The Golden Disc

6.5 Special

The Duke Wore Jeans

Wonderful Things

A Cry from the Streets

The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw

tom thumb

Hello London

Life Is a Circus

February

By any standards, Butcher’s tribute to the coffee bar culture of the late 1950s is a dismal piece of work that somehow made it to the screen despite battling its crushing budget constraints. Nevertheless, The Golden Disc has much to offer, and for those susceptible to its naïve charms, it remains vastly entertaining. It is a wonderful example of what we may call demi-choreography, rather than dancing as we know it. Naturally, hand-jiving plays its part, being especially handy as it doesn’t take up much studio space, a distinct advantage in a film in which characters are forever coming through suspiciously curtained areas that no doubt hide a multitude of production sins (it was produced at Walton studios by W. G. Chalmers). Director Don Sharp and Don Nicholl provide a screenplay based on a story by Gee Nicholl.

Dennis Lotis, a considerable catch for Butcher’s Film Services, obligingly starts the film off by singing Philip Green and Ray Mack’s attractive ‘I’m Gonna Wrap You Up’ to a theatre full of screaming teenagers. One Lotis enthusiast has ‘Denis’ (wrongly spelled) writ large across her top. Some time later, we see her again, with ‘Terry’ writ large on her top, a clear indication that allegiances in the pop world can swiftly shift, and that Mr Lotis may not be exempt from the effect.

These, after all, are changing times, in a cinematic era where the British public have already been offered The Tommy Steele Story and Rock You Sinners. Now young Terry Dene continues drawing what passes in Butcher’s Films for a crowd with Green and Mack’s restful ‘Charm’ and Len Paverman’s jaunty ‘Candy Floss’. Later, we move to the recording studios, where Phil Seaman’s Jazz Group perform his ‘Lower Deck’ complete with manic drummer, and Murray Campbell performs Green’s sub-Eric Coates ‘Balmoral Melody’. It falls to Sheila Buxton to have the most interesting number of all, Green and Mack’s ‘The In-Between Age’.