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EDDiE AND ThE CruiSErS
30 Years Down the Pike By Bill kelly
It’s been thirty years since Hollywood came to the Jersey Shore to film eddie and
the Cruisers, but it’s still fondly remembered for documenting the times and the
places that were very special to a lot of people.
Set in the early 1960’s and filmed on location on the Ocean City (NJ) beach and
boardwalk as well as Tony Marts nightclub in Somers Point, eddie and the Cruisers
caught the spirit of early rock and roll and captured the basic landscape of a
bygone era—a landscape that for the most part, no longer exists.
eddie and the Parkway Cruisers first made their appearance in literature in the
1980 novel, “eddie & the Cruisers” by P. F. Kluge.
From Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, Paul Frederick “P.F.” Kluge attended Kenyon
College in Gambier, Ohio, where he now teaches creative writing. Shortly after
graduating, Kluge landed a job teaching at Vineland High School in South
Jersey, and from there, frequently wandered down to the Jersey Shore where he
discovered a burgeoning rock & roll scene. The music scene inspired him to write
the story of a typical Jersey Shore bar band that, on the verge of breaking out
and making the big time, ends tragically when the lead singer dies in a suicide
crash off the Ocean City causeway bridge.
The book wasn’t a bestseller but one copy found its way into the hands of Martin
Davidson, the Hollywood producer of The Lords of Flatbush, the movie that first
introduced us to Sylvester Stallone and Henry Winkler. Davidson saw the movie in
it, and purchased the film rights with his own money. Using his literary licenses,
Davidson made some minor variations in the script but kept the basic story and
main characters the same. In the book, eddie’s inspiration is the sentimental
romantic Walt Whitman, who Davidson replaced with the radical eccentric Arthur
Rimbaud. Instead of Leaves of Grass, the Cruiser’s masterpiece is Season in Hell,
giving it more of a Doors’ psychedelic edge.
Martin Davidson has said that his inspiration for the film came from a desire to
“get all my feelings about the music of the last 30 years of rock music into it”. He
wrote the screenplay
with his wife Arlene
and decided to use
a Citizen Kane-style
story structure, “That
was in my head: the
search.”
58 | The Boardwalk Journal | April 2013
Although not in
the book or in the
original script, when
the location scouts
and set designers
came poking around
for a place to shoot
the film, they were
directed to Tony
Marts Café in Somers
Point, one of the
last of the old rock
& roll nightclubs still
standing at the time.
Anthony Marotta,
fresh from Masina,
Sicily, made his
way to Atlantic
City and saved money he
made from selling hot dogs
and sandwiches on the
boardwalk at St. James
Place. When the opportunity
arose—just after the Storm
of ’44—Marotta purchased
the old Schick’s Hotel and
Rathskeller on Bay Avenue
in Somers Point. expanding
the tavern bar on the first
floor and adding a stage,
Tony brought in acts like
Bill Haley and the Comets, Conway Twitty,
Duane eddie and Mitch Ryder. Tony
featured all kinds of entertainment and
a variety of music, as long as the people
liked it. A second stage was added to
present continuous live entertainment so
when one band concluded another would
begin, keeping the dance floor busy.
Featuring traveling recording artists, Tony Marts ushered in early rock & roll and
even Las Vegas style headline acts as well as local bar bands in its heyday. In
1965, Conway Twitty was the most popular attraction and the house band was
Levon & the Hawks (who later became The Band that often accompanied Bob
Dylan after he “went electric”).
But by the summer of 1982, Tony Marts was a shell of its old self. The music was
winding down, disco had changed the styles, DJs were cheaper, and Tony was
tired. So when the right deal came along, Tony took it. Tony decided to sell the
place to an attorney who had plans to level the old clapboard building and build a
disco nightclub, as he had done with Bayshores across the street.
It was to be the last summer before the music died when this Hollywood film crew
comes to town looking for a rock & roll nightclub to make a movie. When they saw
Tony Marts, looked at the scrapbook of bands that had played there, looked at the
walls and soaked in the club’s motif, which had been simmering in the booze for
decades, they knew Tony Marts was the place. Davidson wanted to close the place
for two weeks and make a movie there, and when Tony told them how much it
would cost, they made a deal.
A casting call went out for teenagers to be in the audience and for bit parts, and
hundreds of people got called and became part of the show. “Think 1962” they
were told, the year the movie was set, and the clothes and hairstyles that were
required.
eddie, the leader of the Cruisers, drove a ’57 Chevy.
When the main stars showed up, many of the extras didn’t recognize them. Now,
three decades later, they’re familiar faces with household names—Tom Berenger,
Michael Pare, Helen Schneider, Joe Pantoliano, Matthew Laurence and ellen
Barkin.
Berenger plays Frank Ridgeway, aka “Wordman,” a school teacher character based
on author Kluge, who is working the summer as a Tony Marts custodian and
recruited into the Parkway Cruisers, the band led by eddie Wilson, played by the
charismatic Michael Pare. “Words and music,” eddie says, “that’s what we need.”
In the movie, Berenger’s Ridgeway is pushing a broom around Tony Mart’s dance