Rock Around the Clock is the title of a 1956 musical motion picture that featured Bill Haley and His Comets along with Alan Freed, The Platters, and Freddie Bell and the Bellboys. It was produced by b-movie king Sam Katzman (who would produce several Elvis Presley films in the 1960s) and directed by Fred F. Sears.
The film was shot over a short period of time in January 1956 to capitalize on Haley's success and the popularity of his multimillion-selling recording "Rock Around the Clock" which debuted in the 1955 teen flick Blackboard Jungle, and is considered the first major rock and roll musical film.
Rock Around the Clock told a highly fictionalized rendition of how rock and roll was discovered, but moviegoers didn't care about the plotline; they wanted to hear the music. The film was blamed for inciting rowdy behavior in theaters across America and Great Britain, and was banned in some parts of the world. Queen Elizabeth II reportedly requested a special screening of the film; her reaction to it is not known.
Despite the movie being named after it, the song "Rock Around the Clock" - although heard three times during the picture - is never actually performed in its entirety on screen. At the end of the picture, the director decides to show the two dramatic leads having a conversation while Haley and the Comets are shown performing the song in the background, the music muted to allow dialogue. It has been suggested that the decision to have people talking over this climactic performance "Rock Around the Clock", a song people came to the film to hear, might have been a contributing factor in reported theater violence.[original research?]
Rock Around the Clock was one of the major box office successes of 1956, and soon many more rock and roll musical films (notably the big-budget "A" picture The Girl Can't Help It) would be produced and within a year, Elvis Presley (whose first film, 1956's Love Me Tender, was a western, not a rock and roll movie) would soon appear in the most popular films of the genre, including Jailhouse Rock and King Creole.
Later in 1956, Bill Haley and His Comets headlined a loose sequel, Don't Knock the Rock, also directed by Sears and produced by Katzman. Rushed into production in order to capitalize on the success of Rock Around the Clock, the sequel failed to duplicate the earlier film's success.
In 1961, Katzman produced the similarly titled, Twist Around the Clock starring Chubby Checker, which was very similar in basic plot to Rock Around the Clock and is often referred to as a remake of the Haley picture.
