New Picture

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 end, of course, the yob gets with it, and the agent finds himself far out.

Actor Harvey is sometimes fairly effective as a sort of marked-down, sterling-bloc Sinatra. The lines are often smart enough (stripper complaining of the bald old men in her audience: "It's like playing to an egg box"). But why should so much effort and ability have been expended to make a bad imitation of a Hollywood movie?

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