how ‘bye bye birdie’ made me a critic

In the spring of 1963, I endured what was my first pop culture disappointment, the first case in which anticipation turned to despair, and the moment it occurred to me that artistic endeavors could go horribly wrong. I'm thinking of that now because for the last few weeks, 'Mad Men' has been reminding me of 'Bye Bye Birdie,' as the advertising execs try to replicate Ann-Margret's visual rendition of the title song for a diet soda commercial. Also, 'Bye Bye Birdie' is coming back to Broadway.

You know the story of 'Bye Bye Birdie,' I assume, but briefly: a '50s pop star named Conrad Birdie is drafted into the Army. His fans are distraught. His manager arranges for Kim McAfee from Sweet Apple, Ohio to give Conrad one last kiss, on The Ed Sullivan Show. I saw the play not long after it opened, and got the biggest kick out of it, especially Birdie's big number, 'Honestly Sincere,' which is still one of the sharpest Elvis parodies ever, and there have been skillions of Elvis parodies. (And note: the song ends with a prescient 'yeah, yeah, yeah')

So imagine how happy I was that there was going to be a 'Bye Bye Birdie' movie, and how I felt when we went into Manhattan, and I saw how much it completely sucked. How could something I'd liked so much be turned into something so bad? And I got the soundtrack album from the film, and I can't swear to this, but I remember being so upset by the revised 'Got A Lot of Livin' To Do' that I shut it off in the middle, never to play it again.

That's when I became a critic. I blamed the screenwriters, for taking a simple show-business fable and making it into a stupid Disneyish picture, changing the manager character (Dick Van Dyke) into a failed scientist. I blamed the director (George Sidney) for emphasizing the corniest, most sitcomish aspects of the plot, and randomly turning solo songs into duets. I blamed whomever cast the film, for sticking Janet Leigh (who could neither sing nor dance) into the lead female role. I blamed Bobby Rydell for being Bobby Rydell. I blamed the other actors for their shameless mugging. It was even shot like crap.

I was a 12-year old Roger Ebert, with both thumbs way down.

I will defend Ann-Margret however, from those who still carp that she was too...much. Too vixenish to be a Sweet Apple teenaged girl.

Her Kim McAfee, with her ruffled pink top and tight pink slacks, may have been overdoing the smolder-factor, but early '60s movies were filled with good-bad girls getting out of hand (see small-town girl Yvette Mimieux in 'Where The Boys Are,' and Tuesday Weld in just about anything), and I think Ann-Margret - badly directed, it's true - was, in her musical numbers, playing a girl playing with her sexuality as an outward expression of her conflicted morals. Or something like that.

As Season 3 of 'Mad Men' started, Ann-Margret came into view, in front of a blue screen, like there were going to be special effects, or at least some rear-projection stuff, going on behind her, but Ann-Margret in 1963 didn't need any additional visual effects. She stared straight into the camera and sold that dopey, tacked-on song (it's not in the original musical).

I still like red-haired girls.

And I still like 'Bye Bye Birdie,' the one I saw live. There's an original cast recording floating around from the early '60s London production, and what's cool about it is that they cast an actual British pop star, Marty Wilde, as Conrad. I'm putting his 'Honestly Sincere' on a list of MP3's I'd like to post when MOG gives the green light. But you can go check it out on iTunes.

About 10 months after the movie came out, the pop world went totally bonkers, and the era of Conrad Birdie seemed even more quaint and antique, but teen hysteria being teen hysteria, someone had the idea to rework a song from the play. Tomorrow being 09/09/09, and tonight being devoted in this apartment to playing the new mono CD's of 'A Hard Day's Night' and 'Rubber Soul,' I thought I'd close with this: