Seven Things to Know About Miss Perpetual Motion (that'd be Candy Johnson!)

1. Candy Johnson gained fame as the fast-shakin' go-go dancer in the colorful fringe outfits in four Beach Party movies made in 1963-64: Beach Party; Bikini Beach; Pajama Party; and Muscle Beach Party (shown on right with "Little" Stevie Wonder in the background). Those are the only movies she made!

2. In the first film, Candy is aptly billed as the "perpetual motion dancer." In the other three films, her character's name is...Candy. Her character's hip gyrations are so dangerous that--if aimed properly--they could send a guy flying across a room without even touching him. Thus, Candy comes in handy when Frankie and the boys are fighting Eric Von Zipper's gang.

Candy's hips send Deadhead flying in Bikini Beach.

Candy doing her act in a nightclub.

3. Candy was discovered by Red Gilson, who managed a West Coast band called The Exciters. Gilson convinced her to join the band and she became its "frontman." The band, which became billed as Candy Johnson and Her Exciters, played lounges in Palm Springs and Las Vegas. That's where she attracted the attention of American International Pictures executives.

4. Candy could have made a fortune with her weight loss program; she allegedly burned off five to fifteen pounds a night when performing her lounge act. In Tom Lisanti's book, Drive-in Dream Girls: A Galaxy of B-movie Starlets of the 1960s, he mentions that Candy ate steak and potatoes every night to make up for the weight loss. He also included one of Candy's quotes to the press: "If your trouble is too much weight, just twist it off!"

5. Red Gilson started a small label called Canjo Records (the name being a truncation of Candy Johnson, of course). Canjo only released two albums: The Candy Johnson Show at Bikini Beach and Ray Ryan Presents The Candy Johnson Show. They're both very rare, but not pricey for collectibles. You can buy a near-mint copy of either album for around $40. Canjo Records also released 45s featuring Candy's Beach Party series co-stars Jody McCrea (Bonehead or Deadhead) and Meredith MacRae (Animal). The "A" side of McCrea's single was "Chicken Surfer" and the "B" side was "Looney Gooney Bird." Meredith MacRae, who later gained fame on My Three Sons and Petticoat Junction, sang "Image of a Boy" on her single.

A rare moment of stillness.

6. Candy performed at the World's Fair in New York in 1964-65. Allegedly, that's where the members of The Strangeloves saw her and were so inspired they wrote their #11 pop hit "I Want Candy."

7. Candy Johnson and Red Gilson married in the late 1960s and opened a New York City nightclub called The Candy Store. It didn't last long and neither did her marriage to Gilson. Candy subsequently retired from show business (some sources claimed she turned down the role on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-in that eventually went to Goldie Hawn). Candy kept a low profile for many years, but did make a rare public appearance at a special 2006 screening of Beach Party--where she received a standing ovation. Candy Johnson died in 2012 at the age of 68.

Get Ready for a Palm Springs Weekend!

Stefanie Powers and Troy Donahue.

As soon as Troy Donahue starts warbling "Live Young" over the opening credits, it's clear that you'll either find Palm Springs Weekend to be nostalgic fun or a dated disaster. I fall into the former camp; I hold a special affection for the fluffy teen pics of the 1960s, from classics like Beach Blanket Bingo to lesser-known imitations like A Swingin' Summer. Unlike many of those youth films, Palm Springs Weekend isn't a musical, though it does boast the only known duet between Ty (Bronco) Hardin and Jerry Van Dyke. Plus, it offers something that its competitors can't--a wealth of promising young performers who were all under contract to Warner Bros. at the time.

Ty Hardin and Connie Stevens.

Written by Earl Hamner, Jr. (who would later create The Waltons), Palm Springs Weekend opens with the spring vacation invasion of the famed California resort city. College basketball star Jim Munroe (Donahue) and his teammates believe they have elluded their coach en route from L.A. to Palm Springs. Alas, their crafty coach (Jack Weston) is onboard the bus, too, and his presence puts a crimp in their plans. That doesn't stop Jim from meeting Gail (Connie Stevens), who also claims to be a college student seeking fun in the sun.

Robert Conrad as the rich bad boy.

