahue, the tall blonde non-entity who somehow surfed his way through 60's movies without any discernible talent whatsoever......(you'll want to turn the sound down during his tortuous attempt at singing during the film's main titles.),,,,, as for the wild party scenes, well, unlike the AIP beach party romps, you won't see the girls in skimpy bikinis, dancing like they just got taser-zapped. Warner Brothers outfits all its young beauties in modest two piece bathing suits and they boogie down like arthritis victims.....
And oddly enough, this lighter-than-air confection was written by Earl Hamner Jr., who'd go on to create the much beloved "Waltons" family drama of the 1970's. He does throw in a few odd touches here and there.....some surprising sexual innuendo between the story's grown-ups (Jack Weston and Carole Cook) and stranger still... sedation gags! No kidding, the police chief's wife sedates him to keep him mellow and Van Dyke tries tranquilizing Mumy so he can canoodle with the kid's babysitter. We can only feel grateful that Hamner kept 'The Walton's roofy-free........
Also worth noting and a perfect example of the era the film was made.....the appearance of the kind of folk-singing group that became a brief pop music fad of the early 60's.....(later gently wittily lampooned in Christopher Guest's 2002 'mockumentary' 'A Might Wind')
I honestly wouldn't recommend "Palm Springs Weekend " to anyone except folks like myself ....who every so often, enjoy a little bit of a 3 star (***) stroll down 1960's memory lane....the people, the attitudes, the fashions......before the world turned all of it upside down......
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