Tommy Charles Movies

The endearingly awful Shake, Rattle and Rock! serves as a showcase for four top rock-and-roll talents of the 1950s. Fats Domino heads the cast as "himself", performing "I'm in Love Again", "Ain't it a Shame" and "Honey Chile". Likewise, Joe Turner offers renditions of "Feelin' Happy" and "Lipstick, Powder and Paint", while Tommy Charles and Annita Ray let loose with "Sweet Love on My Mind" and "Rockin' on Saturday Night". The plot is one of the oldest known to man: a quartet of buttinsky do-gooders, played by screen veterans Douglass Dumbrille, Margaret Dumont, Raymond Hatton and Percy Helton, try to impose a ban on rock-and-roll, while TV producer Touch (later Mike) Connors does his best to convince the "squares" that the new musical style is harmless fun. Sterling Holloway is a riot as Connors' jive-talking assistant, who lays on the hipster slang so heavily in one scene that he requires English subtitles! Shake, Rattle and Rock was (sort of) remade for TV in 1994 as one of Showtime Cable's "Rebel Highway" entries. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide