Where The Boys Are (1960)

Four college co-eds (Dolores Hart, Yvette Mimieux, Paula Prentiss, Connie Francis) go to Fort Lauderdale on spring break where each girl must handle romantic and sexual entanglements in her own way from comic (Francis) to tragic (Mimieux). Based on the novel by Glendon Swarthout and directed by Henry Levin (JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH). Too often unfairly dismissed as the first of the beach party sex and surf films, WHERE THE BOYS ARE is an intelligent and often incisive look at the budding sexual mores of college age kids and frankly discusses pre-marital sexual activity among young adults as a very real event, something Hollywood at that time rarely, if ever, acknowledged. The thinking was that "good" girls didn't think about sex, just the "bad" (as in promiscuous) girls. BOYS showed that good girls did indeed think about sex! The youthful cast is energetic and appealing and director Levin balances the amusing spring break hijinks with a subtly thought provoking subtext. The title song was a huge hit for Francis. With George Hamilton, Jim Hutton, Barbara Nichols, Frank Gorshin, Maggie Pierce and Chill Wills.