The film was Van Dyke's feature film debut and helped make Ann-Margret a superstar during the mid-1960s. Her performance earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress and her next role was with Presley in Viva Las Vegas.
In 2006, the film was ranked number 38 on Entertainment Weekly's list of the 50 Best High School Movies.[5]
Plot
In 1962, popular rock and roll superstar Conrad Birdie receives an Army draft notice, devastating his teenage fans nationwide. Despite his doctorate in biochemistry, unsuccessful songwriter Albert Peterson schemes with his secretary and long-suffering girlfriend Rosie DeLeon to have Conrad sing a song Albert will write. Rosie convinces Ed Sullivan to have Conrad perform Albert's song "One Last Kiss" on The Ed Sullivan Show and then kiss a randomly chosen high school girl goodbye before joining the Army. After this succeeds, Albert will feel free to marry Rosie, despite his widowed, meddlesome mother Mae's long history of interfering with her son's life.
Columbus, Ohio, is chosen as the location for Conrad's farewell performance. The random lucky girl chosen, Kim MacAfee, is thrilled, unlike her high school sweetheart, Hugo Peabody. The teenagers of nearby Sweet Apple, blissfully unaware of their town's impending fame, are spending the "Telephone Hour" discussing the latest gossip: Kim and Hugo have just gotten pinned (a tradition where a boy gives a girl his fraternity pin, indicating a serious commitment to each other)[6] and Kim feels grown up ("How Lovely to Be a Woman").
Upon Conrad's arrival, the teenage girls sing their anthem, "We Love You Conrad", while the boys express their dislike of him ("We Hate You Conrad!"). Sweet Apple becomes very popular, but some local adults are unhappy with the sudden celebrity, especially after Conrad's song "Honestly Sincere" and his hip-thrusting moves cause every woman, including the mayor's wife, to faint.
Pressured by the town's leading citizens, Kim's father Harry declines to allow her to kiss Conrad on television, until Albert placates him by promising that his "whole family" will be on Sullivan's TV show ("Hymn for a Sunday Evening"). Albert reveals to Harry that he is actually a biochemist who has developed a miracle supplement for domestic animals that will make a hen lay three eggs a day; they test it on the family's pet tortoise, which speeds out the door. Harry, a fertilizer salesman, sees a great future for himself marketing this pill with Albert.
Hugo feels threatened by Conrad, but Kim reassures him that he is the "One Boy" for her. Rosie, meanwhile, feels unappreciated by Albert, who persuades her to "Put on a Happy Face". Albert's mother Mae shows up, distressed to find the pair together; Harry is also agitated about Conrad's monopoly of his house and Kim's behavioral changes. Both lament the problems with "Kids" today.
During rehearsal for the broadcast, an impatient Conrad kisses Kim (who swoons). Hugo is hurt and Kim breaks up with him. Later that night, at the local malt shop, Conrad, Kim, Hugo, and many of their friends assert that they have "A Lot of Livin' to Do". Meanwhile, after being informed the Russian Ballet has switched to a different dance requiring extra time, therefore eliminating Conrad's song and farewell kiss to Kim, Albert unsuccessfully attempts to convince the Ballet's manager to shorten its performance. Afterwards, he dejectedly decides to drown his sorrows at Maude's Madcap Café, a local bar.
Surprisingly, he finds Mae there, playing canasta with the owner Mr. Maude, also a widower. Rosie, fed up with Albert and his mother, also goes to the café for "a night to remember". After ordering three drinks (but only gulping down one), Rosie goes into another room where the Shriners convention is taking place. She starts dancing and flirting with the men ("Sultans' Ballet"), but when the scene becomes too wild, Albert rescues her from the crazed Shriners.
The next day, Rosie formulates how to get back Conrad's spot on The Ed Sullivan Show that evening. She slips one of Albert's pills into the orchestra conductor's milk, which speeds up the ballet, amusing the audience, offending the Russians and placing Conrad back on the show to sing "One Last Kiss". However, just as Conrad is about to kiss Kim, Hugo runs onstage and punches Conrad, knocking him out on the live telecast, which shocks Albert and Rosie.
Kim and Hugo reunite. Albert is free to marry now ("Rosie") and his mother agrees, revealing her own marriage to Mr. Maude. All three couples live happily ever after. Kim, now wiser, bids Conrad a fond goodbye in "Bye Bye Birdie (Reprise)".
In addition, in uncredited cameo appearances as themselves, are two CBS personalities: former ABC News anchor turned CBS game show host John Daly, doing a live news report from in front of the United States Capitol; and The Ed Sullivan Show orchestra leader Ray Bloch, reprising that role.
Musical numbers
"Bye Bye Birdie" – Kim
"The Telephone Hour" – Ursula and Sweet Apple Kids
"How Lovely to Be a Woman" – Kim
"We Love/Hate You Conrad" - Kim, Ursula, Hugo and Sweet Apple Kids
"Honestly Sincere" – Conrad
"Hymn for a Sunday Evening" – Harry, Doris, Kim and Randolph
According to Ann-Margret, she was cast when director George Sidney saw her dancing while on a date at the Sands Casino on New Year's Eve 1961.[7]
Sidney was so smitten with the rising new star that Janet Leigh was "very upset that all the close-ups were going to Ann-Margret", as Leigh herself was the lead star of the film.[8]
Sidney says originally he was only going to produce and Gower Champion would direct, but Champion told Sidney he could not see it as a film, so Sidney stepped in. "That was a great deal of fun," said Sidney. "It was a young people's picture, with a lot of bright, gay noisy cast members yelling and screaming."[9]
Ann-Margret was paid $3,500 a week and earned $85,000 in all.[10]
Wanda Hale of the New York Daily News gave the comedy a full four-star rating and said it "bubbles over with the vitality of youth and the fun of farce as it creates a teenage furor over a hip-twisting, leering rock 'n' roll male singer."[2] Philip K. Scheuer of the Los Angeles Times said it "should repeat the success It scored on the stage and is in the smash class with 'West Side Story' and 'The Music Man.'"[14] A user of the Mae Tinee pseudonym in the Chicago Tribune said "the music is pleasant, the dances are spritely, and it's all amiable, light entertainment."[15] Ken Barnard of the Detroit Free Press stated that it "offers an attractive and tuneful means of saying bye, bye to the summer doldrums for a couple of hours."[16] Margo Miller of The Boston Globe called the film "fantasy as Hollywood can best serve up, slick and funny."[17] Harold Whitehead of the Montreal Gazette said it was "a quite handsome film with not too many drawbacks" but noted that Ann-Margret "is much too frenetic for our taste. When she calms down a little, she will probably be really something for the musical screen."[18] Michael P. Feiner of the Montreal Star called it "a gay musical—sometimes farcical, sometimes mildly satirical, sometimes merely entertaining, but most of the time fun to watch."[19] A critic for the Buffalo Evening News called it a "hilarious song-and-dance show" that "exaggerates youth's exuberance and carries its infectious exhilaration to the audience."[20] Jay Carmody of The Evening Star in Washington said that "the picture, glowing with color and crazy camera tricks, flatters its natural audience no
end. It presents the girls as beautiful, well, mostly, the boys as abounding in animal vitality, and both sexes as given to the kinds of enthusiasm that may one day really make this the best of all possible worlds. As for the elders among the performers, they come off as no more nor less Insufferable than teen-agers know them to be." He added that "the performers, and why not, have been astutely chosen by Mr. Sidney, starting with Ann-Margret (if I can leave out that second "a” in Margret, Mr. Printer, you can do it on a linotype) as the heroine. She’s Just fine and so are Janet Leigh and Dick Van Dyke, he of the original cast, as the managers of Conrad Birdie’s adieu party. Conrad himself is played by Jesse Pearson, a mad broth of a subhuman boy in a spaceman costume which he wears with all the nonworldly distinction anyone could ask."[21]
The film received generally mixed-to-positive reviews in the state of Ohio itself. Brainard Platt of the Dayton Journal-Herald said it was "an excellent follow-up to the hit stage play of the same name" and a "real fun show for the whole family".[22] E.B. Radcliffe of The Cincinnati Enquirer said the film "should be on your list of planned holiday fun" and called it a "good farce".[23] Dale Stevens of The Cincinnati Post criticized the film for lacking the satirical edge of the musical, but said "this is unquestionably among the smash films of the year" and "should be the teenage sensation of the century".[24] W. Ward Marsh of the Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote that "on occasion there is too much dredged up to stimulate laughter, but for the most part the film is eminently successful. Since we’ve not had a big screen musical for some time, Bye Bye Birdie should keep the Allen's audiences—and big ones, too—laughing."[25]
A more mixed review of the film was offered by David Cobb of the Toronto Daily Star, who liked Ann-Margret's and Leigh's performances, its humor and the musical numbers; as for everything else, he said "it is professionally, smoothly accomplished [but not] very engaging or dramatically interesting".[26] Richard Roud of The Guardian said, "I wonder if anyone will remember any scenes from Bye Bye Birdie (Odeon, Marble Arch) in 20 years. I doubt it. Birdie is no On the Town, no Singing in the Rain, no Funny Face. But in a year as barren of American musicals as 1963 (and 1962 for that matter) it looks pretty good [...] and it makes quite a pleasant evening out."[27]Bosley Crowther of The New York Times praised several of the musical numbers but wrote that "unfortunately, Mr. Sidney and his scriptwriter, Irving Brecher, have allowed the essence of this spirited musical comedy of Michael Stewart to get away from them. Not only do they lose Conrad Birdie in the mazes of their rearranged plot, but they lose the essential idea of satire and the pace and sparkle of the show."