Where the Boys Are [Blu-ray]

Overview

Yvette Mimeux, Paula Prentiss, Connie Francis, and Dolores Hart star in this frothy teen romance-drama as attractive co-eds who take off from Midwest colleges on the annual spring break to land in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida -- where the boys are. There are plenty of parties, booze, and sex to keep minds off calculus for awhile. Merritt Andrews (Hart) and Ryder Smith (George Hamilton) manage to get together, Tuggle Carpenter (Paula Prentiss) manages to let her comedic talents shine, Angie (Connie Francis) sings the hit title song, but Melanie (Yvette Mimeux) becomes a casualty of too many good times. She will recover, and all the leads will go on to good, even great careers in some cases. Dolores Hart was the only featured player here to leave Hollywood behind -- she became a Benedictine nun in 1963.

Product Details

Release Date:	07/25/2017
UPC:	0888574547080
Original Release:	1960
Rating:	NR
Source:	Warner Archives
Presentation:	[Wide Screen]
Language:	English
Time:	1:39:00
Sales rank:	5,683

Special Features

Commentary by Paul Prentiss; Connie Francis and Paula Prentiss in Where the Boys Were: A Retrospective; Fort Lauderdale Premiere Newsreel; Theatrical Trailer

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Dolores Hart	Merritt Andrews
George Hamilton	Ryder Smith
Yvette Mimieux	Melanie Tolman
Paula Prentiss	Tuggle Carpenter
Jim Hutton	TV Thompson
Barbara Nichols	Lola
Connie Francis	Angie
Chill Wills	Police Captain
Frank Gorshin	Basil
Rory Harrity	Franklin
John Brennan	Dill
Ted Berger	Stout Man
Vito Scotti	Maitre d'
Sean Flynn	Guy in Blue Sweatshirt
Percy Helton	Motel Operator
Jack Kruschen	Counter Man
George Stoll	Composer
Pete Rugolo	Composer

Technical Credits

George Wells

Glendon Swarthout

Henry Levin	Director
George Wells	Screenwriter
Joe Pasternak	Producer
Glendon Swarthout	Screenwriter

Editorial Reviews

More than four decades after it was released, it's easy to smile and wonder if college students ever really behaved as they did in the original Where the Boys Are, in which what's supposed to be a week-long bender of collegiate decadence in Florida looks like a fairly innocuous beer bust by contemporary standards. But the movie still gets by on its charm and the thankfully light touch of much of the cast. Dolores Hart has the good sense not to overplay her hand as the relative glamour girl of the South-bound foursome, and George Hamilton's wealthy dreamboat carries just the right balance of sincerity and tongue-in-cheek self-parody. If Paula Prentiss and Jim Hutton lay it on a bit thicker, they certainly play well off of one another, and went on to become a solid comic team in several subsequent pictures. If someone had to have a tragic event, at least Yvette Mimieux gives her character the proper degree of dignified gravity, and while Connie Francis can't really act, she seems to know enough to stay out of the way when she's not singing. (And has the screen ever beheld a dialectic jazz musician quite like Frank Gorshin? I believe not.) Director Henry Levin keeps the proceedings fun and frothy most of the time, and while the more serious turn in the final reel seems forced, the film was certainly ahead of its time in pondering the notion of sexual freedom for both male and female college students (even though, for the most part, our heroines ponder this as principle rather than reality). Hardly a masterpiece, Where the Boys Are still stacks up as pleasant entertainment that doesn't insult the intelligence, and time has been much kinder to this film than its misbegotten 1984 remake.