Expresso Bongo **** (1959, Laurence Harvey, Sylvia Syms, Yolande Donlan, Cliff Richard) – Classic Movie Review 3952

Director Val Guest’s 1959 British black and white musical drama Expresso Bongo is a fascinating period piece, and snapshot of a long-ago time and place. It is far more fragrant of its era than the Eighties homage movie Absolute Beginners and a much more interesting film altogether.

Laurence Harvey stars as a seedy, cynical London Soho talent agent called Johnny Jackson, who discovers a bongo-playing teenage singer named Bert Rudge (the 18-year-old Cliff Richard) and turns him into an international music hit star as Bongo Herbert.

Old smoothie Harvey doesn’t have much of an acting reputation, but here he is in his element: stylish, slightly sinister and convincing. Perhaps he deserves a re-assessment and a new second opinion. A chubby, lip-curling Cliff just plays himself – and rather well too, in his second film, after Serious Charge (1959). It also stars Sylvia Syms and Guest’s wife Yolande Donlan.

Expresso Bongo also features Meier Tzelniker, Gilbert Harding, Ambrosine Phillpotts, Eric Pohlmann, Wilfrid Lawson, Hermione Baddeley, Reginald Beckwith, Martin Miller, Avis Bunnage, Barry Lowe, Kenneth Griffith, Susan Hampshire, Peter Myers, Esma Cannon, Wolf Mankowitz, Norman Parnell, Pamela Morris, Patsy Dalton and Paula Barry.

Also in the cast are Rita Burke, Susan Burnet, Roy Everson, Katherine Keeton, Burt Kwouk, Copeland Lawrence, Patricia Lewis, Peter Myers, Maureen O’Connor, Norma Parnell, Lisa Peake, Christine Phillips and Sylvia Steele.

Meier Tzelniker and Susan Hampshire were the only cast survivors from the London stage play.

Wolf Mankowitz’s screenplay is based on Wolf Mankowitz and Julian More’s theatre play stage satire on the skiffle phenomenon, which starred Paul Scofield, Charles Gray, Hy Hazell, Millicent Martin and James Kenney (as Bert Rudge) on the London stage, first produced at the Saville Theatre on 23 April 1958. Alas, the songs from original stage show aren’t much good. Almost certainly no one – not even Cliff Richard – could ever have had a hit career with ‘Nausea’, ‘Shrine on the Second Floor’, ‘I’ve Never Had It So Good’ (all music by David Heneker and Monty Norman, lyrics by Julian More and Wolf Mankowitz).

But ‘A Voice in the Wilderness’ (music by Norrie Paramor, lyrics by Bunny Lewis) sung by Cliff Richard and played by The Shadows is much better, a lovely song beautifully sung and played that got to number 2 in the UK charts from January 1960.

The EP of Expresso Bongo made number 1 in the EP charts and got into the singles charts, reaching number 14.

Mankowitz walks around London’s Soho with sandwich boards carrying the opening credit sequence titles for writer (himself), producer and director.

Guest told Harvey his character was ‘part Soho, part Jewish, and part middle-class’ and suggested he model him on Mankowitz. Harvey arranged a couple of lunches with the unsuspecting Mankowitz to study him, so the character Johnny Jackson sounds a bit like Mankowitz but with a mix of accents including his own Lithuanian.

It is shot at Shepperton Studios, near London, with some scenes filmed on location in Soho. Guest hired Kenneth MacMillan to choreograph the strip-club dancers. Struggling to get them to dance and sing to playback at the same time at Shepperton, MacMillan moaned: ‘It’s the simplest routine. They may have looks, legs and tits, but they have no co-ordination.’

Marty Wilde was considered as Bert Rudge, but was dismissed as too tall (6ft 3in) and so ‘less sympathetic’.

Expresso Bongo is directed by Val Guest, runs 111 minutes, is made by Britannia Films, Val Guest Productions and Conquest, is released by British Lion Film Corporation (1960) (UK) and Continental Distributing (1960) (US), is written by Wolf Mankowitz, based on Expresso Bongo by Julian More and Wolf Mankowitz, is shot in black and white by John Wilcox, is produced by Val Guest and Jon Penington (associate producer), is scored by Robert Farnon, with music by Robert Farnon, Norrie Paramor, Paddy Roberts, Bunny Lewis, Val Guest and lyrics by David Heneker and Monty Norman, choreography by Kenneth MacMillan, and set design by Anthony Masters.

Val Guest recalled the film made ‘a lot of money and got us a lot of awards’.

Cliff Richard turns 80 on 14 October 2020.

The much loved English actress Sylvia Syms OBE (6 January 1934 – 27 January 2023) is best known for the films Woman in a Dressing Gown (1957), Ice Cold in Alex (1958), The Moonraker. (1958), Expresso Bongo (1959), No Trees in the Street (1959), Victim (1961), The Punch and Judy Man (1963), The Tamarind Seed (1974), and The Queen (2006), in which she played The Queen Mother.

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