Out In The Corner Boy Be-Bop Night-With Jersey Boys In Mind   

 

 

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

Jersey Boys, John Lloyd Young, Erich Bergen, directed by Clint Eastwood, based on the Broadway musical, 2014 

The person who I saw this film with said that she could not get into the story line of the film under review, Jersey Boys, about the rise and fall of the iconic 1960s group, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, at the beginning but said that after watching that segment she assumed that the film dovetailed with the kind of things I have been writing about lately. She was right about that, no question. Lately I have been writing sketches about my musical coming of age time in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the time frame that this group blossomed on the scene. Strangely, except for the classic doo wop be-bop song, Sherri, I was not a fan of the Four Seasons although unlike other groups and singers of the time I did not hate their sound (you know the litany, Fabian, the Everly Brothers, sorry, sorry now, for not appreciating their work more, Ricky Nelson, the Bobbys Vee, Darin, Rydell, Sandra Dee, Brenda Lee, Pasty Kline again sorry). What perked my interest in this film was the corner boy aspect, Jersey corner boy aspect, which was not all that unlike my Carver corner boy growing up saga.        

In fact at certain points the early story of the guys who formed the core of the original group, Frankie, Tommy and Nick was so very, very similar to parts of my corner boy experience I had to laugh. The options for corner boys, guys who grew up “from hunger” in the working class neighborhoods, usually “the projects,” around the country in the 1950s had those same options, the Army one way or another (usually at like my own brother and a couple of cousins at the judge’s bidding- jail or the Army), straight-up jail when the folder got too thick with armed robberies and other mayhems, or become famous. I know my boys and I tried the latter at one point. That point had been in the sixth grade or so, maybe the summer before, when our leader, Billy Bradley, having been driven to distraction by the notion of fame since about third grade when Elvis and some other rock and roll legends splashed onto the scene, got us together around our corner which because we lacked any stores in our “projects” was in the back of the Myles Standish Elementary School, on those hot summer nights under “the street lights” and we sang. Sang the doo-wop craze stuff which Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers started and which Billy figured we could cash in on. That worked, well, worked for what our other purpose was, gathering interesting girls around us, meaning as we were reaching girl awareness times girls who had started getting a shape to kindle our virginal desires.

The problem, though, was unlike Frankie and the Four Seasons we really did not have any serious musical talent and did not at they did have a new angle on the music of the times (except Billy, Billy had a very good voice to cover stuff we heard, the drive too but lacked something maybe an original niche to hang his talent on although as I found out later plenty of people, guys, had talent but could not make the break-out and sadly some went on to the next best thing). So, sadly too, most of my corner boys wound up in the Army, a couple dead in Vietnam whose service is now commemorated down in black marble down in Washington and on a granite column on Carver Commons for their troubles, or jail, including Billy who turned to small-scale armed robberies first of gas stations then of small town banks before he was gunned down by a cop in a shoot-out at a White Hen in North Carolina after he failed to make a career singing. My own path followed very closely to Billy’s for a while (I actually worked the “clip,” the five-finger discount” with Billy as he moved over to his new career) and it was very close thing which way I would head.          

That talent part is important because no matter how “from hunger” you are you need the talent and the quirky niche in order to survive in the musical world. Even then as became apparent as the film unfolded fame is a very close thing. A couple of twists one way or another and the fifteen minutes of fame is up, gone. And fame as Frankie found out the hard way despite his hard work doesn’t shield you from life’s woes as the break-up of the group, his daughter’s drug death and the financial problems created by Tommy’s proliferate ways attest to. Not an unfamiliar story but one worth telling once again.

[By the way as the film moved on to the performance parts the person I saw the film with said she did settle in and liked the rest of it. And why wouldn’t she as a child of that time as well when she was glued to her transistor radio up in some bedroom listening to the aforementioned Sherri, Dawn, Walk Like A Man,  Rag Dog, Big Girls Don’t Cry and all the rest that drove the young girls wild back then.]