In his gritty ’55 flick BLACKBOARD JUNGLE, director Richard Brooks introduced a wide audience to Sidney Poitier, the harsh world of inner-city schools...and a genre of music called "rock ‘n’ roll."
Host Rico Gagliano tells the story of Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock"—cinema's first rock needle drop—with the help of music detective and author Jim Dawson, film writer Anna Ariadne Knight, and actor Peter Ford...the Hollywood kid who may have accidentally started the rock-n-roll era.
The third season of the MUBI Podcast, titled “Needle on the Record,” dives into the unifying power of movie music and tells the stories behind some of cinema’s most renowned “needle drops”—moments where filmmakers deployed pre-existing music instead of an original score. Each episode explores an iconic marriage of song and image that’s become part of pop culture. It’s a six-part mixtape for film lovers.
Check out our film collection Turn It Up: Music on Film, featuring a selection of eclectic music films, from concert docs to music-rich feature films. This includes Andrew Dominik's ONE MORE TIME WITH FEELING, streaming now nearly globally.
And to stream some of the films we've covered on the podcast, check out the collection Featured on the MUBI Podcast. Availability of films varies depending on your country.
MUBI is a global streaming service, production company and film distributor dedicated to elevating great cinema. MUBI makes, acquires, curates, and champions extraordinary films, connecting them to audiences all over the world. A place to discover ambitious new films and singular voices, from iconic directors to emerging auteurs. Each carefully chosen by MUBI’s curators.
In his gritty ’55 flick BLACKBOARD JUNGLE, director Richard Brooks introduced a wide audience to Sidney Poitier, the harsh world of inner-city schools...and a genre of music called "rock ‘n’ roll."
Host Rico Gagliano tells the story of Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock"—cinema's first rock needle drop—with the help of music detective and author Jim Dawson, film writer Anna Ariadne Knight, and actor Peter Ford...the Hollywood kid who may have accidentally started the rock-n-roll era.
The third season of the MUBI Podcast, titled “Needle on the Record,” dives into the unifying power of movie music and tells the stories behind some of cinema’s most renowned “needle drops”—moments where filmmakers deployed pre-existing music instead of an original score. Each episode explores an iconic marriage of song and image that’s become part of pop culture. It’s a six-part mixtape for film lovers.
Check out our film collection Turn It Up: Music on Film, featuring a selection of eclectic music films, from concert docs to music-rich feature films. This includes Andrew Dominik's ONE MORE TIME WITH FEELING, streaming now nearly globally.
And to stream some of the films we've covered on the podcast, check out the collection Featured on the MUBI Podcast. Availability of films varies depending on your country.
MUBI is a global streaming service, production company and film distributor dedicated to elevating great cinema. MUBI makes, acquires, curates, and champions extraordinary films, connecting them to audiences all over the world. A place to discover ambitious new films and singular voices, from iconic directors to emerging auteurs. Each carefully chosen by MUBI’s curators.
Heads up, this episode includes spoilers. Beverly Hills, California, 1954. Palm trees tower over the broad boulevards and gliding down the street, windows down, a big boat of a fifties car. At the wheel, one time movie star Eleanor Powell. Her shoulder length curly hair, gently blowing. And beside her, her son, Peter Ford, nine years old, clutching a 78 RPM record. By that time, my mom had retired from film business. She had made her last film, I think, in 1950, and I was an only child. So I'd tell mom, you know, let's go here, let's go there. That's Peter and where he'd had her drive him that day was to the local record store called The Gramophone Shop. His oasis. We lived kind of in a remote area in Beverly Hills at that time, and I really didn't have any friends to play with after school. So music became my, I don't know, my refuge. The music he was into was R&B, what was called race music back then, because it was played almost solely by black artists. It was cool, sometimes wild. The opposite of the milquetoast pop acts like Perry Como that topped the charts. Peter dug Big Walter's squanking harmonica and the haunted vocals of Johnny Ace. And believe me, finding a new Johnny Ace record in Beverly Hills in 1954, it was like... Like finding a tooth on a hen. I mean, it just, it just didn't happen. But a few months earlier, there had been one white act that cut a record worthy of Peter's collection. I had purchased a song by Bill Haley and the Comets called <i>Crazy Man, Crazy</i>. And I had taken it home and really liked it. And I decided I would have to pick up the next song that came out by Bill Haley and The Comets, which is<i>13 Women and Only One Man in Town</i>. And that record he had found at the gramophone shop that day, 78 in hand, he bolted from the car and into his house Mansion really. My parents bought the house we were in at the time from Max Steiner. And of course, Max Steiner did all of the great scores.