Summer Holiday – its history

Summer Holiday is a British musical film released in February 1963, featuring singer Cliff Richard. The film was directed by Peter Yates, produced by Kenneth Harper.

The original screenplay was written by Peter Myers and Ronald Cass (who also wrote most of the song numbers and lyrics). Herbert Ross choreographed the musical numbers.
The cast included Lauri Peters, Melvyn Hayes, Teddy Green, Jeremy Bulloch, Una Stubbs, Pamela Hart, Jacqueline Daryl, Lionel Murton, Madge Ryan, David Kossoff, Nicholas Phipps, Ron Moody and The Shadows.

The story concerns Don (Cliff Richard) and his friends (Hayes, Green and Bulloch) who are bus mechanics at the huge London Transport bus overhaul works in Aldenham, Hertfordshire. During a miserably wet British summer lunch break, Don arrives, having persuaded London Transport to lend him and his friends an AEC Regent III “RT” double-decker bus. This they convert into a holiday caravan, which they drive across continental Europe, intending to reach the South of France.
However, their eventual destination is Athens. On the way, they are joined by a girl trio (Stubbs, Hart and Daryl) and a runaway singer (Lauri Peters), initially pretending to be male, pursued by her mother (Ryan) and agent (Murton).

The movie was a box-office smash, thus repeating the success of Cliff Richard’s earlier film The Young Ones (1961).

Summer Holiday was adapted into a stage musical in the mid-1990s starring Darren Day in the role that Cliff Richard played.