Bernardine

Bernardine is a 1957 American musical film directed by Henry Levin and starring Pat Boone, Terry Moore, Dean Jagger, Dick Sargent, and (in her last film, after a 19-year hiatus) Janet Gaynor. The 1952 play upon which the movie is based was written by Mary Coyle Chase, the Denver playwright who also wrote the popular 1944 Broadway play Harvey. The title song, with words and music by Johnny Mercer, became a hit record for Boone. Plot At Wingate High School, a group of pals including Griner (Ronnie Burns), Arthur "Beau" Beaumont (Pat Boone) and Sanford "Fofo Bidnut" Wilson (Dick Sargent) race cars and boats, hang out at an after-school place called the "Shamrock Club", and jokingly profess their love for a mythical dream girl named Bernardine Mudd from Sneaky Falls, Idaho. Sanford, who's academically and socially less successful than his pals, declares that he intends to take a date to see bongo king Jack Costanzo perform at the Black Cat Club. When the boys call the local phone company for the fictional Bernardine's phone number, a young operator named Jean (Terry Moore) answers the phone. Soon she accepts a date with Sanford. The love-struck Sanford feels that he has found his "Bernardine". But when his widowed mother (Janet Gaynor) talks about remarrying, and he realizes he could flunk out of school rather than graduate, he decides to briefly put his new romance on the back burner. His friends try to help him with his problems, but their well-meaning attempts don't go as planned.