<i>Gone With the Wind</i> and <i>Casablanca</i> and <i>The Letter</i>. So in that house, Max Steiner had this room he called the China Room, and all of the walls were paneled with these Chinese murals. That was where he did a lot of his composing. So when my dad bought the house, my mom and dad bought the house, there was a guy who worked at MGM, you'll see his credits all the time, his name was Douglas Shearer, and he did all the sound editing at MGM for decades. Mr. Shearer came over to the house and installed this incredible speaker system in the China room. It was, I could turn the volume up and it would shake the walls. Peter threw on the side of his new Bill Haley record, prepared to have his socks blown off. And heard a song about a guy who dreams of a nuclear war that leaves him alone with the titular 13 women.<i>♪ Last night I was dreaming</i><i>♪ I dreamed about the H-bomb</i><i>♪ Well, the bomb went off and I was caught</i><i>♪ I was the only man on the ground</i> And I thought,"Oh man, this is terrible." It was horrible. I did not like it. What didn't you like about it? Just if you play it, you've... It's everything. The melody was terrible. The theme was stupid. I just didn't like it at all. So I turned it over and... And there was <i>Rock Around the Clock</i> And that I really liked. I thought, well, now, yeah, this is, this is happening. So that's how it came to be in my collection. A nine year old sitting in a mansion surrounded by Asian murals. When I imagined the birth of the rock and roll era, it's not the picture that ever came to mind, but you could argue... That's how it all began. I'm Rico Gagliano, and welcome back to the MUBI podcast. MUBI's the streaming service that champions great cinema. On this show, we tell you the stories behind great cinema. This is season three. We're calling it Needle on the Record, as we're diving into a few movie, history's iconic needle drops. When filmmakers take preexisting tunes, drop them in their films and end up with something legendary. And when director Richard Brooks dropped Rock Around the Clock into his gritty high school drama <i>Blackboard Jungle</i>. A legend is what he got, the first rock tune ever on a Hollywood soundtrack, and the one that made Bill Haley and rock and roll, a worldwide phenomenon. For better, and for worse. It was playing Berlin, and people were tearing the place up. They tore up the chairs. Chairs were flying through the air. The band had to leave the stage because they were just being overrun. That's rock historian Jim Dawson, and he's one of many folks who told me how this song went from the B-side of a 78, to Peter Ford, to the silver screen and made rock the center of the pop culture universe. So brush off your blue suede shoes as we drop the needle on <i>Blackboard Jungle</i>. If you had to pick a poster boy for ultra rebellious rock and roll out of a lineup, your first choice might not be Bill Haley. Well, Bill Haley really began recording as a country artist in the 1940s. And like so many of the artists back then, he was a jack of all trades. He worked in a radio station in Pennsylvania, right outside of Philly. Jim Dawson wrote the book<i>Rock Around the Clock:</i><i>the Record That Started the Rock Revolution.</i> He says as a small market country music DJ, Haley's job was to work the names of local baking good sponsors into his patter. Like, "Yeah, boy, there's a good Hank Williams song there, and the sounded just as sweet as good ole Martha's Flour!" You know, that kind of thing. You know, a kind of a folksy sort of guy. He was a little odd too, you know, when he was young, he had an accident and he basically had a dead eye. So in order to distract from his strange eye, he had a curl of hair plastered against his forehead, which we called a spit curl back then. And finally, his music didn't indicate the makings of a rocker either. He was a yodeling champion. In fact, if you go on YouTube and look up <i>Yodel Your Blues Away,</i> you can hear how great of a yodeler he was.<i>♪ ...yodel your blues away</i> But eventually, Haley put together more of a country western group called The Saddle Men, and fatefully ended up mingling with some decidedly non country western folks. The band's regular venue, a Philly joint called The Two Bar, catered to sailors of all races from the nearby naval shipyard. So Haley shared the stage with black acts like The Treniers and got exposed to R&B. It was just the beginning. So he was always interested in black music. And on the station where he had a radio show, there was a black guy who had a show before him who would play the, y'know, old rhythm and blues, and they had a theme song called <i>Rock the Joint</i>. So he and his group, The Saddlemen, you know, who'd be dressed up in cowboy hats and, you know, cowboy boots and all that stuff when they were playing at The Two Bar, that would be their outro and intro song.