Don't Knock the Rock
| Don't Knock the Rock | |
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Film lobby card
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| Directed by | Fred F. Sears |
| Produced by | Sam Katzman |
| Screenplay by | Robert E. Kent |
| Story by | Robert E. Kent |
| Starring | Alan Dale |
| Cinematography | Benjamin H. Kline |
| Edited by | Paul Borofsky Edwin H. Bryan |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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84 mins. |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $1.2 million (US rentals) |
Don't Knock the Rock is a 1956 American musical film starring Alan Dale. Directed by Fred F. Sears, the film also features performances by Bill Haley & His Comets, Little Richard, The Treniers, and Dave Appell and the Applejacks.
The title of the film comes from one of Haley's hit singles of 1956. The Haley recording is played over the opening credits, but it is Alan Dale who performs the number in the film.
Dale stars as Arnie Haines, a rock and roll star who returns to his hometown to rest up for the summer only to find that rock and roll has been banned there by disapproving adults. Among those against him is influential newspaper columnist Arline MacLaine, though this does not stop Arnie from starting up a romance with MacLaine's daughter Francine. At Francine's urging, Arnie decides to perform a show to demonstrate to Arline that the adults' fears are unjustified. Meanwhile, MacLaine's columns have led to other towns across the country canceling planned rock and roll shows. This leaves big-name acts like Bill Haley, Little Richard, The Treniers and Dave Appell available to perform in Arnie's show.
The show goes well at first, with Arline prepared to write a new column acknowledging that the music is harmless. However, things go awry when Arnie rejects the advances of local girl Sunny Everett. In retaliation, Sunny gets drunk and gets two boys to begin a brawl. No one believes that Sunny was at fault and the resulting newspaper articles reporting that the show led to a drunken brawl among its attendees give rock and roll a worse reputation than ever.
As his final play, Arnie works with a local theater group to put on a show called "The Pageant of Art and Culture" to appeal to the adults. The show opens with depictions of paintings by Vermeer and Renoir, followed by a minuet dance performance, this show of high culture meeting with the strong approval of the adults in attendance. However, the show's next number is taken directly from those adults' own days of youth: a raucous performance of the Charleston, providing a stark contrast between the entertainment in which the adults indulged when they were young and what they are now advocating for their children.
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