But romance isn't in the cards for Jim and Gail. She becomes wooed by both a rich bad boy (Robert Conrad) and a nice Hollywood stunt man named Stretch (Hardin). Meanwhile, Jim hooks up with Palm Springs local Bunny (Stefanie Powers), whose father is the grumpy chief of police. As if there was any doubt that love is the air, Coach Campbell becomes smitten with the motel owner (Carole Cook) and Jim's pal Biff (Van Dyke) finds love with Gail's roommate Amanda (Zeme North). Just to make sure things don't get too icky with all the romance, there's a young brat named Boom Boom (Billy Mumy), who wreaks havoc by turning the swimming pool into a giant bubble bath.

Yes, Palm Springs Weekend is frequently silly, but the peppy young cast keeps it entertaining and never lets the proceedings turn into a spoof. There's even a modest amount of depth to some of the characters. Conrad's troublemaker turns out to be a lonely lad dealing with an absentee father. Connie Stevens' Gail is actually a high school student named Jane, whose identity crisis almost leads to a bad situation. Still, Palm Springs Weekend has no illusions of being taken seriously, not even to the point of Gidget or Where the Boys Are (both of which dealt fleetingly with more mature themes).

Jerry Van Dyke and Zeme North, whose
career fizzled in the late 1960s.

Interestingly, about half the Palm Springs Weekend cast was appearing in Warner Bros. TV series concurrently and the other half were set to launch long-running TV careers. Ty Hardin was starring in the Western Bronco, a spinoff of Cheyenne that was created when Clint Walker had a contract dispute with Warners. Robert Conrad and Connie Stevens both appeared in the exotic detective series Hawaiian Eye (Conrad later starred in Wild, Wild West). Troy appeared in the Miami-set private eye series Surfside 6. Stefanie Powers would become The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. before the decade ended and Billy Mumy would gain fame as Will Robinson in Lost in Space. Jerry Van Dyke appeared in many sitcoms, the most unususal being My Mother the Car, in which his deceased mother was reincarnated as a 1928 antique auto voiced by Ann Sothern. Decades later, he'd have greater success as a supporting player on the sitcom Coach.

The bottom line is that if you like these performers and enjoy the "1960s teen pic" genre, Palm Springs Weekend is a celluloid gretaway for you.

Bikini Beach: “Where All the Chicks Are Bikini Clad”

Welcome to Bikini Beach, where the ladies adorned in bikinis are constantly distracting passing drivers, cooks, surfers and guys already spending time with girls. Frankie (Frankie Avalon), Dee Dee (Annette Funicello), and the rest of the gang are spending another summer at the beach, lying on the sand and surfing against the rear projection that is the ocean. Their fun in the sun is threatened when Harvey Huntington Honeywagon III (Keenan Wynn) arrives with his chimpanzee, Clyde (Janos Prohaska), who shows off his surfing skills to a dumbfounded crowd of teens. Honeywagon, however, is demonstrating the youngsters’ lack of intelligence, bolstered by a “preoccupation with sex,” and he follows it with a scathing article in his newspaper. The lovely Miss Clements (Martha Hyer) soon learns that Honeywagon’s true agenda is to purchase the beach property and convert it into a retirement home, Sea-Esta by the Sea.

Meanwhile, back at the beach, Frankie is in danger of losing Dee Dee to... well, himself, as the actor also portrays British rock phenomenon, The Potato Bug. The singer pitches a tent on Bikini Beach and instantly woos the girls, including Dee Dee, who is peeved by Frankie scoffing the idea of marriage. When The Potato Bug boasts of his proficiency at drag racing, Frankie believes he can regain Dee Dee’s affection by besting the British star. It literally becomes a race to the finish, while monkey wrenches are thrown into the mix: Frankie having few resources with which to purchase a race car (not to mention the inability to drive one); Clyde the chimp once again transcending humans by securing the drag racing record and out-watusi-ing everyone; and the delightful but dim Eric Von Zipper (Harvey Lembeck) and his motorcycle gang of Ratz and Mice stirring up trouble for all.

