The Gene Krupa Story
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: James Darren, Sal Mineo, Susan Kohner, Susan Oliver, Yvonne CraigDVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 1.0; English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0
Format: Black & White, Digital Sound, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen, 1.85:1
Running Time: 101 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-05-18
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Movie Reviews of The Gene Krupa Story
Movie Review: Sal Mineo Sparkles In The Late 1950's Bio-Pic About The Great Gene Krupa!!
Summary: 5 Stars
This film came out in 1959, and the then 20 year old Sal Mineo
gives what I think is one of the defining performances of his
brief and all-too-tragic career!
I have posted several reviews on the work of Sal Mineo...
he was an amazing and highly underappreciated talent in his lifetime
who had a few moments in great films where he really got to show the
world a glimpse of what he was made of!
He was a talent far beyond his years who worked really hard to develop
and inhabit the characters he played in a time when that was unheard of!
In his written and televised biographies, his sister Sarina recants that
Sal Mineo became so deeply immersed in Gene Krupa that he taught himself how
to play drums to almost the same intensity level of Gene Krupa,
who was one of the first virtuoso drum soloists in jazz history!
He hang out a lot with Krupa to absorb his story and to get a feel for
his fiery personality, and the two struck up a lifelong friendship.
All this becomes evident when you see Sal's amazing performance in one of the
few big screen movies where he was featured as the headliner.
He is supported by the beautiful Susan Kohner, who played the troubled
Sara Jane, the self-hating mulatto child in another 1959 classic, "Imitation Of Life".
She plays his principle love interest in this.
Other supporting cast members include James Darren, Susan Oliver and others who
would become big stars later on. I'll allow you to discover them for yourself
when you see this film. (-:
Sal Mineo was on top of the world during this time and recieved great reviews
and accolades from his peers for this role. It's a shame that he only had one other
big role after this one in the 1960 Otto Preminger film, EXODUS, in which he won
a golden globe for that role as "Dov", the nazi-hating jewish radical.
Even though he was nominated for 2 oscars and won a golden globe, Sal Mineo's career
was plunged into a tailspin when the powers that be in Hollywood of that time decided
that he was a has-been at 22. He spent the rest of the 60's into the mid 70's
trying to regain the place in the industry that he had once held,
turning in some very interesting and ahead of their time performances which
made some very uncomfortable ( Who Killed Teddy Bear? and Fortune In Men's Eyes)
during those wild in some ways, but still very much conservative in other ways, times.
Sal Mineo was a masculine, attractive, talented man that was forward-thinking enough to
dare to live openly as a gay man at a time when that was career suicide for an actor!
But he forged on in spite of this, eeking out a living in TV, commercials, off broadway plays
and was at threshold of a triumphant comeback when he was murdered by a random man
in an attempted robbery in February of 1976.
So much talent & promise misused and lost forever!
That's why it's great to go back and see movies like this one,
to ponder what might've been had he been given a chance back then in his youth.
A very good classic film for those who love classic films.
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