<i>♪ We're gonna rock, rock this joint</i><i>♪ We're gonna rock</i> And he saw that whatever they did, <i>Rock the Joint,</i> you know, they got a good reaction from the crowd. Eventually, in 1952, The Saddlemen recorded it as the B-side of one of their country singles.<i>♪ Well, six times six is thirty six I ain't gonna hit for six more licks</i><i>♪ We're going to rock. Rock...</i> And in what was going to be a pattern for Haley, it got more radio play than the A-side. For him and the band, things were about to change. So he goes on tour and he's in the South. He was hoping to get on the Grand Ole Opry, but then the record company owner calls him up and says the other side is taking off.<i>Rock the Joint</i> is the side That's happening. So here he is. You know, he's got his cowboy hat and his cowboy boots and sideburns and all that sort of thing. The band had to change their wardrobe mid-tour, and they started singing <i>Rock the Joint,</i> and that sort of became his first hit. And that really started him in this new direction. He was seeing that there was a, this new teenage market. Yeah, a market of kids like Peter Ford, most of whom weren't quite living in mansions but were flush with cash from the postwar economic boom. For them, Haley's mash up of country twang with R&B was a whole new thrill, and they were happy to pay for it.<i>♪ ...this joint, we're gonna rock Rock this joint</i><i>♪ We're gonna rock this joint tonight</i> But just as Haley was getting a warm welcome from the teen crowd, the rest of mainstream America was getting really worried about them. I suppose we could call it the youth problem. That's Anna Ariadne Knight. While she was teaching film and history at the University of London, Queen Mary, she wrote the book<i>Screening The Hollywood Rebels</i>. She says during World War Two... You've got the disruption of war. You've got mothers working. You've got absent fathers. You've got children being unsupervised. And I guess in a response to the war, you've got this sort of liberal ethos surrounding parenting. Kind of like things are so bad that, like, maybe we should give our kids- a little slack.- Yes, exactly that. So this led to children hanging out, more. Being unsupervised, less discipline, and maybe just, you know, what started off as hijinx between teenagers finding sort of self-expression and minor offenses, became of real concern to government and agencies. After dark is the most dangerous time for young people. Adventure in the night holds many hazards for children. When parents neither know nor care what they do. And it sort of inspired psychological studies, government information films, pamphlet literature. I think the idea was that this sort of undisciplined youth could lead to a sort of wasted generation of people. Rowdy kids. Troubled kids headed for trouble. Still a couple of years from real crime. But with destruction and violence their only outlet. They're on their way to it. Soon the shocking problem of juvenile delinquency was the topic du jour. Now it wasn't just the government fretting about it in educational films, American journalists, novelists, everyone was taking it on. And finally, so did Hollywood, including the last studio anyone would have imagined. So MGM was the purveyor of very lush, sentimental, glossy, Technicolor entertainment. But with the ongoing competition with TV, which had sort of taken the family audience, the studio knew it had to stay relevant. It needed to provide adult themed realism, which the burgeoning sort of TV industry couldn't yet provide. One of MGM's first forays into that kind of movie would be a juvenile delinquent melodrama called <i>Blackboard Jungle</i>. It wasn't an unprecedented kind of movie. A year earlier, Columbia Pictures had scored a teen rebel hit with <i>The Wild One</i> in which Marlon Brando played Johnny, the leader of a biker gang that terrorizes a small town. Hey, Johnny, what are you rebelling against? Whadda ya got? That <i>Blackboard Jungle</i> ups the ante. It's about a teacher named Mr. Dadier who struggles with delinquents who aren't like invaders from out of town... They're the kids in his own classroom. So Rich Dadier is an ex-GI. He goes to teach at an inner city school in New York. It's a lot tougher than he expects and becomes involved in a sort of power struggle with a number of the students. Foremost among them, a brooding, violent punk named Artie West. Right From day one, Mr. Dadier and this kid are at war. Take your hat off in this classroom. You ever try to fight 35 guys at one