Bop Girl Goes Calypso

A fun look at the brief period of time when Rock and roll and calypso music almost intersected. Belafonte was big, even Maya Angelou and Louis Farrakhan were recording with calypso bands. Light movie, fun performances, calypso never really took over Rock & Roll by any stretch of the imagination, it was sort of added in to the US's fascination with things tropical in the late 50s as Hawaii was about to be entered as a state. Mom & Dad went to Calypso parties and did the limbo, the kids still loved Elvis. Recommended, as I recommend Twist movies, for a snapshot of a largely forgotten time.

Get out your coconut frond hat, tie up the front of your Hawaiian Flower-dy shirt and see how low can YOU go, mon!

Bop Girl Goes Calypso (1957)

* (out of 4)

Excruciating mix of drama and music has Robert Hilton (Bobby Troup) warning people that rock and roll is on its way out and that calypso is the next big thing. No one believes him except for singer Jo Thomas (Judy Tyler) and soon the two are dating while trying to make the newest thing work. BOP GIRL GOES CALYPSO was just one of many "rock" musicals to be released in the 1950s and it's perhaps the worst one I've seen. Now to be fair, none of these musicals were all that good but the majority of them at least featured some interesting acts and a decent story but that's really not the case here. Music wise, Nino Tempo is about the best thing in the film and sadly this music is on so early that it leaves you a long time remaining with many less interesting acts. I think the biggest problem with this thing is that there's really no story to speak of. Instead of any real story we've got a very silly and unbelievable love story that has no sparks and we also have two leads with very little chemistry for one another. Tyler, on her own, isn't too bad as she manages to carry a tune and the "performance" is better than average. For the most part the music isn't all that good and if rock was really on its way out then nothing here would make you believe that. The cinematography isn't that bad for such a low-budget film but this here isn't strong enough to where it's going to keep viewers interested. Music buffs might want to check it out as a curiosity but that's about it.

I don't know how to score this movie. If you're like me, once you start watching it, you'll just sit back dumbfounded by the whole premise that Calypso music could have ever been a serious threat to rock and roll as a popular form of music. And how is this determined? Why, how else? A guy with a decibel meter goes to a club showing a rock and roll group, and another club with a calypso band, and he measures the volume of the applause! The applause registers higher at the calypso club so it's 'sorry, rock and roll, calypso's got you beaten'. Yeah, that's how I'd measure it.

Hmm. Does anyone remember any calypso bands? Any calypso hits? Ever been to a calypso concert? I can think of zero, zero, and zero respectively. (Well, actually, maybe that Harry Belafonte thing about 'daylight come and me wanna go home' would count....) However, if you give me a little time, I can probably jot down a couple hundred rock / rock & roll bands, just as many songs, and a couple dozen concerts that I attended. I have to say, I think that guy's decibel meter, scientific as it looked, was not a valid way to measure the popularity of a music form in a culture. Slightly wrong, it was.

Anyhow - this movie has a thin plot and plenty of excuses to make you listen to calypso bands to make sure you know how much you (are supposed to) like calypso music. Oh, yeah, mon! Not. I can almost feel myself blacking out, it's got to be like being violated in some way, letting this movie inflict this tropical racket on your ears! Ow, help.

This story is a "B" picture, simply about a rock and roll singer who is told by a professor with a kind of applause meter at a night club tells her that rock and roll is fading out and calypso is the new hot genre of music to pursue. The title character is Jo Thomas, played by Judy Tyler, one of her few roles (she passed away young from a road accident). The film lets you listen to various groups at nightclubs, encompassing jazz, rock and roll, r & b and, of course, calypso. The story line is thin, but for someone who was born after the film was made and was raised on rock, the film is enjoyable due to the fairly solid performances of each act. As a matter of fact, I was surprised to find I've never heard of these acts, some were very good. Ms. Tyler is fairly engaging, and though the interaction between the main characters is fairly pedestrian, its still a fun film. It showed up on TCM, which is where I watched it. You can do much worse than this film, and all of us have. I kind of enjoyed it. Check it out.

This is an easy film to mock. The leads can't act. (Nor can the supporting players.) The plot -- something about scientific proof that Calypso was about to replace Rock n' Roll as the reigning pop music --could have been conceived by Ed Wood. The fact that our hero was about to marry a Eugenics professor (yes, they did call it "Eugenics") who was enthusiastic about the genetic make up of their future child was unintentionally creepy. And, agonizingly, the titular Bop Girl cannot sing either Rock or Calypso. (She doesn't try to sing Bop -- for which the shade of Charlie Parker was likely grateful.) But these music movies of the 50s were not about the plot. Plot was an interlude for the kids to start smooching at the drive in. It was about the music. And SOME of that in this film was quite good.

For example, the first six or seven minutes are quite good. The credit sequence is Nino Tempo blowing a very hot r&b sax with a good stomping band. We move to another group (not sure who) singing pretty. Then, alas, we get some very, very, very bad music. Then some lame plot. Then, the highlight, a gentleman named Lord Flea, whose two features in the movie are exceptional. (Want to know where Bob Marley came from? Take a look. Then lobby EMI to get Flea's music re-released.) Generally, the better music is in the first half of the movie. Things start to get increasingly Ed Wooden after that, and the Bop Girl is allowed to sing far, far too often.