GO, JOHNNY, GO! (1959)

Johnny Melody is the star of DJ Alan Freed's big rock & roll show, being watched from the wings by Freed and superstar Chuck Berry, who is impressed with Melody. Backstage, Freed relates the story of Johnny's rise to Berry. Johnny was an orphan choirboy who was booted from the choir for squeezing in some rock singing at rehearsals. He gets a gig as an usher at an Alan Freed show, but gets fired from that for dancing in the aisles. Before he leaves, he hears Freed announce a new talent hunt for a star he'll name Johnny Melody. We discover that this is just a publicity stunt, but Johnny takes it seriously and saves up some money to cut a demo. He runs into Julie, a former orphan who is trying to get her own start as a singer. She takes a liking to Johnny and helps him out, even though he's a bit slow on the uptake to realize that she's romantically interested in him. Johnny cuts a demo but signals get crossed and his record is ignored by Freed. Berry finally gets Freed to listen to the song; Freed likes it, but Johnny's name and number have gotten lost, so Freed plays the record on his show that night and asks the singer to get in touch with him. But in an unnecessarily melodramatic (and wildly implausible) plot twist, before Johnny hears this, he smashes a jeweler's store window to get a necklace that Julie has been pining after. Freed and Julie arrive just before the police and Freed takes responsibility, saying he was drunk and disorderly. And a star is born.

Despite a thin narrative and dirt-cheap production values, this film has some interest for fans of 50s pop music. Its biggest asset is Chuck Berry who performs a few songs, including "Johnny B. Goode," and, though an obvious amateur as an actor, is still fun to watch as he earnestly plays a sanitized version of himself. Freed does the same thing with more screen time if a little less effectively. Jimmy Clanton, who had a handful of top 40 hits, is fairly bland in the lead role, and Sandy Stewart, who went on to a career in jazz singing, can't make much of an impression. The bulk of the movie is made up of clips of other 50s performers including Jackie Wilson, Eddie Cochran, The Flamingos, The Cadillacs (the worst song in the movie, a comic relief bit called "Jay Walker"), and most interestingly, Ritchie Valens, best known for "La Bamba" and for dying young in the plane crash that also claimed Buddy Holly just a few months before this movie came out. His song is unmemorable but this is apparently the only footage that exists of Valens in performance. I kept hoping the movie would take off, but it never does, despite a structure that goes back and forth between the present and Johnny's rise. Pictured are Berry and Freed. [TCM]