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Idol On Parade 1959
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Short filmTranscript
00:21Idle on Parade, 1959.
00:25Idle spelt I-D-O-L and I-D-L-E, according to which version you want to see.
00:31They're the same film.
00:33And a massive platform, really, for Anthony Newley.
00:37It was to really send him into stardom from what had been a very successful theatrical career
00:44and a fairly extensive film career already.
00:48Now, when we watch it, we would probably think that that weird mix of sort of army and musical
00:53might seem a little strange, but there's two elements to that you've got to bear in mind.
00:58One is Elvis had been called up and had become a GI.
01:02That was huge at the time.
01:04So what basically the filmmakers were doing, which was Warwick Films,
01:08they were making sure that they had their own version of Elvis
01:12and they were putting him in the army and going,
01:14OK, what happens when a major rock star goes into the army?
01:18This being the British army rather than the American army, we're talking national service.
01:24Between 1947 and 1963, every man between 17 and 21 had to be forcibly signed up to join the army.
01:33They actually stopped the call-ups in 1960, but everybody theoretically had to do national service for two years
01:41if they were fit enough and within that age group.
01:44You hear Anthony Newley say, oh yeah, but what about getting me out of it?
01:47What about my dispensation?
01:49You know, well, no, no, you haven't got it.
01:51And everybody would probably have tried to get out of national service at that time,
01:56even as a rock star supposedly Newley gets called up.
02:00The other reason why I think this is an important sort of element of an army stroke musical
02:06is that the 1950s had had a massive number of films released that were set in World War II
02:12and were about the army.
02:13Now, of course, the way that the British looked back at their times in World War II
02:18wasn't in a kind of triumphalist way about the entire thing,
02:22about the end of Nazi Germany, about the discovery of the Holocaust, any of those things.
02:26It was specific individual events within World War II that they made films about,
02:32which is why you get the likes of the Dambusters, Reach for the Sky.
02:37And ultimately, of course, Cockleshell Heroes, which had had a young man in it playing a Marine
02:42called Anthony Newley only a few years earlier.
02:45And so army films were very, very popular.
02:48But then what they became was army caper films.
02:52And in 1958, you get the first and potentially the greatest of them all,
02:57which is Carry On Sergeant.
02:59Carry On Sergeant, of course, kicks off the entire Carry On franchise,
03:02but it also introduces this idea of young recruits playing around with the whole idea of the army
03:11and playing around with the whole idea of the army as representative of establishment,
03:17of the man, of their parents, and all the rest of it.
03:21So, to create what's basically a star vehicle for a young man who has not really been recognised as a
03:29rock star up until this point,
03:31until he makes this film, is a very canny move.
03:34This is a fascinating cuspal period for music in the UK.
03:39Because what all these films represented were skiffle into rock and roll,
03:45the last vestiges of jazz as a kind of 60s young person's thing.
03:51And it's all going to be swept away within a couple of years by Merseybeat.
03:57So, what we have in this particular film is a form of rock and roll called Rockaboogie.
04:03I suspect Newley was the one who particularly wanted to pursue this,
04:07because Rockaboogie is that boogie-woogie piano, left hand.
04:13And over the top of it, you can put a rock band.
04:16But it means that there's kind of a slightly jazzy feel to what's happening.
04:22Anthony Newley was responsible for writing most of the songs in this film,
04:26as well as performing them.
04:28And he is the sole performer.
04:30The biggest hit number in the film, the one that he had the success with,
04:33is I've waited so long.
04:34And rather than actually set that against a barrack room background,
04:39or try and make a big musical number out of it,
04:41Anthony Newley's character goes to a record shop to listen to it with his girlfriend
04:45and watches people buying the record.
04:47All of the songs in this film are that kind of rock-stroke ballad
04:53that had really established itself, particularly in Britain at this point.
04:58And what you have to bear in mind with the songs in Idle on Parade
05:03is that they really do have to be shoehorned in.
05:06Two that we hear him actually present for the camera
05:09are done as part of an army concert troupe,
05:12which is kind of what you'd expect.
05:14The film itself, well, funny old piece, really.
05:18Lionel Jeffries doing his normal bumbling officer routine.
