Word: bongos
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...Expresso Bongo is the slum to stardom story of a London Presley-in-the-rough, depicted with total amorality. Adapted from his own play by British novelist and playwright Wolf Mankowitz, the film removes the glittering facade of show business for a behind the scenes view of the world in its dog-eat-dog reality. The almighty pound weaves in and out of the script, permeating the atmosphere and the characterizations...
Cliff Richard, as the uncut diamond, Bert Rudge, and the transformed glittering gem of a commercial property, Bongo Herbert, handles himself well while acting, but is unconvincing when he slides into song. His virile voice doesn't quite go with his peach-fuzzed cheeks...
...Trio, they often appear in gold shirts and Oxford grey shorts, offer hoked-up versions of such numbers as Eddystone Light and Let the Rest of the World Go By. Perhaps their most unforgivable sin, in the eyes of folk purists, is backing up their arrangements with cymbals and bongo drums...
Through the fogs and damps of London drift thousands of Africans, a long way from the sunlit ease of their homelands. They live in bleak, crowded rooming houses in Netting Hill and Paddington, find their entertainment in smoky cellar nightclubs that are loud with West Indian steel bands, bongo drums and maracas. They are genuinely puzzled when the Jumbles (a corruption of John Bulls) object to the noise and the dawn revelry. "What harm do we do?" asked an African last week. "We like to dance and sing, and we've worked hard all day and till late...
...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...