“It Only Hurts When I Cry” (Donna Loren)

Your real song by a fake person in a real movie of the day is “It Only Hurts When I Cry” by Donna Loren. Ms. Loren, a singer and actress, sang it in character as “Donna” in the classic Frankie-and-Annette beach movie, 1965’s Beach Blanket Bingo. In this fashion, it’s like the fictional Wonders from yesterday’s classic song of the day, “That Thing You Do!,” performing in a fake beach movie as an even more fake band, Cap’n Geech and the Shrimp Shack Shooters. It’s how they did things back then.

“It Only Hurts When I Cry” was written by Guy Hemric and Jerry Styner, who wrote all the songs in the movie. Hemric and Styner wrote songs for a lot of the beach movies, including Bikini Beach, How to Stuff a Wild Bikini, Muscle Beach Party, Ski Party, and Pajama Party. They also did other stuff later on, but it’s the royalties from those beach party songs that paid the rent, at least for awhile.

There are no musicians listed for the Beach Blanket Bingo soundtrack or for this song, but it really sounds like Hal Blaine on drums. I know Hal did a fair amount of movie work back then and also recorded for a lot of beach music artists, so it would make sense. Fellow Wrecking Crew bassist Carole Kaye lists Beach Blanket Bingo on her list of recordings, and that certainly sounds like one of her aggressively picked bass lines, so it’s possible the normal Hollywood studio gang played on this one.

The song itself is a simple thing in the key of C, with lots of I, ii, IV, and V chords. It does have an interesting drop from I to a major VII (C major to Bb major) in the verses, which gives it a slightly dramatic sound. It does the job.

Beach Blanket Bingo was the fifth film in American International Pictures’ beach party series, following Beach Party, Muscle Beach Party, Bikini Beach, and Pajama Party. Most of the films starred Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello as relatively chaste teenaged sweethearts (although they were both in their mid-twenties by then) and featured a recurring cast of characters, including comic relief pal Bonehead/Deadhead/Goo Goo (Jody McCrea), straight-laced best friend Steve (John Ashley), and comic foil biker Eric Von Zipper (Harvey Lembeck). There were tons of slightly over-the-hill or not-quite-yet-big-name guest stars, including Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, Don Rickles, Mickey Rooney, Morey Amsterdam, and the legendary Buster Keaton. The films also featured a ton of groovy music for hip young people, typically original knock-offs by Hemrick and Styner performed by popular artists slumming for an easy paycheck, including Dick Dale, Lesley Gore, Nancy Sinatra, the Hondells, the Bobby Fuller Four, the Supremes, James Brown, Stevie Wonder, and the wonderful Donna Loren.

Donna Loren was a fairly famous face back then, and a cute, one, too. She rose to fame starting in 1963 as the girl in the Dr. Pepper commercials, appeared in several of American International’s beach movies, and was a featured vocalist on the Shindig TV program. Since she really didn’t have any hit singles of her own, the Shindig gig found her covering songs from a lot of other artists. She appeared on a lot of TV shows in the ’60s, including a notable shot as Susie the cheerleader in two episodes of the Batman TV show in 1966, “The Joker Goes to School”/”He Meets His Match, the Deadly Ghoul,” where she worked for the Joker and got to kiss Robin (played by Burt Ward, of course).

Ms. Loren left show business in 1968 to raise a family. She married and had three children with famed music producer Lenny Waronker. For a little while she designed her own line of tropical clothing and had three boutiques in Hawaii, where she had moved after divorcing Mr. Waronker in the mid-80s. She began performing and recording again later in the ’80s and is still doing so today, playing off her swinging sixties success. In 2009 she re-recorded “It Only Hurts When I Cry,” her signature song, in a slower, sultrier, acoustic version. It’s pretty good, actually. She’s currently 76 years old, still cute as a button, and recently moved back to California to be with her grandchildren. Good for her.