Rock, Pretty Baby (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Aug 12, 2025
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
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Director
Richard BartlettRelease Date(s)
1956 (June 17, 2025)Studio(s)
Universal-International (Kino Lorber Studio Classics)- Film/Program Grade: B-
- Video Grade: A-
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: B-
Review
As a rock-‘n-roll teenage romantic/family melodrama, Rock, Pretty Baby (1956) is only fair, but as an artifact of its time, as one of the earliest rock-‘n-roll movies, and for its unusual cast, it’s rather interesting. A kind of homogenized Rebel Without a Cause, its casting of Sal Mineo and Edward Platt from that film exhibits that obvious influence, while the furtive emergence of rock in movies, beginning with Bill Haley & His Comets cover of Rock Around the Clock over the main titles of Blackboard Jungle (1955), and cheap jukebox musicals like Rock, Rock, Rock! (1956) was another. Universal-International’s film was one of the first of its kind, in production prior to the release of Elvis Presley’s movie debut in Love Me Tender, released just weeks prior to Rock, Pretty Baby.
Sal Mineo, fresh from his Academy Award-nominated performance in Rebel Without a Cause, is top-billed, but in fact his part is really a supporting one, and pretty inconsequential at that. Instead, the narrative revolves around high school senior Jimmy Daley (John Saxon) and his family: medical doctor father Thomas, Sr. (Edward Platt), Jimmy’s understanding mother, Beth (Fay Wray), pubescent kid sister “Twinky” (Shelley Fabares), and younger brother Thomas III (George “Foghorn” Winslow).
Jimmy is an aspiring musician, leader of the “Jimmy Daley Combo” rock band that includes classmates Angelo Barrato (Sal Mineo, on drums), “Ox” Bentley (Rod McKuen), “Fingers” Porter (John Wilder), “Half-Note” Harris (Bob Courtney), and “Sax” Lewis (Alan Reed, Jr.). Jimmy desperately needs $300 to buy a new electric guitar but his parents refuse to loan him the money, forcing him to hock a set of pricey books given to him by his father for his studies.
At a gig for a local fraternity party, where the boys there are only interested in making out with their dates, Jimmy meets Joan Wright (Luana Patten), an aspiring composer herself, though Jimmy’s need to appear aloof and not “fall for some dame” pointlessly strain that relationship for most of the picture. Through Joan’s sympathetic trumpeter father (Douglas Fowley), an audition for a seasonal booking at a summer camp is arranged, but the camp’s director (Walter Reed) kills the deal out of concern for the “wanton” dancing of the teenage audience, who throw off their shoes in an enormous pile in what must be cinema’s first sock hop. Joan learns about another high school music competition hosted by Johnny Grant, with the top prize being a Decca Records contract. However, Johnny’s troubles at home, especially when an out-of-control party there causes a lot of damage, threaten the band’s chances.
As was commonplace in these early Hollywood rock-based movies, the studio-generated rock songs bear little resemblance to real rock and roll music quickly evolving from R&B, jazz, boogie-woogie, gospel, and other “race music” of the period, as well as the rockabilly of Elvis, Carl Perkins, and others. For Rock, Pretty Baby there are songs co-written by Henry Mancini, Bobby Troup, and Rod McKuen, hardly untalented hacks but glaringly not-quite right, either. (One can only admire the restraint of U-I in not commissioning additional rock tunes from Hoagy Carmichael and Spike Jones.) Mancini’s background music is quite good in several scenes, and the song themselves aren’t really bad, similar to the kind of pseudo-rock music created by composer Ronald Stein and others for low-budget pictures of this era, but it’s far from authentic.
The cast dazzles. It’s such an eccentric hodgepodge I first wrongly assumed this was an Albert Zugsmith production, but no. Saxon, with a Michael Landon-esque shock of hair, was only 21, straining believability as a teenager only in retrospect with his later career. Luana Patten was, briefly, a child star at Disney, most famously for Song of the South (1946). She was 18 at the time, and indeed all the other band members with the exception of Rod McKuen are within spitting distance of being teenagers. McKuen, of course, went onto much bigger things, but his great successes as a singer-songwriter and poet were more than a decade away. Likewise, John Wilder, who gave up acting around 1960 to write and produce, most famously for the ‘70s series The Streets of San Francisco. Shelley Fabares was just 12 and at the beginning of her long career, while George “Foghorn” Wilson (Gentleman Prefer Blondes) was nearing the end of his.
One can’t help but wonder if Rock, Pretty Baby was conceived as a vehicle for Sal Mineo, but that the higher-ups at Universal decided he was too ethnic, too eccentric, or something, causing them to rework it for cleaner-cut John Saxon instead. This would certainly fall in line with the homogenization of Rock and Roll occurring simultaneously, with its black pioneers like Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and others pushed aside for the likes of Pat Boone and Ricky Nelson. In the movie, Mineo has precious little to do, his character depicted as an almost hopped-up ladies man but otherwise he’s just another member of the band. Unlike most of his bandmates, Mineo seems capable in his role as the band’s drummer, predicting his title role in The Gene Krupa Story (1959).
Like his character in Rebel Without a Cause, Edward Platt exhibits empathy toward his son’s romantic and career angsts. In one sense Rock, Pretty Baby is more like the TV series Leave It to Beaver than Rebel, with its sitcom siblings but also sympathetic parents who, unlike most intolerant ‘50s parents, make considerable effort to try to understand their kids’ complex, hormone-driven emotions. (In a subplot, young Twinkie is frustrated that the almost-teen is still being treated like a child, the familial tension overcome when Mom and Dad buy the overjoyed Twinkie a brassiere. That this training bra is proudly shown off is surprising for what ultimately is a ‘50s family film, rather than one exclusively targeting teenagers.)
The modest film was well-received, prompting even a little-known sequel, Summer Love (1958), with Saxon, McKuen, Wilder, Winslow, Wray, Platt, and Fabares (but not Mineo) all returning. Though at best a modest dramatic success, audiences of the time seemed to have liked it.
Kino Lorber’s Blu-ray of Rock, Pretty Baby is derived from a 4K scan of the original 35mm camera negative. Like other U-I black-and-white titles of the middle-‘50s, while accurate it’s still a little dark and overly-grainy, as if over processed somehow; U-I’s black-and-white films from this time are rarely impressively sharp for some reason. Presented in 1.85:1 widescreen, the release offers a DTS-HD Master Audio (2.0 mono) mix, supported by optional English subtitles, and the disc is Region “A” encoded.
Extras are limited to a new audio commentary track by David Del Valle. Of greater interest is an original, unusual trailer, built around a “special studio preview” screening of the film, with Johnny Grant, longtime honorary Mayor of Hollywood, interviewing people after the film. All ages seem to have enjoyed it, especially the teenagers (“Johnny Saxon is dreamy!”). Though it leaves out any negative reactions to the film, those left in sure seem authentic and not scripted.
It appears Rock, Pretty Baby was envisioned as a slightly bigger “B” that the studio rightly saw more box-office potential in, once it was completed, especially following the huge build up to Elvis Presley’s much-anticipated film debut, itself a modest Western with songs. Not great by any standard, Rock, Pretty Baby is nevertheless fairly interesting and thus recommended.
- Stuart Galbraith IV