Where the Boys Are

Glendon Swarthout taught at Michigan State, went south with his students to see what they did there, and published Where the Boys Are in 1960. MGM filmed it the same year. The picture put Fort Lauderdale on screens across the country and the town's March crowds rose from tens of thousands to a scale it had never planned for. It is the rare case of a single film measurably creating the thing it depicted.

Part of Spring Break

16 moments in this segment.

1. 1960 - MGM comes to Fort Lauderdale. Local news covers the MGM production of Where the Boys Are shooting on location in Fort Lauderdale in 1960, with real college students hired as extras. The film that followed is credited with turning the town into a national destination.
2. 1960 - The trailer that sold Fort Lauderdale. MGM's trailer for Where the Boys Are, the 1960 film adapted from Glendon Swarthout's novel. Its arrival is widely credited with turning a Fort Lauderdale beach holiday into a national ritual.
3. 1960 - The mermaid at the Wreck Bar. The Lola the Sea Nymph sequence from Where the Boys Are, performed by Barbara Nichols in the underwater window of Fort Lauderdale's Wreck Bar. The bar's mermaid act still runs, and the scene fixed it in the town's tourist image.
4. 1960 - Selling Where the Boys Are. The original theatrical trailer for the 1960 MGM adaptation of Glendon Swarthout's novel, which sold the spring migration to Fort Lauderdale as a rite of passage. How the studio pitched it matters as much as the film itself.
5. 1960 - Premiere night in Fort Lauderdale. A British Pathe newsreel records the cast arriving in Florida for the 1960 premiere of Where the Boys Are, greeted by Fort Lauderdale mayor Edward Johns. The city staged the opening of the film that would define it.
6. 1960 - Jim Hutton in the Where the Boys Are trailer. A frame from the trailer for the 1960 MGM film, with Jim Hutton among the cast of students heading south. The trailer sold the beach as much as the story, and the studio marketing is part of why the town it depicted was overwhelmed within a few seasons.
7. 1961-02-24 - A cinema advertisement for Where the Boys Are. The Earle Theater in Allentown, Pennsylvania advertises Where the Boys Are in the Morning Call of 24 February 1961, three months after the film opened. The picture carried the Fort Lauderdale spring break to audiences a thousand miles from any beach, and is generally credited with turning a regional habit into a national one.
8. 1961 - The 1961 break gets out of hand. Miami station WCKT-7 included Fort Lauderdale's spring break in its year-end review of 1961, a year the crowds outran the city's expectations. It is among the earliest surviving broadcast records of the phenomenon.
9. 1961-10-08 - Connie Francis sings the title song for Ed Sullivan. Connie Francis performs 'Where the Boys Are' on The Ed Sullivan Show on 8 October 1961, in a segment taped in West Berlin. The song carried the film's premise far beyond the cinemas.
10. 1962 - College students crowd the Fort Lauderdale beach. The sand at Fort Lauderdale packed with college students in 1962, two years after 'Where the Boys Are' put the city on every campus's map. Florida Memory's own caption identifies the crowd as college students.
11. 1963 - Catamaran on Fort Lauderdale beach. A woman aboard a catamaran drawn up on the sand at Fort Lauderdale, dated by the catalogue to December 1963. Made months away from the spring weeks, it shows the strip's beach when the students were not there.
12. 1965-01-25 - Students throw their president into the fountain. Florida State University's president being carried into Westcott Fountain by students on 25 January 1965, photographed for the Tallahassee Democrat. Campus high jinks by the student generation then filling the coastal resorts each spring.
13. 1965-04-19 - Out-of-state plates on the sand. An April 1965 agency reel of college students filling the beach at Daytona, cars parked on the hard sand and repeated shots of out-of-state licence plates. Five years after the film that made the trip famous, the crowd was arriving from across the country.
14. 1966 - Ocean Drive, spring 1966. A short amateur reel labelled as the 1966 spring break season on Ocean Drive. It is the kind of home footage that survives from the decade when the college migration to Florida became an annual fixture.
15. 1968-06-25 - Students tubing at Wakulla Springs. Florida State University students floating on inner tubes at Wakulla Springs on 25 June 1968, photographed for the Tallahassee Democrat. The state's own students had water rituals well inland of the coastal resorts.
16. 1969-12-31 - New Year's band in Fort Lauderdale. An all-female band playing a New Year's Eve celebration in Fort Lauderdale on 31 December 1969. The city closed out the decade in which its name had become attached to the student season.