Ted Knight Is 'The Candidate'

The Republicans are in my home town this week to nominate a candidate for President, and I can think of no more appropriate way to mark the occasion than by posting this soundtrack from a 1964 exploitation film called The Candidate.

This is not the film of the same name that starred Robert Redford; the US Senate candidate here is none other than Ted Knight, who would later become famous as the narcissistic news anchor on American television's Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Knight was then a television and voice-over actor. This was his first lead role in a film, albeit a low-budget one. Billed above him were sex bombs Mamie Van Doren, from the US, and June Wilkinson, from the UK.

The plot, if not ripped from the headlines, was at least suggested by them. It centers on influence-peddler Buddy Barker and his procurement of women and other objects of desire for the men who run Washington. The Barker character was "inspired," shall we say, by the contemporary scandals that revolved around Congressional aide Bobby Baker, a former Lyndon Johnson crony.

I won't go into the plot (mainly because I haven't seen the movie), but I will note that my favorite part of the plot summary on the back of the soundtrack is the climax (so to speak) where Ted Knight's character, who has fallen in love with June Wilkinson, discovers that she has made a stag film at the behest of Buddy Barker. Seeing this film gives him a heart attack and he dies on the spot.

I can't promise that this soundtrack will stimulate any such dramatic response in you. It is middling quality crime jazz from the pen of the young composer Steve Karmen, who then specialized in sleaze films. (This score is bookended by his work on Hollywood Nudes Report and The Beautiful, the Bloody, and the Bare.) He later became a prolific composer of advertising jingles - perhaps his greatest hit is "I Love New York."

June Wilkinson and Mamie Van Doren

Despite their prominence on the cover, Mamie, June and Ted do not appear on this LP. However, Jubilee, which issued the album, enlisted the women to record a single at the same time - "Bikini with No Top on Top" b/w "So What Else Is New," written by Sid Robin and backed by guitarist Billy Strange and the Senators. (Apparently this was part of the promo activity for The Candidate. Despite a claim on IMDb, I doubt these songs were included in the film.) I call tell you that the bikini song demonstrates that neither Van Doren nor Wilkinson could sing. Mercifully, they only make a cameo appearance on the flip side, an enjoyably frantic instrumental by the Strange crew. I've included the single in the download (not my rip, although I did clean it up some).

The sound on the LP is good. If my synopsis has somehow awakened a desire to see The Candidate, it's on DVD and the trailer is on YouTube.

In another nod to the election season of 52 years ago, my singles blog is posting the promotional single "Hello, Lyndon!", the Democrats' attempt to stimulate enthusiasm for their Presidential candidate by offering pop singer Ed Ames in a curiously lifeless rewrite of "Hello, Dolly!" done by composer Jerry Herman.