Happy Birthday to actor-turned-producer Bart Patton. Tall and lanky, handsome Bart Patton played a surfing college boy on vacation in Waikiki in Gidget Goes Hawaiian but it is his work behind the camera that he is best remembered for. An association with Roger Corman led the actor to become a twenty-four old producer of the beach-party movies, Beach Ball (1965), Wild Wild Winter (1966), and Out of Sight (1966).
At age ten, Bart played Scampy the Clown for four years on the ABC children’s program, Super Circus. While attending UCLA in the late fifties he met his future wife, pretty blonde actress Mary Mitchel, and became close friends with an aspiring filmmaker named Francis Coppola. Patton made his film debut playing a high school student in Because They’re Young (1960), which began his four-year relationship with Columbia Pictures though he never signed a contract. He would go on to work for the studio in Strangers When We Meet (1960) before joining Joby Baker and Don Edmonds as partying college boys in Gidget Goes Hawaiian (1961) starring Deborah Walley in the title role. Bart also began working on TV and guest starred on such varied series as 77 Sunset Strip, Father Knows Best, Thriller and General Electric Theatre. His next film role was as an ax murderer in Dementia 13 (1963) directed by Francis Coppola. This eerie black-and-white horror movie is set in an Irish castle also starred William Campbell, Luana Anders, Mary Mitchel, and Patrick Magee. It was on Dementia 13 where Bart Patton began to get involved with the production side of making movies. Producer Roger Corman was impressed with the young man and he began working as a production manager for his company. He helped put the cult horror movie Spider Baby (1964) together before Corman offered him a chance to produce Beach Ball (1965) one of the most blatant and successful knockoffs of AIP’s Beach Party. This began his short partnership with director Lennie Weinrib. The success of Beach Ball landed the duo a seven-year contract at Universal Pictures. The studio was late into getting in on the beach movie craze and hired them. First up was Wild Wild Winter (1965), a beach party in the snow starring Gary Clarke and Chris Noel, and then the combination beach and spy spoof Out of Sight (1966) with Jonathan Daly and Karen Jensen.
In between producing assignments Patton continued accepting roles on such TV sitcoms as Petticoat Junction and Hank. At Universal, he and Weinrib had a number of projects in development but were let go before any could come to fruition. Bart Patton went on to produce the trouble-laden production The Rain People (1969) directed by his friend Francis Coppola. The movie starred Shirley Knight as a pregnant Long Island housewife who abandons her husband and hits the road and picks up hitchhiker James Caan as a mentally challenged former football star. Frustrated with film making, Patton began making commercials for John Urie & Associates. The one later film that Patton produced was The Further Adventures of the Wilderness Family (1978) starring Robert Logan of Beach Ball. Patton also began working steadily as an assistant director on a number of projects.
You can read anecdotes from Bart Patton about his beach movies and career in my book Hollywood Surf & Beach Movies: The First Wave, 1959-1969.
I always liked him a lot. He’s yet another person who appeared on THE MANY LOVES OF DOBIE GILLIS. My ex-girlfriend was in a play with him, and spoke warmly about him.
I did find his interview disappointing in Brian Albrecht’s book about cult movie people (I hope I spelled that author’s name correctly). Reading between the lines, it seemed as though that Bart Patton isn’t aging well.
That’s too bad. I was curious about that book and on my list to buy. I interviewed him about 12 years ago for my Hollywood Surf and Beach Movie book and he was a great interview with lots of anecdotes and insights.