A right Bongo Herbert

Gail-Nina, source of all sorts of cultural gems, loaned us the DVD of Expresso Bongo. She described it as "Cliff Richard's first musical", largely, I suspect, for the pleasure of this entirely truthful but entirely misleading description. Yes, that's how it is now largely remembered, and yes, Cliff plays the part of a singer / bongo player who becomes a star, and even, yes, his rôle is central to the film - but it isn't a 1960s Technicolor romance in which Cliff plays the nice boy who gets the girl.

For one thing, it was released in 1959. Cliff's first records were released in 1958, and that includes Move It: I'd guess that when he was cast he was less of a star than he had become by the time the film hit the cinemas. He gets second tier billing, below Laurence Harvey, Sylvia Sims and Yolande Donlan. It's Laurence Harvey's film. He plays Johnny Jackson, a wheeler dealer, a sharp operator on the edges of the music business, who sees Cliff's potential, launches him on the road to stardom and is outsmarted by even sharper operators.

I wasn't entirely persuaded by his performance. Perhaps the problem is his accent, which is ostentatiously East End Jewish, and not all that convincing. Johnny Jackson is a man playing a part, in that he is perpetually selling something to someone, and at times this slips into an acting style which is more theatrical than cinematic. In the early scenes especially, I was very conscious that Wolf Mankowitz's screenplay is based on his earlier stage play. In addition, all the characterisation is quite simple: the film is comedy, quite sharply observed, cynical comedy, but comedy, and the characters are reduced to types to serve this.

Cliff, for example, plays Bert (short for Herbert) Rudge, a young man who enjoys singing but who declares that his real passion is for playing the bongos. His first song, in a coffee bar to which Johnny has been dragged by his girlfriend, is a reminder that he was initially promoted as the British Elvis; he lacks passion, but then he is surely miming. Johnny sees his potential, and the way all the girls are drawn to him, re-names him "Bongo Herbert" (which has to be intended humourously) and signs him up. (The real pleasure of the coffee bar scenes is that the musicians are Jet Harris, Tony Meehan, Hank Marvin and Bruce Welch, not credited - and still, I think, the Drifters, not yet the Shadows - but unmistakable). Bongo accepts his new name, relinquishes his bongos and does as he is told. He signs a contract splitting his earnings 50 - 50 with his manager, Johnny - later this is treated as outrageous, although considering the stories told by some pop stars, and the fact that Johnny does seem to hand over 50% of the gross, I'm not so sure.

There are some oddly prescient moments in the story of how Johnny builds Bongo's career. He inveigles his way onto a television programme in which Gilbert Harding, playing himself, examines the phenomenon of teen culture (or rather, the depraved tastes of the young, who enjoy listening to this terrible noise; I was amused to note that they do this while drinking coffee) with the help of a smarmy vicar and a supercilious psychiatrist (Patrick Cargill), which made me think of Malcolm Muggeridge confronting Mick Jagger. Stranger still, this gives Johnny the brilliant idea that the way forward for Bongo is religion, with the appalling The Shrine on the Second Floor...

Despite all of which, the best thing in the film is the opening credits, a tour of Soho by night.