Rock, Rock, Rock!

Director: Will Price

Overview

Rock, Rock, Rock stars 13-year-old Tuesday Weld, who looks 11 if she's a day. Even so, Weld's Dori is trying to get together enough money to buy a strapless gown (she's far more self-confident than she should be at this biological stage of the game). Daddy has cut off Dori's allowance, but gee, she's gotta go to the prom. Nevermind all that, you'll want to see Rock, Rock, Rock for its dynamite lineup of guest stars. In alphabetical order: LaVerne Baker, Chuck Berry, the Johnny Burnette Trio, Jimmy Cavallo House Rockers, Cirino and the Bowties, the Coney Island Kids, the Flamingos, Frankie Lyman and the Teenagers, the Moonglows, and Teddy Randazzo. As a bonus, Connie Francis provides Tuesday Weld's singing voice. And say, kids, it's Alan Freed serving up platters 'n' chatters and stax o' wax on prom night. This marked Valerie Harper's film debut; she was in her teens at the time.

Product Details

Release Date:	10/17/2017
UPC:	5060137488107
Original Release:	1956
Rating:	G
Region Code:	A
Presentation:	[B&W]
Sound:	[stereo, Dolby Digital Stereo]
Language:	English
Time:	1:25:00

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Tuesday Weld	Dori Graham
Chuck Berry	Himself
Alan Freed	Himself
Jacqueline Kerr	Gloria
Ivy Schulman	Baby
Fran Manfred	Arabella
Jack Collins	Father
Carol Moss	Mother
Eleanor Swayne	Miss Silky
Lester Mack	Mr. Bimble
Bert Conway	Mr. Barker
David Winters	Melville
Teddy Randazzo	Tommy Rogers
LaVern Baker	Herself
Frankie Lymon	lui-m?me
Connie Francis	Dori,Dubbed singing for Tuesday Weld
Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers	Actor
Johnny Burnette	Actor
Fats Domino	Actor
Valerie Harper	Actor
Jimmy Cavallo	Actor
Frank Virtue	Actor
Frankie Lymon And The Teen-agers	Actor

Technical Credits

Milton Subotsky

Max J. Rosenberg	Producer,Producer
Milton Subotsky	Producer,Screenwriter

Scene Index

Disc #1 -- Rock, Rock, Rock!
1. I Never Had A Sweetheart [3:48]
2. The Things Your Heart Needs [5:30]
3. Rock Pretty Baby [5:56]
4. Rock N Roll Boogie [2:19]
5. I Knew From The Start [2:56]
6. You Can't Catch Me [2:08]
7. Would I Be Crying [3:01]
8. The Big Beat [3:10]
9. Thanks To You [2:21]
10. We're Gonna Rock Tonight [11:48]
11. Little Blue Wren [9:23]
12. Rock, Rock, Rock [9:02]
13. Lonesome Train [2:20]
14. Over And Over Again [2:26]
15. Tra La La [2:08]
16. Ever Since I Can Remember [2:24]
17. Baby Baby [2:12]
18. I'm Not A Juvenile Delinquent [2:27]
19. One More Chance [3:53]
20. Right Now Right Now [3:29]
21. Chapter 21 [2:43]

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Disc #1 -- Rock, Rock, Rock!
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Editorial Reviews

Rock, Rock, Rock! was the first of three juke-box movies starring Alan Freed, the legendary dee-jay who, as much as anyone else, played an essential role in putting rock 'n' roll on the map. It also happens to be a dreadful movie in most of the areas by which we usually judge a movie's worth -- among other shortcomings, the "plot" is thinner than tissue paper and the acting is barely on a level that would engender the description "amateurish"; what's more, and, seemingly fatally for a movie with those attributes, it never lets us forget that it is a movie. And, yet, for all of those flaws (and one has to see Tuesday Weld's performance to truly appreciate the awfulness that we're talking about), this is still a movie worth watching, as a popular culture and musical artifact of its time. If one concentrates on the musical acts, whose performances take up most of the movie's running time, one gets a sense of a telling moment in American cultural history, when rock 'n' roll captured the imagination of virtually the entire population below the age of 20, and even some of their parents to a certain degree -- and as this was the first full year of the rock 'n' roll boom, a lot of Black acts that would be swept aside later in the 1950's are featured as well. You sort of wish that someone would shove Alan Freed aside in the final performance segment so that we could see Big Al Sears, the jazz saxophone legend, in the center of the screen, but it's pretty cool just hearing him and seeing his band, and it was Freed who brought them aboard on his package tour. Later on, programmers would become more sensitive to racial and sexual sensibilities but here we get sexy, robust La Vern Baker, the elegant Moonglows, the spirited Flamingos, the beguiling Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers, and the totally provocative and lusty Chuck Berry, duckwalking through "You Can't Catch Me," his guitar about as phallic looking a stage prop as anything seen on the screen this side of the bananas in a Carmen Miranda production number -- had a Black man ever before been permitted such a degree of sexual expression (and you can see the delightful, proud smugness on Berry's face, knowing what audience the movie was aimed at) in a movie intended for white audiences? Not to this reviewer's knowledge. The white acts -- even most of the dance bands -- are also pretty good, though there's only one here that matches the Black performers for sheer charisma, and that's Johnny Burnette doing "Lonesome Train."