Sal Mineo's Favorite Role: "The Gene Krupa Story"

With a Drum Track Recorded by Krupa Himself

Considering that Sal Mineo (1939-1976) was my favorite movie star when I was a child, and that I continue to find him eye candy, it is a bit odd that I had never seen "The Gene Krupa Story" (aka "Drum"Exodus" and "Who Killed Teddy Bear" aren't that of an adult!)), released in 1959, until now. (It has been available on DVD since 2004.) I didn't even know what Krupa's ethnicity was. With him sometimes called "Gino" in the movie and played by Mineo, I thought he was Italian-American. Being pressed into the Roman Catholic priesthood fit with this, but he was Polish-American. His best buddy, with the vaguely Italianate name of Eddie Sirota (played by James Darren), could more easily be taken as of Polish descent, so it is probably just as well the movie was vague--a Catholic ethnic with first-generation parents adamantly opposed to a career in smoky gin joints--in the beginning (1927), during Prohibition, in speakeasies.

The much-loved parents rejecting a vocation in "devil's music" is only one of many musician/artist biopic cliches piled up in "The Gene Krupa Story." There is also the corrosive corruption brought by fame and income that is spent even faster than it comes in, a grounded friend, the woman who would save the protagonist if only he'd let her, enthusiastic fans, Fallen Women, and Demon Drugs (marijuana, very much in the "Reefer Madness" portrayal).

How can a good movie survive such a concentration of clichés? The performances by the three leads (Mineo, Darren, and Susan Kohner) and the music (Krupa's drumming and various other musicians who appear onscreen, most notably Anita O'Day, whom I'd never seen before).