Taglines: Turn on! Stay loose! Make out!
Don’t Make Waves movie storyline. New York tourist Carlo Cofield (Tony Curtis) falls asleep on a Southern California beach on his first night in the West and wakes up to The New Phantasmagoria–catamarans, surfers (including a dog), bodybuilders, acrobats, motorcycle chicken races, a nut fishing in the shallows… and Malibu (Sharon Tate) as a skydiver named Malibu who gives him the rapture of artificial respiration when he is conked on the head by a flying surfboard. This is the ’60s American Dream: youth and beauty and money and sex in Southern California. Go west, all men.
Don’t Make Waves is a 1967 American sex comedy (with elements of the beach party genre) starring Tony Curtis, Claudia Cardinale, Dave Draper and Sharon Tate. Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the film was directed by Alexander Mackendrick and is based on the 1959 novel Muscle Beach, by Ira Wallach, who also wrote the screenplay.
The film depicts a series of romantic triangles between different groupings of the principal cast and supporting players among several backdrops involving Southern California culture (swimming pools, bodybuilding, beach life, fantastic real estate, mudslides, metaphysical gurus).
Sharon Tate told her husband Roman Polanski that her experience working on this film was not particularly enjoyable. The production atmosphere was tense, and it was worsened when an uncredited stuntman drowned when he parachuted into the Pacific Ocean.[3]
The film was Tate’s third to be produced, but as it was the first to be released in cinemas, it is generally considered to be her debut. MGM mounted an extensive publicity campaign upon its release that was based largely on Tate and her character, Malibu, and life-sized cardboard cutouts of Tate wearing a bikini were placed in cinema foyers throughout the United States. It was also linked to a widespread advertising campaign by Coppertone which also featured Tate.
Dave Draper, who plays Malibu’s boyfriend Harry, was the 1965 IFBB Mr. America and the 1966 NABBA Mr. Universe. 1966 NABBA Mr. Universe bodybuilder Chester Yorton, who plays Ted Gunder, made one other film, 1964’s Muscle Beach Party, in which he plays the character called “Hulk.”
The score was composed by Vic Mizzy. Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman wrote the title song, “Don’t Make Waves,” performed by The Byrds over the opening credits.
Don’t Make Waves (1967)
Directed by: Alexander Mackendrick
Starring: Tony Curtis, Claudia Cardinale, Sharon Tate, David Draper, Joanna Barnes, Robert Webber, Reg Lewis, Mort Sahl, Edgar Bergen, Mary Grace Canfield, Holly Haze, Sarah Selby, Julie Payne
Screenplay by: Ira Wallach, George Kirgo, Maurice Richlin
Production Design by: Edward Woehler
Cinematography by: Philip H. Lathrop
Film Editing by: Rita Roland, Thomas Stanford
Costume Design by: Donfeld
Set Decoration by: Henry Grace, Charles S. Thompson
Art Direction by: Edward C. Carfagno, George W. Davis
Music by: Vic Mizzy
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release Date: June 9, 1967
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