Childs play… Melody (1971)

This is a film I remember being promoted in my sister’s Jackie magazine probably because of the presence of Jack Wild who had become a teenage pin-up after playing the Artful Dodger both on stage and then in the film Oliver (1968) before then staring in the American TV series H.R. Pufnstuf. He was slightly older than his parts and in Melody he was a 17-year old playing 13 alongside fellow Oliver alumnus Mark Lester (12 during filming in May 1970) and Tracy Hyde (who had just turned 11).

Wild had been discovered playing football by June Collins – mother of fellow child actor Phil… who signed him up for the Barbara Speake Stage School along with his brother Arthur. He certainly had his moment but did get tired of playing kids as he entered his twenties and, according to his obituary in the Daily Telegraph, was already an alcoholic by 21. His undoubted talent – a high-energy screen presence with subtlety and wit – was undermined by such casting and despite the occasional TV and film role, most of the rest of his shortened career was spent in theatre.

In this film, originally titled S.W.A.L.K.  (Sealed With a Loving Kiss) he’s very convincing as young tearaway Tom Ornshaw and helps to bring out the best from Lester and Hyde who also do well on their own as Daniel Latimer and the titular Melody Perkins, pre-teenagers in love. The film popped up on Talking Pictures and, after a half century I finally got to watch what I had only read about in the above-mentioned copy of Jackie…

One of these two could drive a car and go to the pub...

The script was from Alan Parker and he has said it combined elements of his own childhood experience in Islington as well as that of producer David Putnam. Given the significance of these gentlemen’s later careers it’s clear to say that Melody, despite only really being a big hit in Japan, set them on their way. For Parker, who was second unit director for some scenes, it gave him the desire to make more films and to direct whilst for Putnam, the film kept his fledgling production company afloat.

There are so many things to recommend the film, not least the slice of South London life it offers as background – Lambeth in 1970 – as well as the little-changed Weymouth sea front in one sequence. It’s also a very well-made film with director Waris Hussein marshalling his younger cast well and portraying the matter of “love” in a convincing way. As Melody says at one point as she and Daniel are interviewed by the headmaster – James Cossins on superb form – they want to be together but “we don’t really understand…”

I can only relate having been smitten with classmate Julie Barton aged 11 and spending my weekends longing for Mondays and the sight of her freckled face in assembly. Unlike Daniel though I was barely able to speak to Julie and any chances were dashed when I went to a local comprehensive and she moved. It’s fine… I’m over it now!

Sheila's here!

Like me perhaps, Daniel is a quirky lad, and how could he not be with a mother played by the great Sheila Steafel and a step-father (Keith Barron) who seems continually annoyed with him. At one point Tom sets fir to his newspaper and is sent to his room where his mother soon forgives him, over-compensating perhaps. Daniel befriends Tom who is from different social circumstances and has to look after his Grandad after school, and, after sweetly suggesting that his mother might help, Daniel offers his help after she’s side-tracked by a Women’s Institute meeting.

The pal’s friendship is soon challenged by Daniel’s growing attraction to Melody, a development he isn’t yet capable of verbalising as the two hover around each other as much in fear as affection with the jeers of their immature classmates an ever present guarantee… There are so many moments of recognition and shared embarrassment you watch this with your inner, half-remembered childlike wonder at the unknown and uncertain connections you make that only grow in complexity as you mature.

Jack goes Wild!

The leads are only a handful of years older than me and so, this is almost my generation and the locations and fashions – almost invisible at the time – now bring that sharp pang of nostalgia to accompany the recognition of painful lessons learned. Hussein paces the story well and the central love is woven through many funny incidents of school life, from the bullying history teacher (played by Scouser Ken Jones who was so very good at playing unlovely!), to the boys’ attempt to make an explosive using weedkiller which fail repeatedly on the wastelands near Clapham Junction. Turns out making a bomb is just as mysterious as establishing a romantic connection with the opposite sex: trial and error no matter how much study is undertaken.

The supporting cast of adults is superb, creating a school full of oddball teachers who to paraphrase Tom, want to be in charge but also their friends after a school disco throws everyone together. We also have Roy Kinnear and Kate Williams as Melody’s parents and both are as good as you remember – I found myself wishing Kate had done more Ken Loach films after playing Beryl in Poor Cow, such a fine actor and what a long career she is having! Hilda Barry is also fab as Grandma Perkins, all Nans looked like her in 1971…

There’s a soundtrack featuring five songs from the Bee Gees and, surprisingly, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young singing Graham Nash’s Teach Your Children to end the film on a suitably poignant note. That sounds more 1971 to me than the brothers Gibb who are still in their post-psychedelic baroque period sweet though their songs are, especially Melody Fair which gives the film it’s title and main character. Pop music moved so quickly in those days and I remain acutely aware of every shift I remember and I do recall the First of May, one of the twoBee Gee hits from the film and released in 1969. By 1971 though, it’s all change and time for some noise with T-Rex, Slade and The Sweet!

Dusty Verdict: Melody is a time capsule in so many ways but still resonates with the eternal truths of developing childhood. It takes some skill to make a film like this with children who may not have experienced anything like it before and that’s a tribute to the writing and direction. The film’s success in Japan and elsewhere overseas helped return a profit and opening the way for Puttnam and Parker to refresh British film over the next decade and it remains influential with Wes Anderson saying it inspired Moonrise Kingdom. It’s well worth a watch and is available on TPTV as well as Blu-ray.

And you, of tender years
Can't know the fears your elders grew by
Help them with your youth
They seek the truth before they can die

Crosby Stills Nash & Young Teach Your Children (Nash)

 

 

Hey, rock 'n roll… Three for All (1975)

 

Pop moved so fast in the 1970s, it was blink and you missed it for top trends and so many became so much Disc and Music Echo chip paper once the consensus had moved on. From T-rex, Slade and Sweet to tailenders like the Rollers in a little over 2-3 years, Glam Rock was a sparkling flash in the pop-pan but it is long overdue a more widespread re-evaluation as one of the great British musical movements. People like Jon Robb have argued that it was nothing less than the precursor of punk, a bridge between post-Beatles depression, blues and progressive rock to punk, some of the main players having already been in rootsy rock formations.

 

Cinematically the moment was pretty much missed, with even Slade in Flame (1975), coming just after the parade had passed and perhaps the less said about Never to Young (1975) the better although it features some good Mud action and the Glitter Band (without you-know-who). The same could also be said of Three for All which is a slightly jarring cultural relic, still full of energy and harder-edged Glam from Billy Beethoven (oh yes) led by future Rainbow front man Graham Bonnet who also wrote the songs. It’s a mix of Y viva Espana, the huge trend of Spanish holiday making, and the Billy B’s attempts to make it as a Cowboys and Indian glam rock band which would have been released just after the mascara and glitter had been replaced by tartan. Pop in general had just run out of steam by 1975, waiting for something, anything to happen… cue 1976, The Ramones, Sex Pistols and punk’s first single, New Rose by The Damned with dozens of bands punching through without the major record company marketing seen in this film.

Boys in the band: Robert, Graham, Paul and Christopher

 

Three for All has an anarchy of its own though and is produced by the team that brought us Eskimo Nell, with writer Michael Armstrong (who also cameos) and director Martin Campbell marshalling the chaos for this free-running farce which features a dozen high-profile cameos as well as a strong central cast. Campbell has had a highly successful career but it’s a long way from Torremolinos to the Planet Oa, home of the Green Lantern Corps but he’s made the journey having directed the early DC film after many hits on big and small screen, particularly with the ground-breaking Edge of Darkness, simply one of the finest television series of the Eighties and beyond.

 

Here the brief is simpler as we encounter three young women who are wandering through London traffic as the credits roll, on their way home to greet their boyfriends and to plan their holidays. There’s the vivacious Diane (Adrienne Posta), impulsive and ambitious with ideas slightly beyond her grasp, Pet (Cheryl Hall) more down to earth but still given to flights of fancy and Shelley (Lesley North), the quiet and possibly the most reliable one.