time, Teach? Take your hat off, boy, before I knock it off. So Artie resolves to make his teachers life hell. And not just in class. Artie West starts to intimidate Dadier's wife. A series of phone calls and poison pen letters, making her believe that Dadier has a romantic interest in a teaching colleague. That's not all. Artie and his crew jump Dadier in an alley and punch him bloody. They try to get him fired by spreading rumors he's a racist. But through it all, he perseveres, winning over more and more of the kids. Until when Artie straight up pulls a switchblade on Dadier in class, he finds himself fighting alone. You're not so tough without a gang to back you up, are you? But you were tough that night in the alley, weren't you? 7 to 2. It's about your odds, isn't it? Artie is subdued. And his one remaining henchman... Gets clobbered by another kid wielding a flagpole draped with the stars and stripes. Seriously, Based on a bestselling novel, the <i>Blackboard Jungle</i> was written and directed by the great Richard Brooks, a hard nosed ex-soldier just like Mr. Dadier, who'd grown up in slums just like the movie's teenagers. So except for the improbable happy ending, Brooks was hell bent on making <i>Blackboard Jungle</i> as gritty as MGM could handle. And then some. I think there was a bit of conflict there between Brooks and the studio executives When he was making the film, he said that he wanted as much realism as possible. He would want the students to look raggedy, to look poor, to look a bit beaten up, to look unruly. They smeared the sets with dirt. They wanted it to, you know, to depict real life. And you had the studio executives having this ongoing conflict of wiping everything clean. You know. Literally? Literally, like people would come in... And wiping everything clean. You know "We can't have that. This is an MGM production." So luckily, Brooks kind of was tenacious enough to stick with his vision. And that tough modern vision extended to the music. In <i>The Wild One</i> Johnny and his biker pals dance to big band tunes. But in the <i>Blackboard Jungle</i>... This is a Cherokee. Anybody want to hear this record, huh? There's a scene where Artie and his gang literally destroy a newbie teacher's prized big band records. Hey, clap hands, here comes Charlie. Brooks knew modern kids were into newer, wilder sounds like this emerging genre of jacked up boogie and country, and R&B, that a big time deejay named Alan Freed was now calling 'rock and roll.' Brooks hadn't heard tons of it, but it seemed just the thing for his opening and closing credits. And as it happens, the perfect song had come out a year earlier from a band that was now known as Bill Haley and the Comets.<i>Rock Around the Clock</i> was recorded on April 121954, in New York at the Pythian Temple. And the group had a hard time getting there. They had to drive there from Philly. Their first order of business, taping a tune partly written by their producer and which was therefore going to be the A-side, <i>13 Women</i>. You may remember it from the top of this episode as the song even the nine year old called 'stupid.' So when they went in, since the group had never seen <i>13 Women,</i> they had to kind of learn the song and they'd run it down and all that sort of thing. And back then a standard recording session was three hours. So they spend all their time recording, you know, take after take after, take after, take of <i>13 Women</i>. And finally they only had about a half hour left to record the flip side. That was a number written by a Tin Pan Alley songwriter named Maxi Freeman. His take on a theme that had been around in music for decades. If you go back to like 1923, there was an influential recording, Trixie Smith, who was a blues singer and it was called<i>My Man Rocks Me with One Steady Roll</i>. And in the song she says, you know, "I looked at the clock and the clock struck one. And I said, 'Oh, baby, let's have some fun.'" You know. That idea of kind of, you know, having fun all night long. Yeah, but by the clock. Yeah, by the numbers of the clock. And then in 1953, Dinah Washington had a song called<i>TV is a Thing This Year.</i> And in this case, the TV repairman comes over and he's..."So we turn to channel three, and I said oooh ooh eee."And we turn to Channel four..." You know. You could just apply this concept to anything with a dial, basically. Yeah.<i>♪ One, two, three o'clock, four o'clock, rock</i><i>♪ Five, six, seven o'clock, eight o'clock, rock</i> In the remaining half hour of studio time, Bill Haley and the Comets squeezed in two takes of <i>Rock Around the Clock,</i> later pasting together the best bits to create the version that even my own three year old kid sings today.<i>♪ We're gonna rock around the clock tonight</i><i>♪ We're gonna rock, rock, rock, 'til broad daylight</i> But back in 1954 was just a minor hit, creeping into the charts and then falling off fast. One year later, with some help from a certain nine year old, it'd be back.