In the late 1950's, modestly made rock-n-roll movies were the rage, or at least popular and profitable. Paramount came up with the rather bright idea to make a similar film on the burgeoning country music market, which was just starting to break out of it's limited niche and cross over into popular music sales. The result is COUNTRY MUSIC HOLIDAY which spawned a lot of knockoffs over the next ten years but this film remained the only one of it's type produced by a major studio.
HOLIDAY stars country singer Ferlin Husky ("Gone") as a good old boy who becomes a popular hillbilly singer and ultimately grabs a citified audience and even the romantic interest of a international vamp (Zsa Zsa Gabor - playing herself!!) much to the distress of his longtime sweetheart June Carter.
I have to admit I haven't seen this picture in over 25 years. When I was growing up it was a mainstay of the local late show but I haven't seen it anywhere since. This film has a modest storyline but more emphasis on music, from Husky, Faron Young, The Jordainaires, and the country comedy act Lonzo and Oscar. The movie is stolen however by a completely obscure vocal group, The Ladell Sisters who rock it with a sensational rockabilly number called "Wang Dang Doo". The Ladells were amazing - sort of the Andrews Sisters meet the Davis Sisters and completely predating the 1960's "girl group" pop sound. I would watch this movie every time it aired just to catch them. Alas, they apparently made no records or at the least certainly never had any hits, there's nothing about them even on the internet.
June Carter, as I recall, did not sing at all in the film and simply played a standard leading lady part. Grand Ole Opry comedian Rod Brasfield played Husky's father, an obscure actress with no other film credits played his mother.
Several major show biz names got early starts in this film. Child actress Patty Duke is seen in a small part in one of her first roles and the title song is written by then unknown team of Burt Bacharach and Hal David!! I don't recall much about the film beyond Gabor referring to country music as "peasant music" and Husky mangling her name as Jazz-Jazz but whenever this little rarity pops on my TV schedule if ever again I will be ready with recorder set.
