I liked this film for a number of reasons.The big budget,cgi films of today cost mega bucks yet are tiresome,with no story,and so music video fast-paced that you can't see anything worth seeing.The old black & white low budget films are campy fun.You get to see famous people in early roles or maybe at the end of their careers.The clothes,cars and music take some of us back to times that were the happiest for us and our country.I hadn't seen this film before yesterday when I saw it on cable and it is a hoot.One minute your listening to corny dialog then a musical performance pops in.Jackie Wilson(a favorite of mine )does a great Elvis impersonation singing a song with the same moves and all or was Elvis imitating Jackie? Loved the song too.As some one else commented it was am early version of a music video.Now for a correction The Jack Larson in this film is not the same guy that played Jimmy Olsen on the Superman TV series.I made the same mistake with a TV show. This Jack played a horrible nightclub performer whose uncle hires Rob,Sally and Buddy to write his act in an episode of "The Dick Van Dyke Show" I noted on a website for "Superman" that this Jack had changed so much it was hard to believe it was the same guy yet he had mentioned the part in his autobiography.Well someone noted they are are in fact two different men hence the reason they look nothing alike! Just 2 guys with the same name.As for Jimmy Clanton he looks like a young Donald O'Connor to me.He should have made more films no worse than any other teen singing sensation turned actor.A great find for anyone loving 60's B films.
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mojo200424 September 2005
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ejprice23 May 2005A great little period piece! Was 17 when this movie was made. What an innocent time for America. The movie centers around the record industry and is a showcase for some of the singers of the time. Kinda cool to see everyone with a shave and the girls looking like girls! No hippies in this one, just a light story with lots of videos of the stars of that era. Yeah the plot line is corny and the dialog coached but then again maybe we were corny back then and our dialog a little coached. Liked it a whole lot better when you could tell the boys from the girls the biggest thing I worried about was getting gas for the car and palmade for my hair. A movie without drugs, fighting, sex or murder, what a concept! Maybe we should go back to corny and coached dialog....
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cricket-1416 May 1999This is one of the worst rock'n'roll themed films I have ever seen. Badly acted, lousy script. A total dud.
Even the musical performers are not very good. Some of their scenes are shot in this weird brown-and-white or red-and-white process, while the rest of the movie is in black and white.
It has the feel of a TV pilot for a show that never made it on the air. -
I really enjoyed the movie because I love oldies. There's even a couples singers that never made it big that had some great songs. The movie itself is just average - kinda harmless amusing story. But I really enjoyed hearing all those old songs. Who knew Jimmy Olsen of Superman fame (Jack Larsen) had such a great voice? There's a gal named Vickie Spencer who sings two songs beautifully, why was she never a star? Marv Johnson, co-creator of the Motown sound with Berry Gordy Jr., has a wonderful voice - makes you wonder why he didn't have more hits. You get to hear songs from Jackie Wilson, Dion and Chubby Checker that never made the charts but were really good songs anyway. And Checker does his famous Twist song. And you don't get to just hear these songs, you get to watch the singers perform them. It was great seeing the famous Zasu Pitts, I heard so much about her. It's too bad the movie wasn't made about a year later and Clanton's "Venus in Blue Jeans" could have been the featured song in the movie. One ironic thing, the featured song in the movie "Green Light" by Clanton isn't very good. But overall, if you love oldies music, you'll like this movie.
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I always remembered this movie because it was so vacuous. Half the film was shot by a pool, with a minimal plot. There would be a little action, sometimes with Rocky Graziano as the boy's assistant doing his shtick about boxing, after which the the boy hero would ask him to put on a record. Then the audience saw the performer doing a number. Thus, only half the film deals with the storyline. It wouldn't surprise me if the segments with the performances were shot separately for promotional purposes and then included in the film. I believe some of the performances were later cut from that film and occasionally turn up on television today. This and films like it are a major source of performances from early rockers.
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DMark071524 October 2005This was like watching the proverbial car wreck...truly horrible, but you can't turn your head away.
The editing was the worst I have ever seen in a movie. (They cut to a musical number for no reason whatsoever, and sometimes they would lose a word or two of dialog - no great loss as the scriptwriters obviously failed grade school English class.) The film was in B&W, but they "jazzed it up" by having cheesy sepia color hues in the background...orange-ish, lime green-ish.