<i>Blackboard Jungle</i> rocks the world's bobby socks off. Coming up in just a minute. Stay with us.<i>♪ We're gonna rock, gonna rock, around the clock tonight</i> Okay, friends, so MUBI is a curated streaming service showing exceptional films from around the globe, all handpicked by real people who really know movies. Those same people also curate special collections of films on MUBI. And guess which one of those collections I've been obsessed with lately? Why, yes it would be the one that gathers together awesome music films. Go to MUBI.com Look for the collection Turn It Up: Music On Film and you will find some gorgeous concert flicks, documentaries about musicians and movies just generally filled with music. I myself just rewatched something that I actually caught in theaters in its first run. That would be the Nick Cave documentary,<i>One More Time with Feeling,</i> directed by Andrew Dominik. It captures Cave in the studio recording his album <i>Skeleton Tree,</i> and it'd be worth it solely for the sequence set around the song <i>Distant Sky,</i> which is heartbreaking just as a song. But it is way more so here because the movie is also about how cave processed, let's say, a huge personal loss. Beautiful movie to look at. Good for the soul. And yeah, just one example of the movies that you're going to find in that collection, which once again is called Turn It Up: Music on Film. We've got all the links and info you need in the show notes of this episode. Speaking of which, let's get back to it. So it's early, 1955.<i>Blackboard Jungle</i> has been shot and in his Beverly Hills home one night, young Peter Ford gets a visit from none other than director Richard Brooks. Which was actually not that big a deal.'Cause, see Peter's dad was Glenn Ford, the star of Richard Brooks's film, playing the tough Mr. Dadier himself. And Dick used to live up the street from us up into the canyon, I believe, and he would stop at our house sometimes after work or on the weekends he'd come by. And I'm one particular evening he came over to the house for some advice. See, Brooks was already deploying a big band number on the <i>Blackboard Jungle</i> soundtrack. Stan Kenton's <i>Invention for Guitar and Trumpets.</i> It's pretty awesome. Kenton's stuff was maybe as frantic and cutting edge as big band ever got. But Richard Brooks wanted to add something even edgier. He wanted to juxtapose this this big band sound with something that was more typical of the generation that was to come. And so my dad said to him, to Richard Brooks, he said, "Well, my son, listen to this kind of strange music." So I took Richard Brooks into the China room and I played him a bunch of my songs. And as I recall now, it would have been a <i>Shake, Rattle and Roll,</i> I think maybe <i>All Night Long</i> by Joe Houston Orchestra. But he also took <i>Rock Around the Clock.</i> I later found out from Joel Freeman, who was the assistant director on the film, that Richard brought them into the studio and he called Joel and he said,"What do you think?" And they said, "Oh, you know, I like this <i>Rock Around the Clock.</i>" That was going to turn out to be a big decision. In the old days, the studios used to use the Encino Theater in Encino, California, as a place to have the previews. I think it was February 2nd. My 10th birthday, they had a preview of <i>Blackboard Jungle</i>. And I know I went there with my dad and I'm sure some other bigwigs from the studio. And my dad said to me and he said,"You know, they're going to play your song." And boy, I'm glad, I'm sitting there, Rico, in the theater in the back. And they, and they start the movie with, you know,"One, two, three o'clock, four o'clock, rock" with the backbeat on the snare drum.<i>♪ One, two, three o'clock, four o'clock, rock</i> And it was loud, like I used to play it in the China room. I was just thrilled. And of course, when the film was released in I think it was the March of 55 when that song started off, it just ricocheted across the world. Yeah, <i>Blackboard Jungle</i> had a lot going for it. Topic ripped from the headlines, mesmerizing breakout performances from newbies like Sidney Poitier and Vic Morrow as the wayward teens. But what made it a sensation? Let's be honest, it's got to have a lot to do with the rock and roll soundtrack. Something just happened at that moment when <i>Rock Around the Clock</i> was linked to those images about, you know, disaffected youth, beating up their teachers, causing havoc, which must have been very appealing to rebellious teenagers and even to those quieter teenagers. You know, it's almost like a wish fulfillment film, isn't it? It's a fantasy scenario. Yes, <i>Blackboard Jungle's</i> heroes are actually the grown-ups. But Knight says for kids in the audience, that was beside the point. There's someone called Ray Gosling, who was