Marlon Brando, Preston Epps, and Other Bongo Beatin' Beatniks

The late 50s and early 60s were rife with bongo beaters--with all the bongo-rific riffery seeming to reach some sort peak around 1959. What follows is another scatter-shot round-up of some favorites.



First up, Marlon Brando, making the scene with Jack Costanzo in this 1953 television interview. So, okay, technically those aren't bongos they're playing, but rather congas. Still, check out the old, hep meaning of the phrase "losing his mind." And dig that set! Looks like the Corleone-to-be descends a staircase into some kind of swinger’s grotto.



Joe Hall and the Corvettes “Bongo Beatin’ Beatnik” (Global 751, 1959). This one plays on the beatnik’s reputedly sophistimacated preference for jazz over greasy kid stuff, with Hall chanting “I’m a bongo beatin’ beatnik and I just don’t dig RnR” over and over, ironically enough, to a groovy RnR beat. Can still be found on the Sin Alley volume 2 compilation.

Andre Williams and the 5 Dollars

Andre Williams “Mozelle” (Fortune 827, 1956). What’s left to be said at this point? This is possibly the greatest bongo song of all, while it also rates highly among the Greatest RnR Songs Ever.

Preston Epps' single “Bongo Rock” (Original Sounds, 1959) also appeared on the 1960 LP Bongo Bongo Bongo. After a couple of late 50s – early 60s trips to the top of the Billboard charts, Epps settled into a career as session player. He appears in the 1968 film Girl in Gold Boots, and the following title clip contains not a single Epps bongo beat, as far as I can hear, but I include it anyway for its obvious...uh, cultural/anthropological significance.




Finally, here's Henry Mancini’s title theme to Orson Wells’ classic from 1958 Touch of Evil. Factoid: for the set they didn’t use some Tijuana border town streets, but rather Venice Beach during its late 50s bohemian heyday. Lawrence Lipton gives a detailed account of the Venice Beach of that period in the oft-maligned The Holy Barbarians (J. Messner Books, 1959).

Hollywood Suicide #2: Pina Pellicer

During her brief run on the screen, Pina Pellicer was more well-known in Mexico and Europe than the US. Daughter of an affluent Mexico City lawyer, niece to a famous modernist poet, and sister to a tele-novela actress, Josefina Yolanda Pellicer López de Llergo had art--not to mention a wicked long name--in her blood. But then, the old world leisure class often had art in its blood (and time on its hands).

She first appeared in a Mexican production of Macario, released in 1960, the Academy's runner-up for best foreign film for that year. That Macario came first for Pina Pellicer was Marlon Brando's fault. She'd already had a role in One-Eyed Jacks, the weird transitional western that Brando commandeered from director Stanley Kubrick and writers Sam Peckinpah and Rod Serling. It began production in '58. However, as Brando's ego sent director & writers packin, and the enfant terrible took over, work on the film slowed. The new actor/director shot more and more film, release dates got postponed, and the picture didn't hit theaters until '61.

In One-Eyed Jacks--which also stars Karl Malden, Slim Pickens, Timothoy Carey, Katy Jurado, Ben Johnson, and Larry Duran--Pina plays Luisa, adopted daughter of former thief turned scum-bucket sherriff Dad Longworth (Malden). As part of his revenge on Longworth for an old doublecross back in their bank robbing days, the outlaw Rio (Brando), cons the pretty step-daughter out of her virtue. Here's a clip.

Wish I could find a clip of one of the film's finer moments, when Dad's evil deputy Lon (Pickens), tips him to Luisa's new condition. "She came in this morning," he whispers, "A-lookin' kinda messy." As compensation for my failure to find this clip, I offer Timothy Carey's scene (if there's a bad movie with Tim Carey, I never saw it), the one with the classic "Get up, you tub-o-guts!" line.

So what happened to Pina Pellicer? Was her 1964 suicide, in Mexico City, at age 30, another case of life imitating art? (All that art in the blood.) Some like to interpret from the storyline in One-Eyed Jacks that Pina and Brando had their own real-life case of unrequited love. Leading man snubbed leading lady, etc., etc. But she died several years after her brush with the big man. Maybe she had a vision of the future, and it showed her The Island of Dr. Moreau. Other rumors claimed that she wasn't hung up on Brando at all, but that she was bugged by the the same sort of difficulties that beset Montgomery Clift, and the resulting depression made Pina Pellicer take that early bow.