Red Nichols Movies

Swing out with the best of the big band era. This volume includes many favorites like "Stardust" and "Dipsy Doodle." ~ All Movie Guide

Sal Mineo, who'd previously registered well as the lead in the TV drama Drummer Man, essays a strikingly similar role in The Gene Krupa Story. The film details Krupa's troubled home life: (he wanted to be a musician; his father wanted him to become a priest), his rise to fame as drummer for the Benny Goodman orchestra, his years on top as a bandleader, and his ongoing problems with drug abuse. A fictional romantic subplot is grafted onto the proceeding involving clearly defined "good" and "bad" girls Ethel Maguire (Susan Kohner) and Dorissa Dinelli (Susan Oliver). Yvonne Craig has an entertaining scene as an anachronistically garbed good-time girl. Craig would later recall that, at the time of shooting The Gene Krupa Story, she weighed more than Sal Mineo, and that in the scene where he's required to lift her off the floor, she virtually had to lift him. Mineo, a drummer of some accomplishment, convincingly wields the sticks during the musical highlights, though the trickier drum solos were dubbed in by Gene Krupa himself. Real-life recording stars Anita O'Day, Red Nichols, Bobby Troup and Shelley Manne make cameo appearances. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Evidently Monogram had high hopes for the modestly produced Disc Jockey, else why would the studio release the film through its "prestige" subsidiary Allied Artists? Songstress Ginny Simms stars as Vickie Peters, an unknown selected for stardom by radio deejay Mike Richards (Michael O'Shea). It is Richards' contention that he can create a singing star exclusively through exposure on disc-spinning radio programs, without resorting to that upstart medium called television. Along the way, Mike falls in love with Vickie, though she has eyes only for her manager Johnny (Tom Drake). Guest stars in this pleasant bit of fluff include Russ Morgan, Tommy Dorsey, George Shearing, Nick Lucas, Herb Jeffries, Sarah Vaughan, The Weavers, Foy Willing and the Riders of the Purple Sage, and a veritable legion of real-life disc jockeys. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide