Pat Boone Movie...Bernadine

[Ron Hill]

Didn't we have some pictures from "Bernadine"? Ernie Dawe recorded it the other day and I took a few pictures off the TV screen....I wanted to post them with the movie, but have searched for it...



July 25, 1957
'Bernardine' Introduces Pat Boone here


MOVE over, Elvis Presley. And welcome, Pat Boone, his exact antithesis, in Twentieth Century-Fox' "Bernardine," opening yesterday at various neighborhood theatres. Meet a singing teen-age idol—a sunny, clean-cut youth of manly mien and fine voice—with a real screen future, in a wholesome, pleasant comedy about adolescence. As much as we hate to say so however, Mary Chase's stage play was better.
For three wonderful acts the audience literally eavesdropped on a gang of likable high-school Lotharios, lounging in a make-shift clubhouse and yearning for the woman to end all women. In Samuel G. Engel's production, the dream remains the same. Meet "Miss Bernardine Mudd of Sneaky Falls, Idaho, by the banks of the Itchy River—where love is never mentioned." The play was funny, tough-minded and tender all at once. The Hollywood refurbishment is attractive but superficial.
There is a good cast, numbering such people as Terry Moore, Janet Gaynor and Dean Jagger. The small-town settings, spaciously framed in CinemaScope and color, are excellent. So are two new Johnny Mercer tunes, unobtrusively rendered by Mr. Boone.
However, Henry Levin's direction is extremely uncertain for some reason. And the trumped-up plot by scenarist Theodore Reeves (Miss Chase just didn't bother) has most of the cast coddling the gang's least winning member, a selfish numskull with a case of the sulks. As played, like a 12-year-old, by Richard Sargent, this pouting lad has a sub-adolescent crush on Miss Moore, as an understanding clerk. Our real hero, unfortunately, is a pill.
But the others, perhaps taking a cue from the good-natured ease of Mr. Boone, as the boys' leader, render Miss Chase's amusing, often knowing, dialogue most personably, even while the action meanders. The original cutting edge of "Bernardine" is gone, but on the whole, you still couldn't find a nicer bunch of people.

The Cast
BERNARDINE, screen play by Theodore Reeves, based on Mary Chase's stage play; directed by Henry Levin; produced by Samuel G. Engel for Twentieth Century-Fox. At neighborhood theatres.
Beau . . . . . Pat Boone
Jean . . . . . Terry Moore
Mrs. Wilson . . . . . Janet Gaynor
Sanford Wilson . . . . . Richard Sargent
Fullerton Weldy . . . . . Dean Jagger
Lieutenant Beaumont . . . . . James Drury
Griner . . . . . Ronnie Burns
Mr. Beaumont . . . . . Walter Abel
Mrs. Beaumont . . . . . Natalie Schafer
Ruby . . . . . Isabel Jewell