`The passing of plaintive songstress Connie Francis brought
me back to my teen years. Francis—whose early pop hits included “Stupid Cupid,”
“Lipstick on Your Collar,” and a swoony rendition of the old “Who’s Sorry
Now?—played featured roles in movies and then segued into belting out standards
for adult audiences. Hers was an eventful life: her father chased away an early
suitor, the pre-fame Bobby Darin, and none of her four subsequent marriages
ended well. In 1974, while staying post-concert at a Howard Johnson’s motel in
upstate New York, she was raped at knifepoint, left naked and tied to a chair
by an assailant who was never found. Other family tragedies and health
challenges followed, but she eventually resumed her singing career, became a
victims’ rights advocate, and survived until the ripe old age of 87.
I will always associate Connie Francis with Where the
Boys Are, a 1960 film seen (sometimes more than once) by every junior high
school girl I knew. The film was in many ways a template for the beach party
movies that followed (as well as for aspects of Roger Corman’s New World
Pictures nurse flicks). We girls appreciated Where the Boys Are for
zeroing in on the hopes and fears with which we regarded our own futures. Our
impending college years—still far off but looming large in our
imaginations—seemed to promise so much in the way of freedom, self-fulfillment,
romantic love. Still, we could sense that there were dangers to be skirted, and
the film makes these quite clear.
It starts with a group of diverse (but, of course, all
white) college co-eds heading down from the snowy Midwest to enjoy spring break
in Fort Lauderdale, where vacationing collegians abound. Boys, of course, are
very much on the minds of the four. The sensible Merritt (Dolores Hart) is
quickly attracted to Ivy Leaguer Ryder (George Hamilton). Madcap Tuggle (Paula
Prentiss) is delighted to find that TV Thompson (Jim Hutton) is even taller
than she is, and shares her wry sense of humor. Pretty blonde Melanie (Yvette
Mimieux) falls hard for a Yalie named Franklin. Angie (Connie Francis) has a few
laughs with the goofy Basil (Frank Gorshin), but is mostly alone, wistfully
warbling, “Where the boys are . . .
someone waits for me.”
All these plotlines play out in ways we can predict. The fun
and games that are part of this giant courtship dance give way to a more somber
tone when Melanie, who has naively agreed to meet Franklin at a local motel,
finds herself a rape victim. Dazed and disheveled, she wanders down the highway
and is sideswiped by a passing car. Her hospitalization quickly leads her
friends to step back from their own romantic adventures. Maturity, they
realize, is something to be prized. At the film’s end they’re returning to
college, sadder but wiser.
As they recuperate from their spring fling, lessons have
been learned. (I’m sure our parents appreciated the film sending a cautionary
message regarding pre-marital sex.) The light-hearted romance of Tuggle and her
guy is quickly over (though Prentiss—making her first film—and Hutton had such
strong on-screen chemistry that MGM quickly starred them in three romantic
comedies). It’s only Hart and Hamilton’s characters who seem to have a solid
connection that can make for future happiness.
The irony, of course, is that Dolores Hart was not destined
for marriage. In 1963 she ended her engagement to an L.A. architect to enter a
Connecticut convent as a Benedictine nun. Clearly, she was not heading where
the boys are.
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