Cinema: New Picture, Apr. 25, 1960

Expresso Bongo (Val Guest; Continental) is another British attempt to produce an American cinemusical. The hero is a young Sohobo (Laurence Harvey) who calls himself a talent agent because he books skiffle bands and strip acts into low resorts. One night in an espresso parlor he hears a teen-age rockney (Cliff Richard) who bangs bongo and makes noises like Elvis Presley. The agent rooks the dope into a fifty-fifty split of all his earnings, soon makes him a major platter personality, TV type and subject of sociological concern ("Drums," a psychiatrist declares, "may be his means of evacuating tension"). In the...

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