Country Music Holiday on AllMovie

Though produced on a shoestring, Country Music Holiday has a lot more going for it than most popular-music melanges of the 1950s. Ferlin Husky stars as Verne Brand, a talented hillbilly warbler who is discovered by fast-talking Sonny Moon (Jesse White). Verne's rise to the top of country-western fame is compromised by the machinations of a predatory Hungarian lass (Zsa Zsa Gabor) who owns 50 percent of the boy's contract. The film boasts some of the strangest casting of any film of its era: Rocky Graziano, for example, costars as a savvy record-company executive, while Patty Duke is seen as Ferlin Husky's kid sister! In addition to Husky, Country Music Holiday offers such rural favorites as June Carter, The Jordanaires, Drifting Johnny Miller, Lonzo & Oscar, the La Dell Sisters and Bernie Nee. In comparison, the strip-joint comedy team of Al Fisher and Lou Marks seems as sophisticated and urbane as Noel Coward.