a grammar school boy at the time, but became a novelist in his later years. He couldn't even remember the plot. All he remembered was the excitement, hearing the soundtrack and then seeing students beat up their teachers. You know, that was his takeaway. The result? A movie that drew in grownups with its serious message and kids with its music and mayhem. The <i>Blackboard Jungle</i> topped the box office for weeks, earned back more than triple what it cost. Landed four Oscar nominations and inspired rockers to be from Paul McCartney to Frank Zappa. This was a purposeful move to kind of capture the tone and the feeling of postwar America. Who didn't want to see, you know, Busby Berkeley high stepping tap dancers, but more grit and kind of the seedy side of life. But especially with the music that came out of it, it just exploded the whole rock and roll thing. So it had unintended consequences. And one guy experiencing lots of the consequences was Bill Haley. So anyway, the film becomes a huge hit. Decca reissues<i>Rock Around the Clock</i> and it shoots to number one on the charts. And it was the number one song all summer of 1955. It went to England, was a big hit over there, went to Germany, a big hit there. It's the first million seller in Britain. And of course, it brings Bill Haley, you know, brings him a Hollywood contract.- Nice guitar you got there.- Well, thank you very much. We were just trying to find out the name of your band. The name? Hey, guys, We've got a couple of foreigners from the flatlands with us. Are you serious? You mean you've never heard of Bill Haley and the Comets? Yet when <i>Blackboard Jungle</i> and Haley's tune hit number one, filmmakers rushed to cash in with their own rock themed movies, one of which, <i>Rock Around the Clock</i> starred Bill Haley. In fact, it told a fictionalized, very, story of his life. And despite the fact that it also kicked off with <i>Rock Around the Clock</i> as its theme song. Would you mind telling me what you fellows were playing? Well, it's easy, alligator. All you do is play the music upside down. It was hardly<i>Blackboard Jungle,</i> the sequel. But in the U.K... Oh, <i>Rock Around the Clock</i> instigated what's been commonly called"the rock 'n' roll cinema riots." It's got to be one of the great ironies of the era. On one hand, UK censors had heavily edited<i>Blackboard Jungle</i>. They were worried kids would watch the film and go wild in the theaters. But a year later, Haley and rock music were so happening that for this milquetoast family movie, the kids actually did go wild. Bill Haley was using a hep talk where he would call out and of course, audiences would want to respond. You had people wanting to dance. They start jiving in the aisles. So they'd be escorted out. Then, as more and more people heard about these kind of altercations with managers, with police, it became a sort of spectacle. You could go to your local cinema and see if there was going to be any trouble involving young people. And then I'm assuming that it's in the wake of this that then Bill Haley comes to tour the UK, right? Yes, in the wake of this, he arrives at Southampton on the Queen Elizabeth liner and he's besieged. It's unprecedented, the reception that he gets. Then he takes the train to London's Waterloo, and the media call it the "second battle of Waterloo" because it's about 5000 fans at the station. He needs a police escort to leave. In his diary, he sort of confesses that, you know, 5000 people, nearly killed us. And elsewhere in Europe, same near-death experience. He was playing in Berlin and people would tear the place up. They tore up the chairs, chairs were flying through the air, and the band had to leave the stage because they were just being overrun. All over the world rock had ascended. And for a second, Bill Haley was the king. Until pretty quickly he wasn't. My understanding is that when audiences saw Bill Haley, it wasn't quite what they were expecting. And there's some pretty famous people that have sort of talked about their impressions of Bill Haley and that they were pretty disappointed. The thing about Bill Haley, you have to understand it, by this time he was 30 and he was sort of an avuncular kind of guy to start with. You know, he was slightly overweight and he didn't have much in the way of sex appeal. He was just sort of the scoutmaster in a way. And he was always telling kids when he was being interviewed, he'd always say"Now, these kids aren't really delinquents."They're really good kids, you know,"And they shouldn't be tearing up the seats." and, you know, that kind of thing. He looked more like your uncle, you know. He was a family man. He was married. So he had more in common, let's say, with the parental authority, then, you know, with the young people themselves. I think that explains why Bill Haley's career, popularity, let's say, faded quite quickly after the tour. And, of course, that's where Elvis Presley came in.