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The Wanderers - Killer Teens, Rebel Teens, Gang Teens and the evolution of the last Great Greaser Featureby Steve Bergsman What in the cultural zeitgeist causes a movie to be made? Is it current affairs, a popular event or trend, a best-selling book, a genre of filmmaking or the will of a Hollywood director? In the case of the vastly entertaining cult movie, THE WANDERERS, from 1979, the answer would be all above.
The setting of the movie is the Bronx, circa early in the 1960s, but the ambience is the unresolved 1950s when teen gangs frightened American urban dwellers and teenage behavior distressed parents everywhere. The popular singer Dion grew up in the Bronx during the 1950s and in 1961 he climbed the record charts with one of his biggest hits, THE WANDERER. The song struck a nerve in someone else who also grew up in 1950s Bronx, author Richard Price.
He ended up writing a book called THE WANDERERS, which incorporated Dion's song into the storyline. Years later, director Philip Kaufman, picked up the book on recommendation from his son and decided to turn it into a movie. Films about gangs and juvenile delinquency had been popular with teens since the early 1950s with The Wild One and Blackboard Jungle. By the 1970s, soon to be middle-age Americans, became wildly nostalgic for the 1950s, resulting a slew of Broadway plays, television shows and movies that mixed greasers, early rock 'n' roll and naïve sexual fumblings into a cultural tsunami.
This book is about the times, the song, the book, the director, the genre of teen-gang films and, most definitely, the last great "greaser feature, " THE WANDERERS. As a journalist, Steve Bergsman has contributed to more than one hundred magazines, newspapers and wire services over the past four decades. As an author, he has written more than a dozen books. His most recent book was EARTH ANGELS: THE SHORT LIVES AND CONTROVERSIAL DEATHS OF THREE R&B PIONEERS.