Tommy Steele - The Tommy Steele Collection

Cheeky chappy’s fleapit follies

Britain’s first rock’n’roller he may have been, but it didn’t take Steele long to forsake rebellion for a cosy showbiz career, most tellingly with a string of lightweight musical comedies that made Elvis Presley’s celluloid adventures look like high watermarks in Al Pacino’s filmography.

The Bermondsey boy plays himself in 1957’s The Tommy Steele Story (released just four months after his first hit Rock With The Caveman), an overly romanticised tale of his days in the Merchant Navy and subsequent rise to stardom via Soho’s coffee bars. 1958’s The Duke Wore Jeans stumbled towards pantomime, Steele as a Cockney charmer with an uncanny resemblance to a nobleman who he then impersonates to woo the princess of an oil-rich South American monarchy. Oscar voters remained untroubled.

Sid James was drafted in to beef up the laughs in Tommy The Toreador (1959), which spawned the novelty hit Little White Bull, cementing Steele’s credentials as a mainstream family entertainer. 1963’s It’s All Happening sends the schmaltzometer into overdrive, with grown-up Tom staging a variety concert to thwart the heartless businessmen threatening to close down his boyhood orphanage. There’s no denying Steele’s likeability or skills as a song-and-dance man, even if the end results rarely rise above no-brainer wallpaper entertainment.

Optimum | OPTD 0994 (4-DVD)

Reviewed by Terry Staunton
<< Back to Issue 346