<i>♪ You know I can be found</i><i>♪ Sitting home all alone ♪</i> In 1957, just before Haley's UK tour launched, Elvis was doing his infamous hip swinging performance of<i>Don't Be Cruel</i> on the Ed Sullivan Show. So sexy, the cameras would only shoot him from the waist up. Now, here was a rock star. As Bill Haley Jr has said. His dad, Haley Sr, was eclipsed once Elvis came along. You know, it was understandable. And it makes me think<i>Blackboard Jungle</i> must have been Haley's blessing and curse. Unlike Elvis, he just never seemed as dangerous as the movie that put him on the map. So while we could keep following Haley's story all the way to his sad death in 1981, his last years, especially weren't great. I'd rather end it in 73, when another way different movie came out, that also used <i>Rock Around the Clock</i> as its theme song. You ain't got no emotions. We are going to remember all of the good times is what we're going to do. George Lucas's <i>American Graffiti</i>. The fifties usually didn't happen until the 1970s because by that time people had a chance to kind of digest everything, they'd been through the sixties, and all of a sudden they went back. You had <i>American Graffiti</i> and the <i>Buddy Holly Story</i> and <i>Grease</i>. And so by the seventies, people were figuring out what the fifties were. You know, the cars with fins and girls with petticoats and all that kind of thing. It was a way gentler 1950s than the one in <i>Blackboard Jungle,</i> maybe a fifties that never even existed. But a better match for Haley's vibe. The <i>American Graffiti</i> soundtrack sold over 3 million copies. He had a nostalgic following, and I think when they re-released<i>Rock Around the Clock,</i> it did chart in the top 20 in the UK. I think releasing the song again brought him new fans. You know, it's an extremely infectious song, isn't it? Yeah. You can't really stay still listening to <i>Rock Around the Clock,</i> even now.- It's the greatest.- It's the greatest. And as for Peter Ford, he's proud to have lent Richard Brooks a few of his records in the China Room back in 55, although... I never did get them back, by the way. But but he took some of my records. And so that's the story. Yeah. If you had an original<i>Rock Around the Clock,</i> it's probably worth something at this point. But yeah, especially that one, you know, that he took to the studio'cause how could you prove it? You know? And eBay, you know,"This is the record that you know..." Sure... Well, this is actually what I wanted to say. So arguably, by playing that song for Richard Brooks. Right. Arguably you are the reason that the rock and roll era began. Exactly. And tell you a little, a little thing on the side. I went to high school at school called Chadwick School. I graduated from there in 1962, my high school. And you know who was in the sophomore grade behind me? He used to call me Big Daddy and would chase around after me like a fan. Jann Wenner. And who was Jann Wenner? Jann Wenner owns <i>Rolling Stone</i> magazine. So, you know, somebody needs to get me into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. That's the answer to that one. Just kidding Rico! But that is true that Jann was one of my groupies. It's a small world. And that's the MUBI podcast for this week. Follow us to make sure you get a front row seat for more deep dives into movies and music. Next week, we end the season with an interview mixtape, three conversations with three of cinema's biggest music supervisors. Who chances are helped shape your musical memories. The melancholic, plaintive cry that you get from <i>Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want</i> just summed up what Cameron was thinking as he looked at those paintings. Follow us so you don't miss it. Meanwhile, this episode was hosted, written and edited by me, Rico Gagliano. Jackson Musker is our booking producer. Ciara McEniff is our producer. Stephen Colon mastered and engineered. Martin Austwick composed our evocative, original music. Thanks this week to Selena CA Reynolds, Ryan Langford, Back land Studio UK and Peter Ford, who wrote a great biography of his dad called <i>Glen Ford, A Life</i> that was indispensable for this episode. Do check it out. The series is executive produced by me, along with Jon Barrenechea Efe Çakarel, Daniel Kasman and Michael Tacca. If you love the show, tell the world by leaving a five star review wherever you listen, let them know we're not your standard movie chat show, please. Also, if you've got questions, comments, or if you suspect you have Peter's original 78 of <i>Rock Around the Clock,</i> send me an email I'll put you in touch, we are podcast@mubi.com And of course, to stream the best in cinema, including some of the films we talk about on this very podcast, just head over to MUBI.com to start watching. Thanks for listening, be safe. Now go watch some movies.