'One youth was doing a snake dance': teens react to Bill Haley film

News reports said that young people had spread across Whitecrook Street and held up traffic. A woman was injured by a stone and a police officer suffered a cut to the hand. Three youths were arrested. Though there had been no disturbances during the actual screening, two policemen were kept on duty in the Empire cinema, just in case. When the last house came out, there were up to 1,500 people, “some of them jiving”, in Glasgow Road. 

A few days later similar incidents were reported elsewhere. In Motherwell, where Rock Around the Clock was shown at the Gaumont Theatre in Brandon Street, there were outbreaks of rowdyism at 11pm. “Six youths of the ‘teddy-boy type’ were arrested and locked up”, the Evening Times reported. Police laid on extra precautions when the film was shown at Hamilton’s Gaumont Cinema.

Teddy Boys, in a typical shot from the Fifties (Image: Marc Evans)Motherwell Police Court subsequently heard that a crowd had been witnessed in the town’s Muir Street, shouting and bawling “rock’n’roll!” and that several young women had also been reported for prosecution. In Hamilton, some 200-300 fans had tailed police as officers escorted an 18-year-old window cleaner to the station. 

In Clydebank, four Teddy-Boy ringleaders were each fined £3, or 20 days, on breach of the peace charges. A police inspector said in evidence that the film had a special attraction for adolescents and “boys and girls of the Teddy type”. 

So what was this film that caused disturbances in lots of towns and cities? As one authoritative film guide puts it, this “little film” from 1956 “is now history” for the incendiary impact its main stars “produced on teen audiences worldwide and on the music business”. 

Rock Around the Clock starred the well-known American DJ Alan Freed and numerous musical acts, among them Bill Haley and the Comets. 

Bill Haley and the Comets, seen here in rehearsal in London, were an exciting live act (Image: Copyright Bettman/Corbis)Haley, who had successfully fused country, blues and pop influences, would come to be seen as one of the pioneers of rock’n’roll. He and his band had had a number of hits – Rocket 88, Rock the Joint, Crazy Man, Crazy, before their song Rock Around the Clock was used to electrifying effect over the opening credits of Blackboard Jungle, a 1955 film that effectively introduced new-fangled rock music to mainstream cinema. 

The title song became a huge hit for the group – it spent a total of five weeks atop the British singles charts in two spells between November 1955 and January 1956 – and in turn it gave rise to the film, Rock Around the Clock. 

Those were the days - Teddy Boys through the ages

“In 1956, when Rock Around the Clock became the title song of Haley’s first film”, writes music historian Peter Doggett, "the Comets sent Teddy Boys and other errant teens wild in Britain’s cinemas, jiving in the aisles and taking razor blades to their seats”. 

Doggett records that a youthful John Lennon was disappointed when nobody at the Liverpool cinema vandalised the seats. In Manchester, members of the audience turned the cinema’s fire-hoses on each other and on the manager. Numerous cities banned the film, though Queen Elizabeth, just 30 at the time, asked for a print of the film to be sent to her at Buckingham Palace.

Lots of well-known musicians expressed their disdain for rock'n'roll, and for the music of Haley and of Elvis Presley. Billy Rose, the Broadway producer and songwriter, condemned rock’n’roll as a “musical monstrosity” and denounced Presley’s “animal posturings”. 

Sir Malcolm Sargent, chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, described rock’n’roll as “nothing more than an exhibition of primitive tom-tom thumping. “The amazing thing about rock’n’roll is that youngsters who go into such ecstasies sincerely believe that there is something new and wonderful about the music. There is nothing new or wonderful about it. Rock’n’roll has been played in the jungle for centuries”. 

THOSE WERE THE DAYS: 1957: Rock around the clock - but please stay seated during the show

Fines were imposed on youths in London and Manchester. In the capital, an 800-strong crowd had gathered outside the Trocadero Cinema, Elephant and Castle. In Manchester, police said an unruly mob of 200 youths had terrorised pedestrians, obstructed traffic, and had been jigging to rock’n’roll rhythm and that one youth seemed to be “under the influence of hypnotism and trying to do a snake dance”. Magistrates in Blackburn, Lancashire, banned the Haley film, alarmed by disturbances in Manchester and Burnley. 

“The Rock Around the Clock film is getting a big share of free publicity these days, through no merit or fault of its own”, the Glasgow Evening Times pronounced in a leader on September 11. “Police have been called to quell disorderly scenes as youths and girls treat themselves to rock’n’roll riots. 

“But it’s not the police who are needed”, it went on. “It’s a bunch of parents who have obviously been neglecting their duties. Hips won’t wiggle so readily if their youthful owners have to hold them after a good, old-fashioned tanning – the kind of thing that was here long before rock’n’roll”. 

Bill Haley was one of the pioneers of rock'n'roll (Image: Unknown)On September 19 the Glasgow Herald carried a worrying report from Bonn.  “Although the film ‘Rock Around the Clock’ has not yet been shown in Germany”, it began, “youth here is displaying much the same symptoms of dissatisfaction and unease as in Britain. 

“Hardly a day passes without reports of some pitched, but aimless, battles between young Germans and members of the public, the police, or the new armed forces. 

“…These affrays vary in size but all have one thing in common – the basic fact that large numbers of young people have a pathological urge to assert themselves and are prepared to provoke a fight”. 

Those were the days: Billy Haley, Glasgow's Odeon Cinema, 1957

By the time Haley and the Comets toured Britain in February 1957, they had had a number of other chart hits, including See You Later, Alligator, and Rip It Up. They remained indisputably popular with fans, but Haley had been eclipsed by the younger and considerably more charismatic Presley, whose UK chart hits already included Heartbreak Hotel, Blue Suede Shoes, Hound Dog, Love Me Tender and Mystery Train. 

Haley’s arrival in Britain, notes Scottish music historian Brian Hogg, “inspired scenes of mayhem, but rioting was assuaged by the spectacle of this paunchy performer and the now-obsolete sound of his group”. 

ON TOP OF THE WORLD

Two men were arrested outside Haley’s Glasgow venue, the Renfield Street Odeon, charged with breach of the peace and disorderly conduct. 

In a review the Glasgow Herald said: “Before the audience were quite settled with their ice-creams and their bags of nuts. before even the safety curtain had risen, the introductory bars [of the opening song] were finished and the Comets were in full flight... At the very start of the show a polite voice had requested that the audience remain in their seats. 

65 years of rock and roll - and all that jazz

“The mild laughter and the ripple of applause that had greeted this suggested that whatever might happen elsewhere, Glasgow could take its ‘rock ‘n’roll’ with propriety. At one stage two girls did actually stand up ... but they sat down quickly enough when an official frowned at them in the manner of a benevolent dominie with a restive class.” 

Haley fans gather outside the Odeon, Glasgow, in February 1957, where Haley and the Comets were on stage (Image: Newsquest) The review also spoke of Haley “crouched earnestly behind his guitar in that attitude of determination and aggression taught by sub-machine-gun instructors.”

Haley died in February 1981, aged just 55.