By Cameron Tyo
June 6th, 2025
Warning: This review could include what some people think are major spoilers for the movie Bye Bye Birdie (1963)
Bye Bye Birdie, a movie that was made in 1963, has somehow managed to find its way onto my radar of movies to watch. Well, I say somehow, but I could chalk it up to the fact that I’m currently in a community theater’s production of Bye Bye Birdie, and while I could watch the 1995 version that is more faithful to the musical—ahem, the glorious Ann-Margaret and Dick Van Dyke are in the 1963 one. And so yeah, I decided to watch this version first. This movie was directed by George Sidney, and it very much satirizes many aspects of the 1950s. Conrad Birdie (Jesse Pearson) is clearly a satirized version of Elvis Presley. The movie makes that very obvious in the first scene, where, during the news, clips of Conrad singing and swaying his hips in a very overexaggerated manner are shown, with highly comical music playing over these scenes.
The movie is not to be taken seriously. Conrad is to kiss a lucky girl from Sweet Apple. He’s to “make a ga-ga little goof a queen,” as Rosie DeLeon (Janet Leigh) says, to symbolize his leaving for the army, into which he was drafted into on the Ed Sullivan Show as a way to bring in profit for the failing Almalou Records, which she’s the secretary of. This lucky girl is Kim MacAfee (Ann-Margret). Throughout the movie, we see interactions between Kim’s parent, like her dad, Harry MacAfee (Paul Lynde), her mom, Doris (Mary LaRoche), and her jealous boyfriend, Hugo Peabody (Bobby Rydell), all of which are to show Kim is maturing or maybe not maturing as fast as she should throughout the film. While this is happening, Albert Peterson (Dick Van Dyke) has to come to terms with the fact that Almalou Records is failing and that he’ll need to tell his mom, Mae (Maureen Stapleton), who is super overbearing, that he may have to change careers if his final plan to keep the business in float doesn’t work as he sees it doing so. At the same time, Rosie is insistent that Albert tell his mom that she and he are dating. It’s two very simple stories told in a pretty lighthearted and hokey manner.
This is a movie musical, and as they go, you have many different songs that typically end different scenes of the movie. “Honestly Sincere” has Conrad singing to the teens and parents of Sweet Apple, which I can only believe to be one of his hit singles, about how sincere he is. It’s a pretty flamboyant song, and at the end of the country-esque dance song, all of Sweet Apple has fainted. You know, very serious, right? I like that the movie is able to embrace its goofiness. “Telephone Hour” is another song in the musical that embraces a sense of goofiness. The song has the Sweet Apple teens spreading the word that Hugo just pinned Kim, and as the song progresses, the places where the word is spread become increasingly chaotic. You have teens answering rotary phones from cars, in the school showers, and so on. This is the first big number of the show, and the song is honestly just fun to listen to.
Three of my favorite songs in the movie are “Kids,” “One Boy,” and “A Lot of Livin’ to Do“. All of these are completelydifferent from their musical counterpart, but I won’t get into how. “Kids” is sung by Kim’s father, Harry, Mae, Albert, and Randolph (Bryan Russell), Kim’s brother, and I love the nasal tone of the song, which is carried mainly by how Harry delivers his lines. It reveals the adults’ true feelings towards kids and how they perceive them as having become disobedient over the years. “One Boy” is sung as a duet by Kim and Hugo, and actually, the song was pretty. I thought Ann and Bobby’s voices fit well together. And knowing this movie isn’t to be taken seriously when watching, I didn’t judge the music that harshly. It was just a cute scene where Kim was trying to prove that she and Hugo’s love will never die despite Conrad being in the picture, all delivered in song form.
“A Lot of Livin’ to Do” is what I‘d consider the big dance number of the song, and throughout, Hugo and Kim are trying to make each other jealous essentially, duking it out in verses and dance breaks while Conrad overlaps their spats with lyrics indicating how he wants to be free in life. I love the costumes in this scene. The dancing is quirky but well done, and I like the melody of the singing and the instruments used.
You have other songs, too, like “Put on a Happy Face” and many others that progress Kim’s story of maturity and Albert and Rose’s rocky love story.
I’ve heard that many people didn’t like the opening and ending scenes with Ann-Margret singing “Bye Bye Birdie,” and I even read that the director paid with his own money out of pocket to get those scenes added to the movie. Despite having to cut some of Albert and Rosie’s songs and scenes to ensure Ann-Marget had more time on screen than she does in the musical, it wasn’t enough for the director, apparently. I can see how the opening of the movie can come off as bad or clunky. Ann’s voice is very shrill as she is walking in front of a blue background, but once you see the end of the film and the closing sequence, I could chalk up the singing and annunciation choices at the beginning to show how Kim isn’t super mature. She’s very clingy and a typical teen. The way she annunciates and sings becomes classical and mature to show how she has become just a little more woman-like at the end of the film.
I liked the different costumes shown throughout the film, which very much felt indicative of the 50s, and the mannerisms and even the delivery of some of the lines in the movie further showed this. I liked Kim’s story, and even though Albert and Rosie’s story and the development of characters got cut significantly from the musical version due to various changes, I still liked their scenes and story as well. Every time Mae came into the picture, I was intrigued.
I can appreciate Bye Bye Birdie for being such a hokey movie musical. I can see how many people don’t like it, though. There are many madcap moments. The opening, the ways some scenes are ended, the acting of some people, the whole “speed drug” element of the story. If you know, you know, you are insane, but the movie concluded in a lighthearted way. And I love lighthearted, non-serious movies. This might actually become a comfort movie for me. I can see myself continuously coming back to this movie. If you haven’t watched this movie yet, why not give it a shot? You might hate it; you might love it. You’ll never know if you don’t try.