That'll Be the Day (film)

That'll Be the Day is a 1973 British drama film directed by Claude Whatham, written by Ray Connolly, and starring David Essex, Rosemary Leach and Ringo Starr. It is set in the late 1950s/early 1960s and was partially filmed on the Isle of Wight.

That'll Be the Day
DVD cover by Arnaldo Putzu
Directed byClaude Whatham
Produced bySanford Lieberson
David Puttnam
Written byRay Connolly
StarringDavid Essex
Rosemary Leach
Ringo Starr
Keith Moon
Billy Fury
Deborah Watling
Distributed byAnglo-EMI Film Distributors
Release date
  • 12 April 1973 (1973-04-12) (United Kingdom)
  • 29 October 1973 (1973-10-29) (United States)
Running time
91 minutes
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Budget£288,000[1]

Due to the soundtrack the film operates on many levels as a musical. It is very much a film of its time with women existing primarily to be used by men for sex. There is one particularly nasty scene in which the David Essex character rapes a young girl and turns to the camera with a smirk as she begs him not to tell anybody about what has happened.

Plot

Jim Maclaine (David Essex) is a laid back but very bright schoolboy in his final year at an urban secondary school. One day on a cycle trip with his friend Terry he decides he is tired of school and throws his books in a river.

Jim MacLaine's seaman father left the family when Jim was a young child. He lives with his mum and grandfather. As MacLaine (David Essex) becomes a teenager, his shopkeeper mother wants her bright son to go to university. Jim hitches a lift to the coast where he gets a job as a deckchair attendant. His mum tracks him down to ask him to come home, but he gives her a cold response. She gives him some money.

He gets drunk on his own on his birthday and is escorted home by a policeman. At home Terry comes to visit him.

He goes to see a friend, Mike (Ringo Starr), at Butlins who helps him get a job as a holiday camp barman. All staff live on site and he shares a room with Mike. They fancy two girls from the bar and meet them playing crazy golf. They invite the girls to the dance competition at the Blue Grotto bar on site, where the resident singer, Stormy Tempest (Billy Fury) provides the live music. They pair off at the end of the night and Jim has his first sexual experience, which is very short indeed. However he finds that practice makes perfect.

He then joins Mike on the dodgems at the funfair. The initially shy MacLaine quickly becomes a heartless fairground Romeo, having one nighters with everyone from schoolgirls to mature women and young mothers, and coping with a dishonest and dangerous environment. There constant short-changing results in Mike getting severely beaten one night.

Jim buys a motorbike and invites Terry to visit. By now Jim is working the waltzers. Terry introduces Jim to his university friends and Jim pretends he is only in the fair to write a novel. He is attracted to rock 'n' roll and plays the harmonica but does not act on this.

After two years, MacLaine returns home to find his resentful mother struggling with running the store and caring for her invalid father who has been seriously ill for 6 months. MacLaine gets a haircut and decides to stay to help run the family store and buys an old van to do deliveries. He starts dating Terry's sister Jeanette. Despite objections from Terry and his mum, Jim marries Jeanette but, as a sort of revenge, goes out with Terry's girlfriend Jean on the night before he marries.

They live in a room at his mum's house. Jeanette gets pregnant and Jim starts going to nightschool - which gives his wanderlust the opportunity to stay out late.

Despite the birth of a son, still feels the lure of rock ’n’ roll and goes to rock concerts when his mother thinks he is at night school. Jean gets engaged to Terry and looks forward to being related to Jim so she can see more of him.

After talking with friends in a band, he leaves home, leaving Jeanette in tears, but his mum is unsurprised. The film ends as he buys a second hand guitar.

Characters

The Liverpool days of the Quarrymen/the Beatles and Rory Storm & the Hurricanes were said to be the inspiration for the fictional group called "Stray Cats" in the film.

Almost all of the main characters are played by prominent musicians who had lived through the same era which is portrayed in the film including Ringo Starr of the Hurricanes and the Beatles, Billy Fury, Keith Moon of the Who and John Hawken of the Nashville Teens.

The film was produced by David Puttnam.

Cast

Reception and reputation

Box office

The film was a hit at the box office (by 1985 it had earned an estimated profit of £406,000).[1]

Nat Cohen, who invested in the film, said it made more than 50% its cost.[2] It was one of the most popular movies of 1973 at the British box office.[3]

Critical reception

According to Anne Billson in the Time Out Film Guide, the film was a "hugely overrated dip into the rock 'n' roll nostalgia bucket, ... " also commenting "Youth culture my eye: they're all at least a decade too old. But good tunes, and worth catching for Billy Fury's gold lamé act."[4]

Soundtrack

Chart positions
Chart Year Peak
position
UK Albums Chart[5] 1973 1
Preceded by
Pure Gold by Various artists		 UK Albums Chart number-one album
30 June 1973 – 18 August 1973		 Succeeded by
We Can Make It
by Peters and Lee

Award nominations

BAFTA Best Supporting Actress: Rosemary Leach.

BAFTA Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles: David Essex.

Sequels

Essex returned as Jim Maclaine the following year, in the 1974 sequel, Stardust, which continues the story into the early 1970s.

An independent radio drama recording project, That'll be the Stardust!, was released in 2008.[6] The story follows the musical journey of Jim Maclaine's son, Jimmy Maclaine Jr.

References
  1. Alexander Walker, National Heroes: British Cinema in the Seventies and Eighties, Harrap, 1985 p 79
  2. Ooh, you are awful, film men tell Tories. David Blundy. The Sunday Times (London, England), Sunday, 16 December 1973; pg. 5; Issue 7853. (939 words)
  3. Harper, Sue (2011). British Film Culture in the 1970s: The Boundaries of Pleasure: The Boundaries of Pleasure. Edinburgh University Press. p. 270.
  4. The TimeOut Film Guide, 3rd edition, 1993, p. 706
  5. "Number 1 Albums – 1970s". The Official Charts Company. Archived from the original on 9 February 2008. Retrieved 14 June 2011.
  6. "Tony G. Marshall's "That'll be the Stardust!"". CosmicDwellings.com. Retrieved 2019-08-03.
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