Friday, April 7, 2000

Spring Break couch potato, see 'Where the Boys Are'

Forty years after its release, "Where the Boys Are" (1960) still holds up as the greatest spring break movie of 'em all. Maybe because the kids in it are so adorable (although probably a few years too ripe to play teen-agers). Maybe because that generation of kids was caught between Beatnik rage and pre-Beatles ennui. And maybe because it set the bacchanalian tone for spring break that has continued into the MTV era.
   The movie follows a group of pretty coeds - delicious comedienne Paula Prentiss as the wacky one, singer Connie Francis as the musical one, ingenue Yvette Mimieux as the wild one, fresh-faced Dolores Hart as the brainy, nice one - on their trip to Florida. Hoping to meet boys, they pile into one tiny motel room and spend their days cruising the beaches and their nights hitting the bars. (Not much different from breakers today.)
   Man of dreams
   Each of the girls soon meets the man of her dreams. Paula finds Jim Hutton (father of Oscar winner Tim), a gangly Jimmy Stewart type who tries to act like a cad but is really a gent at heart. Connie hooks up with Frank Gorshin, a nightclub musician with Coke-bottle glasses. Dolores find Princeton playboy George Hamilton, whose yacht is conveniently stocked with all manner of aphrodisiacs. And poor little Yvette, a blond waif with a wispy whisper, unwittingly becomes the spring break slattern, handed off between frat boys until she's left shivering and catatonic, wandering down the middle of the highway.
   That plot turn, of course, was The Big Lesson to teen-age moviegoers in 1960. S-e-x led to nothing but trouble.
   Ah, such innocent times. Like a junior Doris Day movie, "Where the Boys Are" focused solely on the girls' struggle to keep their virtue intact and the boys' efforts to relieve them of it.
   Virtue intact
   Paula and Jim head off into the dunes, but she returns unsullied. Dolores and George go almost all the way, before he puts the brakes on because he recognizes her purity. By the end of the picture, because she's the Best Good Girl of all, they're seriously in love and headed for the altar.
   The casting of Dolores Hart as the good girl was apparently no fluke. Shortly after the release of "Boys," she gave up her movie career (she'd also starred with Elvis in "King Creole") to become a Benedictine nun. Now known as Mother Dolores, she oversees a convent in Connecticut. She and the 38 nuns there recently recorded a CD of Gregorian chants.
   The rest of the cast has had ups and downs over the past four decades. Hamilton became more famous for his tan than his acting and is now a guest-host on "Live with Regis and Kathie Lee." Paula Prentiss made some good films, including "The Parallax View" with Warren Beatty and "The Stepford Wives," in which she played the penultimate robot-spouse. After marrying actor/director Richard Benjamin, she gave up acting for motherhood.
   Where they are now
   Yvette Mimieux, still youthfully waify into her 60s, had a long career in TV and film, appearing in dozens of made-for-TV flicks in the '80s and '90s (usually as the older woman seducing the younger stud).
   Connie Francis recorded a string of hits before suffering a nervous breakdown. She's been on a continuous comeback since the 1980s.
   And Jim Hutton died in 1979, just a year before his lookalike son Tim won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for "Ordinary People."
   "Where the Boys Are" is unrated but contains no bad language or violence and only very tame sexual situations.
   Media Critic Elaine Liner can be reached at 886-3688 or by email at linere@caller.com.
  
  
  

 
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