Bikini Beach (1964) was the third in American International Pictures’ Beach Party films and was directed by William Asher, a prolific TV director and producer. Asher also directed the preceding films, Beach Party (1963) and Muscle Beach Party (1964), as well as How to Stuff a Wild Bikini and the fan favorite, Beach Blanket Bingo (both 1965). Asher’s direction works well with the slapstick comedy and frivolous (but endlessly quotable) dialogue. He does repeat some visual puns (e.g., girls causing surfers to “crash,” accompanied by sounds of vehicular collisions, from Beach Party), but there are also worthy gags such as the recurring unknown female in a bikini drawing everyone’s attention, at one point inciting the camera to turn away from the action.

While Frankie Avalon’s performance as The Potato Bug is a bit hammy, it’s also a nice change from the character of Frankie, whose cheeky attitude makes him undeserving of a lady such as Dee Dee. Potato Bug, with his moptop haircut and indistinguishable songs, is a gleeful play on The Beatles, who, in 1964, were in the midst of their British Invasion in the U.S. The only time that The Potato Bug is excessive in Bikini Beach is when Frankie impersonates the singer as a ruse. It’s Frankie playing Frankie playing Frankie, and it’s unduly metaphysical for a Beach Party film. Furthermore, Frankie is too convincing and manages to fool the typically shrewd Dee Dee.

Don Rickles plays “Big Drag,” but there’s an explicit acknowledgement that he’s the same character from Muscle Beach Party. When Big Drag is told that he looks familiar, he states that he was once called Jack Fanny and references “a string of muscle men” (“I got out of the Fanny business; that’s all behind me now”). Rickles is exceptionally funny in Bikini Beach, avoiding the mismatched stand-up routine he would perform in Beach Blanket Bingo, and dishing out amusing dialogue with charm, like when he recites a litany of problems with a race car he’s trying to sell. His response to Frankie when asked if anything is functional: “The radio’s kinda nice.”

Jody McCrea reprises his role of Deadhead in Bikini Beach. Although apparently portraying the same character, he was called Bonehead in Beach Blanket Bingo and How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (evidently Big Lunk in 1964’s Pajama Party is not the same guy). Candy Johnson also revisits her role as Candy, the “Perpetual Motion Dancer,” whose swinging hips become a viable weapon and can knock opponents to the ground. Harvey Lembeck as Eric Von Zipper makes a most welcome return in Bikini Beach, having been absent from the earlier Muscle Beach Party. He isn’t allotted time for his own song like in Beach Blanket Bingo, but he does give himself The Finger (See “F” in The Beach Party Movies: A to Z) and it’s a treat to hear his refrain, “You stupid!” and his argument favoring motorcycles over drag racing cars: “Cycles is better.”

Like most of the Beach Party films, Bikini Beach has a number of memorial tunes. Musical highlights include Donna Loren singing “Love’s a Secret Weapon”, the Frankie and Annette duo, “Because You’re You”, and “This Time It’s Love”, a solo by Annette. The film also features a performance from Little Stevie Wonder (who’d made his film debut in Muscle Beach Party) and “introduces” the short-lived surf rock group, The Pyramids.

The character of Honeywagon shares his name with the term for a mobile restroom utilized for film and TV productions. A honeywagon is a trailer housing multiple rooms for various uses. It’s more generally written as two words, and as such, a honey wagon is for transporting waste or a portable component of a sanitation system.Janos Prohaska, who portrayed Clyde, often played monsters or animals, in costumes which he designed. He typically appeared on television, such as Star Trek, as the Horta, Mugato and Yarnek, in the respective episodes, “The Devil in the Dark”, “A Private Little War” and “The Savage Curtain”. Prohaska also starred as the recurring Cookie Bear in The Andy Williams Show, as well as the TV series, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space, Bewitched, Land of the Giants and The Outer Limits. His creature creation from the Outer Limits episode, “The Architects of Fear”, was deemed so unnerving that local stations in some cities censored or delayed the broadcast.

Bikini Beach is a commendable entry in the series of Beach Party movies. By the third film, the characters are familiar, and the Frankie-Dee Dee struggle is an anticipated theme. There’s also the prerequisite celebrity cameo, a surprise appearance near the film’s end, with a joke on a previous cameo in Beach Party. I’ll concede that Beach Blanket Bingo is the most revered of the bunch, but I quite fancy time on Bikini Beach: there’s good humor, silly characters, and Annette in a bikini. Frankie’s eyes may wander (although more so in other films, like to Luciana Paluzzi in Muscle Beach Party), but mine are completely glued.