 

Their beaus form the majority of Billy Beethoven, Pet’s Tom (Robert Lindsay, who was married to Hall) is the drummer, Shelley’s Gary (Paul Nicholas) is on backing vocals and bass, whilst Diane’s Kook (Graham Bonnet, also dating his cinematic girlfriend at the time) is the vocalist. The odd man out is Ricky the guitarist (Christopher Neil) but three’s company, four’s a crowd. The band are managed by the long-sufferable "Jet" Bone (Richard Beckinsale) who has singularly failed to get the boys to the next level and they’re just about out of goodwill.

 

Hey Rock 'n Roll! Showaddywaddy

We do get to see them supporting Showaddywaddy, glam second-wavers who still look and sound a lot of fun performing The Party off their debut. The Billys(?) badly need an image as strong as the lads from Leicester and they also need a break which, as luck would have it, is just arriving as Jet has entered them into a competition run by marketer, Eddie Boyes (played with relentless energy by George Baker) who, with his assistant Harry (Simon Williams keeping some order), contact Jet to make their offer for the winners: an all expenses tour of Spain to promote it as a holiday destination – as if that was necessary in the golden era of the package tour. The only stipulations being that they dress up as glitter cowboys and Indian and leave their girls behind.

 

The girls are distraught and tearfully wave off their lads at the airport along with Ricky’s mum, played with effortless sauce and consequence by national treasure Diana Dors who fair makes Eddie’s eyes boggle as she sorts her hair, revealing just how well she fills the band’s t-shirt.

 

Back home the girls, led by Diane, decide to take matters into their own hands and book tickets to follow the lads to Spain. Kicking work into touch they set off on a coach where Diane meets an odd psychiatrist Dr Sparks (Jonathan Adams  ) who has written some very odd books and they first experience the lovably English of Ben and Rhoda (Arthur Mullard and Sheila Bernette). At the airport there’s a smashing short cameo from Hattie Jacques as a security officer along with Liz Fraser and David Kossoff as a mysterious couple… You wonder if Campbell and Armstrong just asked everyone to improvise?

 

The eternal Richard Beckinsale and George Baker

Arriving at their hotel in sunny Spain, “Torre” already lined up like a thin city of tower blocks against the Mediterranean, they catch the eye of an older gentlemen, Mr Gibbons (the genius, John Le Mesurier) viewing them with apparent suspicion. He demurs in the way that only John Le Mesurier can demure… such a class act.

 

OK, needless to say all does not go to plan – is there a plan? – as the band starts generating success on their relentless gigs across Spain and the girls just can’t keep out of mischief even when it’s not of their own making… Shelley has her purse stolen and is chased by a mob through the streets to be intercepted by a Spanish Policeman called Carlo (Ian Lavender) with Diane’s dodgy Spanglish making matters far worse until Uncle Arthur, Mr Gibbons stages the first of many interventions.

 

It's a riot of seventies silliness but the actors play their hearts out and there’s plenty of time for more high-impact cameos from Roy Kinnear as Hounslow Joe, Dandy Nichols, Anna Quayle and even Edward Woodward as an unlikely Road sweeper… maybe he was under-cover from another film?

 

Uncle Arthur... sorry, John Le Mesurier

Dusty Verdict: I can’t help myself with these films, there’s so much context and connection with the period and directors, writers and performers on professional journeys stopping off for this moment of commercial opportunity. I was thirteen when the film came out so maybe it’s on the cusp between my appreciation of glam-rock and the charts too? By this stage I was getting into Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, far more serious than The Slade and Sweet… maybe I was the one moving too fast?

 

It also memorialises the Spanish holiday experience for the millions of Brits who hit the sunny sands in the seventies. I didn’t make it down there until the late 80s and by then there were plenty of pubs offering traditional fare like fish and chips and bangers and mash, with plenty of Hounslow Joes watching Eastenders on satellite TV too. A hotter home from home.

 

Looking at the dodgy copy on YouTube and other streaming sources, Three for All is an enjoyable time capsule, it’s not available on official DVD – there’s a two-fer with That’s Your Funeral on Amazon for £73! – but I’m pretty sure there’s enough of us out there to support a proper digital transfer.

 

You can also buy the original soundtrack LP on Discogs for a song… Graham Bonnet’s compositions may pull in a few Rainbow fans. Probably the worst cover of any album ever but it's fun!!