Go! Johnny Go!/Fun Facts
From The Grindhouse Cinema Database
< Go! Johnny Go!
- Additional footage featuring local rocker Adriano Celentano was added to the copies distributed in Italy
- This was Ritchie Valens only screen appearance.
- Though the film was released in 1959, the artists who appear perform their songs from early 1958 and not the hit tunes advertised in the film, as was often the case in Alan Freed films. "Donna" by Ritchie Valens, "Lonely Teardrops" by Jackie Wilson, "I Only Have Eyes For You" by The Flamingos and "Just A Dream" by Jimmy Clanton--huge hits that are now Rock 'n' Roll standards from the summer of 1958 through the end of the year--were all missing from the film.
- The Cadillacs perform "Please Mr. Johnson" as janitors. Over two decades later, Earl Carroll (aka "Speedo", The Cadillacs' lead singer) was located working as a janitor in a South Bronx elementary school in NYC. He subsequently appeared in an Apollo Anniversary Show in February 1985 performing with The Cadillacs and began touring with the group again.
- Shot in two days.
- Ironically the song performed by Ritchie Valens, "Ooh My Head", contains a reference to a Buddy Holly song with the line "No more Peggy Sue". Curiously, this line was left out when "Ooh My Head" was performed in the Ritchie Valens biography La Bamba (1987).
- Eddie Cochran performs "Teenage Heaven". He would just months later record "Three Stars Will Shine Tonight" as a tribute to Ritchie Valens, Buddy Holly and The Big Bopper.