[1] Les Wedman of the Vancouver Sun was more negative in his remarks, saying that the musical "as served up In the movie version, is a bit of a turkey, well-dressed but flavored with chestnuts and overdone to the point where it fell apart to reveal a pretty flimsy skeleton."[28] Dickson Terry of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch said it "starts out to be a hilarious satire on the Elvis-type rock and roll singers and their swooning teen-age audiences but somewhere along the way it loses its bearings and turns into just another musical."[29] Stanley Eichelbaum of the San Francisco Examiner wrote that "producer Fred Kohlmar has clumsily transformed 'Bye Bye Birdie' from a clever musical satire on American teenagers into a comic-strip movie for adolescents. It's true that certain vestiges of the stage work's devastating humor and vitality have crept Into the film at the Fox Warfield and Mission Drive-In. But on the whole, director George Sidney and screenwriter Irving Brecher have bludgeoned the original into semiconsciousness. Happily, no one tried too hard to spoil the bouncy score by Charles Strouse and Lee Adams. The musical numbers are the best part of the film and Onna White's choreography, which brightens most of the songs, is fresh and attractively original. And since the cast is generally young and eager—with Ann-Margret doing a surprisingly competent job as a nimble Ohio 15-year-old—the movie isn't exactly a total loss. But what it misses most is Gower Champion's sleek, galvanic direction, which kept the stage musical moving like a fine Swiss watch."[30] James O'Neill, Jr. of The Washington Daily News wrote that "two hours is simply two hours too long to tell a tired joke, but this is the length of 'Bye Bye Birdie,' at the Trans-Lux, and I was not transported by it. On the other hand, the children in the audience, who understand the attraction of rock and roll singers, and seek an idol in every guitar-playing yokel they can find, seemed to love 'Birdie,' and yelled and hollered and screamed as tho he were real. The film, as the stage musical before it, actually is supposed to be a biting comment on the musical taste of our adored teen-agers, and goes to some length to explain that most of their idols are ghastly tramps with little ability. They appeal largely to the post-puberty set for reasons better explained by a psychologist than a movie reviewer."[31]
21st century reviews
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 86% of 29 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.7/10. The website's consensus reads: "A poppy satire on pop music, Bye Bye Birdie is silly, light, and very, very pink."[32] According to Filmink Ann-Margret "stole the show".[33]
In 1964, The Carefrees made a novelty record with a song called "We Love You Beatles" based on the song "We Love You Conrad" from Bye Bye Birdie.[36] Released on the London International label #10614, the song peaked at No. 39 on the BillboardHot 100. At the base of the Plaza Hotel in New York City, where the Beatles were staying for their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, scores of Beatles fans sang the song out so their voices would reach the band in their rooms up above.
In an episode of the television series Mad Men (Season 3, Episode 2), the opening sequence of Bye Bye Birdie is shown (twice), and later Peggy Olson sings the tune to herself in front of a mirror in an attempt to emulate Ann-Margret's appeal as somebody who can "be 25 and act 14", although Ann-Margret was, in fact, 21 at the time of filming, playing 16. Later, in Episode 4, Salvatore Romano directs a knock-off parody of the sequence for a commercial for Pepsi's new diet drink, Patio.[37]
"One Last Kiss" was featured on an actual episode of The Ed Sullivan Show from January 1967, featuring Gary Lewis & the Playboys. It was one of Lewis' last performances before going into the U.S. Army, so Sullivan chose a girl from the audience to come up to the stage. Lewis sang "One Last Kiss" to her and received that "one last kiss".
In Bye Bye Boyfriend, a Two of a Kind book, the White Oak Academy puts on a school play based on Bye Bye Birdie. Ed Sullivan is mentioned many times, and Mary-Kate wins the part of Kim, even though she auditioned for Rosie. In the book, the characters and the soundtrack of the movie, as well as some of its songs, are mentioned.
In "Wild Barts Can't Be Broken", an episode of the TV series The Simpsons, the kids, adults and seniors of Springfield perform a musical parody of the song "Kids" from Bye Bye Birdie.[38]
In the popular television series Friends (Season 1, Episode 18), during a charade-like game Monica draws a pictorial representation of the film Bye Bye Birdie for the remainder of the group to identify; however, nobody can.
The animated show Home Movies references this play (along with Grease) in the episode "Bye Bye Greasy" in which the characters put on a play with similar themes.
Family Guy references two of the show's signature songs: "The Telephone Hour" (in reference to Peter being diagnosed as mentally disabled in the Season 4 episode "Petarded") and "Honestly Sincere" (performed by Seth MacFarlane, voicing President Barack Obama in the Season 9 episode "New Kidney in Town").
Sonic Boom, a television series, parodied the song "The Telephone Hour" in the Season 2 episode "Mister Eggman". The parody song consisted of the villagers (including Sonic the Hedgehog and friends) spreading the word that Doctor Eggman never truly earned his doctorate. The song also made reference to the fact that it itself was a parody, breaking the fourth wall.
"Kids" was the musical number at the end of "The Punch and Judy Affair" (Season 7, episode 8 of Are You Being Served?).