The only way to see this film would be with a six pack and a group of friends to laugh at how bad it is. The clothes, hairstyles, stupid plot and bad acting were a hoot. -
If I had a guardian aunt like the one played by the dithering Zasu Pitts, I'd probably try a career in rock and roll myself. Jimmy Clanton is the title character whose aunt and agent (Rocky Graziano) are always over his shoulder. Graziano, a poor man's Mike Mazurki as an actor, has taken too many hits to the head because he can barely get any kind of emotion into his dialog, which is mediocre at best, and Pitts is oh so prim and proper without any of the zip she had in those 30's and 40's movies where her nervous characters were hiding behind an acid tongue.
The film itself is badly structured with interruptions constantly by sudden rock and roll numbers on an obvious TV soundstage, looking interpolated and all completely unrelated with the exception of Clanton's. He doesn't have any spark in his acting scenes at all, walking through this without any real enthusiasm.
As a record of music acts of the time (including Chubby Checker), it does hold some interest, but it's like watching two different types of media smashed together to pad it out to 80 minutes. The different colors of sepia don't add anything. In fact, they provide evidence of the desperation to get this out as a musical film that serves no purpose other than for teens at the drive-in to do what they were there to do. -
sol-kay7 October 2004Entertaining little musical about a spoiled young teenager who comes into his parents millions after their death and find love and fame and a stint in the US Army all within the 84 minutes of the movie.
Bobby Chalmers, Jimmy Clanton, likes to play and write music and one afternoon at his old mans radio station he secretly cuts a record "Green Light" that becomes the biggest hit in town but there's only one hitch; nobody knows who made and sang the song.
Having a bodyguard at his side in what seems like around the clock Rocky, Rocky Graziano, Bobby is not as free as he wants to be. The tough but lovable Rocky also sees that the kid needs more to do with himself then just hang around at the mansion drinking tea and eating crumpets with his overprotected Aunt Theodora, Zasu Pitts, who keeps him from going out in the world and having a good time for fear he would hurt himself.
When Bobby finally got the go from Aunt Theodora to work at his dad old radio station he meets Bambi, Diane Jergens, who also works there. Later with Rocky Bobby secretly makes the record "Green Light" under the name of Bob Schultz and the rest is history.
It was good to see former middleweight champ Rocky Graziano in what is a leading role in the movie, instead of a cameo like he usually was seen in the movies, that he was in and Rocky really did a good job acting even though he was only being himself.There were a number of songs in "Teenage Millionaire" in a number of colored over haze or cast, in reds blues yellows and greens, that looked a lot like music videos some twenty years before they came on the scene in the 1980's.
I liked the song with Cuubby Checker doing his tune "The Jet" where he looked and acted like a duck being chased across the hills valleys and ponds by a fleet of hostile UFO's. There was also the song that I liked a lot by pretty Vicki Spencer who was singing to, and hugging, her Teddy Bear with the tune "Hello Mister Dream".
With Bobby's tune now the biggest hit on the air his parents radio station is bought out from under him and it looks like the whole show is about to be over but, surprise surprise,the person who bought out the station is none other then Bobby's girlfriend Bambi's dad Mr. Bennie Price, what a stroke of good luck that was.
Before Bobby can start his singing career he gets a letter from Uncle Sam asking him that he's needed to serve and protect his country, the good U S of A. Bobby is now as happy as a drunk locked up in a liquor store overnight with him, for once, being able to do something that he'll be proud of; weren't those early 1960's a great times to live in. -
Wizard-827 August 2009I had wanted to see "Teenage Millionaire" for a long time. For one thing, I have found many "teensploitation" movies from the 1950s and 1960s to be campy fun, and the idea of portraying a teenage millionaire had the potential to be a hoot. Also, I like music from the 1960s, and hearing that this movie was full of musical numbers made me want to see it more.
After seeing the movie, I must confess I was very disappointed with the results. Even though the central youth of the movie is a teenage millionaire, there's almost nothing done with it. Where's the acting wild? Where's doing whatever you want? There's nothing like that here.
In fact, I'd say about half of the movie is instead devoted to cut-aways to top recording stars of the era lip-synching their hits. If the music had been good, this might have saved the movie. But almost all of the music is terrible, even though it comes from famed singers like Dion. I hadn't heard just about any of these songs before, and listening to them, it's clear why oldies stations haven't resurrected them. The songs are slow and not catchy. That is, except for Chubby Checker's numbers - they are spirited and directed with some energy. However, even his numbers suffer from a problem with all the song numbers - the annoying color tints used to try and pass this off as a partially color movie instead of 100% black and white.
This movie has never been issued on video or DVD. I suspect that issues with music rights have prevented this. But trust me, you are not missing anything.