05:21A very good cast for the most part,
05:23and the sort of film that I think most people who went to the pictures
05:26would have really enjoyed as a B-movie.
05:28Nobody was particularly turning out for Anthony Newley at this point,
05:31but Anthony Newley could fill the trousers of a rock star very, very easily.
05:37And he has got all the confidence you could possibly want.
05:40The director is the almost great John Gilling,
05:44who would later on go on to make the really interesting Hammer films
05:48Plague of the Zombies and The Reptile.
05:51He's someone who was a very safe pair of hands
05:53and knew what he was doing with this film,
05:55but it has to be said there's lots of evidence of a fairly low budget.
06:00One or two nasty exteriors.
06:02And the whole thing has got a kind of easy-going feel to it,
06:06which actually feels much more about an older generation
06:08dealing with something like National Service
06:11than the actual young people we're dealing with there.
06:14Almost everybody in this film, all the youngsters anyway,
06:18are wearing the kind of clothes their parents would have been wearing.
06:21You haven't got much in the way of smart suits.
06:25This feels like a very safe film.
06:27And in its own particular way, as a piece of history, if you like,
06:32it has its interests.
06:33But as a musical?
06:36Well, it's not really.
06:37It's a caper.
06:38It's an army comedy.
06:39But it does work as far as Anthony Newley is concerned.
06:43Newley's star is stratospheric after this film,
06:46simply because he acted the role of a superstar
06:50and did it like he knew what he was doing.
06:53And that superstardom is what was just beckoning around the corner.
06:58Bear in mind also that as a songwriter,
07:00he's going to go on to work with Leslie Brickus
07:02on some of the great musicals.
07:04And as far as film is concerned,
07:06they're going to do things like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
07:10in not that many years ahead.
07:12Newley is someone to whom I think we owe a great deal.
07:16He was absolutely, fundamentally British.
07:20He was a London boy.
07:22His stage persona and the way that he developed that
07:26is something that was hugely, and you probably already know this,
07:30but hugely influential on David Bowie.
07:33Bowie's singing style particularly followed totally from Anthony Newley.
07:38And even the laughing gnome, much maligned,
07:41sounds like an Anthony Newley novelty song.
07:44But later, David Bowie also takes on some of those mannerisms,
07:50those ticks of performance that Anthony Newley had.
07:53And you can even see them here.
07:55You can see the way that he's loving the limelight.
07:58You can see the way that he puts little kind of jumps and hiccups
08:02into the way that he sings.
08:03It's not yet fully formed, Newley.
08:06That would come really within a fairly short time.
08:09And another film of his, Jazzboat,
08:12in which he was already assuming the role of international superstar.
08:16But with this, he's being supported by an absolutely extraordinary number
08:22of great character actors.
08:25And just see if you can spot them.
08:27Keep an eye out for Sid James, Harry Fowler, David Lodge, Dillis Lay,
08:33Bernie Winters, John Wood, Susan Hampshire, Jeffrey Beldon,
08:38and tucked in amongst a slew of reporters, Clive Dunn.
08:42But also Alan and Broccoli have brought onto the screen one great big gun.
08:47And that is Hollywood's own William Bendix.
08:51William Bendix was well known as a character actor in England.
08:54He had starred in Hollywood movies.
08:56He'd really made his name over there.
08:58He was huge.
08:59And I wouldn't say he was exactly on the skids.
09:01He doesn't look particularly well in this film.
09:04But it's the first film that he made in England
09:07and it was obviously worth his while coming over to shoot it.
09:10He has a pretty authentic Irish accent.
09:13There'll be no performing midgets here.
09:16But more than anything else, he does manage to tread that thin line
09:19between being a regimental sergeant major
09:22who won't put up with any rubbish from these guys
09:25and a reasonably warm-hearted man who quite gets into the music.
09:30Bendix is an anomaly in this film.
09:33But he is someone who I think made the movie financeable.
09:38That's probably the big difference.
09:40After this film, Anthony Newley didn't need any Hollywood stars brought in
09:45to try and back him up.
09:48Newley was the star himself.
09:49Get the Woods with a ticket on yourself.
10:01We're sure she could get some music.
10:06That's why we're supported by DSG.
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