00:04Hi, I'm Dave Karger. Thanks for joining me here on TCM for this week's edition of Musical Matinee.
00:10Today's film features only a few musical numbers, but one of them became a chart-topping hit for pop singer
00:16Connie Francis, who made her acting debut in this film.
00:19From MGM, in 1960, it's Where the Boys Are.
00:22Based on a novel by Glendon Swarthout, which was published the same year,
00:26the story follows a group of college girls who decide to spend their spring break partying in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
00:32While this may sound like a recipe for a light-hearted musical comedy, the movie is actually darker than you
00:38might expect,
00:39tackling the subject of premarital sex in ways that were daring for a Hollywood film in 1960.
00:45The young women at the center of the story are played by Dolores Hart, Paul Apprentice, Yvette Mimou, and Connie
00:51Francis.
00:51As I mentioned, this was Connie Francis' film debut as an actress.
00:55Earlier the same year, she became the first woman ever to reach the number one spot on the Billboard Hot
01:00100 chart
01:01with her hit single, Everybody's Somebody's Fool.
01:04Her recording of the title song, Where the Boys Are, became another hit for Francis,
01:09and MGM quickly went on to build a string of romantic comedies around her at the peak of her popularity
01:14in the early 1960s.
01:16Also making her film debut here is Paula Prentice, whose casting posed a little bit of a challenge for MGM.
01:23Prentice was almost 5'10", and the studio felt she needed a tall actor to play her love interest,
01:28so they paired her with Jim Hutton, whose career was also just getting started.
01:32Hutton was over 6 feet tall, and he and Prentice had a natural comic rapport that made them a winning
01:38team on screen.
01:39They teamed up again in three romantic comedies released in quick succession in 1961 and 62,
01:45The Honeymoon Machine, Bachelor in Paradise, and The Horizontal Lieutenant, as well as one more in 1964, Looking for Love.
01:53As for the star of Where the Boys Are, Dolores Hart, she had been working in Hollywood for three years,
01:57but would leave the industry for good just three years later.
02:01I'll tell you more about her after the movie.
02:03From 1960, directed by Henry Levin, and also starring George Hamilton, Where the Boys Are.
