Pat's First Pat

All Hands on Deck (20th Century-Fox). Charles Eugene ("Pat") Boone,*a pop singer known in show business as "the apostle to the adolescents," has a face as wholesome as a glass of milk, though perhaps not quite so interesting. He does not smoke, drink or swear. Some people also say he does not sing, but then some people don't like the way Albert Schweitzer plays the organ. Certainly he does not act, but perhaps that is expecting too much of a lad who is only 26, and who, as he shyly confesses, was spanked by his mother (with a sewing-machine belt) until he was 17.

In his first two movies, Hero Boone righteously refused to kiss the heroine. In his third, he gave her a shy peck on the cheek. In his fourth, he actually kissed her on the mouth--though, as one moviegoer saw it, the kiss was not so much a kiss as an "oral handshake." But after seeing this film, Mama Boone's hand may well reach instinctively for the Singer. Pat Boone kisses the leading lady with his mouth wide open. What's more, in full view of those millions of suggestible young people to whom he has preached "the teen commandments," Pat pats her pretty little derriere. "With each picture," says Pat, "I get a little closer."

Closer to what? Certainly not to an Academy Award. In this routine piece of USNonsense--aptly epitomized in the ship's mascot: a turkey--Pat plays a two-striper, second in command on an LST in the peacetime Navy. When not scuttling his principles with a girl reporter (Barbara Eden), Hero Boone consoles a pointy-headed skipper (Dennis O'Keefe) who dearly loves to fish but sadly catches the only thing that seems to swim in the average gagman's Pacific: a brassiere. Whenever he has nothing worse to do, Pat sings a song. The music will not seriously disturb anybody except musicians, but the words ("She's a new destroyer type Every turret round and ripe") are really going to raise Ned in the 4,400 Pat Boone fan clubs. Anyway, after 98 minutes on a cliche-cluttered Deck, even the most loyal Boone companion may say amen to this unwittingly witty bit of dialogue:

"The admiral's ready to abandon ship!"

"Who isn't?"

*Pat is short for Patricia. Mama, as Pat still calls her, was expecting a girl.

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