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Palm Springs Weekend | 1963


100 min. | color | Warner Bros. | released: november 5, 1963


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Troy Donohue (as Jim Munroe) and the rest of his college basketball team escape to Palm Springs to blow off a little steam over Easter vacation. After being shot down by Connie Stevens (as Gayle Lewis and Jane Hoover… I’ll explain in a sec), Jim disregards his buddy, Biff’s (Jerry Van Dyke) advice and sets his sites on a lovely local girl, Bunny (Stefanie Powers), whose father (Andrew Duggan) happens to be chief of police. Bunny’s father is kept mellow by the valium his wife (Dorothy Green) sneaks into his orange juice each morning.

Meanwhile, poor 18-year old, Jane Hoover (Connie Stevens) pretends to be rich 21-year old Gayle Lewis in hopes of snagging a rich boyfriend. Unfortunately she attracts the attentions of Eric Dean (Robert Conrad), a hotheaded jerk with typical 1960s rich kid/parental neglect issues. Competing for Gayle’s affection is Ty Hardin (as Stretch), a sweet, guitar-strumming Texan who spews folksy wisdom and corny jokes. Things fall apart for Eric when he gets a little too rough with Gayle in a nightclub parking lot. Gayle is saved by Stretch and Eric flees the scene. Stretch and Jim drive after Eric but the chase is cut short when Stretch crashes his car after swerving to avoid running down a pack of boy scouts standing in the road.

There’s a big brawl with some no-goodniks that gets broken up by the police and Biff’s laundry soap falls into the swimming pool creating a big, hilarious mess, but other than that, not a lot happens. Still though, “Palm Springs Weekend” is an entertaining but slightly too long movie.