General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

That'll Be the Day

That'll Be the Day is a 1973 British musical drama directed by Claude Whatham, written by Ray Connolly, and starring David Essex as Jim MacLaine, a restless 1950s youth who abandons his studies and drifts through dead-end jobs before deciding to become a rock 'n' roll star. It takes its title from the 1957 Buddy Holly song, features Ringo Starr, Keith Moon, and Billy Fury among its cast, and was followed by the sequel Stardust (1974).¹

Key fact	Detail
Film	1973, United Kingdom, 91 minutes; directed by Claude Whatham, written by Ray Connolly, produced by David Puttnam and Sandy Lieberson¹
Lead cast	David Essex (Jim MacLaine), Ringo Starr (Mike), Rosemary Leach (Mrs. MacLaine), James Booth (Mr. MacLaine), Billy Fury (Stormy Tempest), Keith Moon (J.D. Clover)²
Production	Seven-week shooting schedule on the Isle of Wight beginning October 1972; budget a modest £400,000³^•⁴
Recognition	Nominated for two BAFTA Awards⁵
Namesake song	"That'll Be the Day," written by Buddy Holly and Jerry Allison, released May 1957 by The Crickets, certified Gold by the RIAA⁶
Sequel	Stardust (1974), directed by Michael Apted, chronicling Jim MacLaine's rise and fall as a rock star⁷
Later namesake	A UK touring rock 'n' roll variety show of the same name, described as the UK's longest-running touring theater show, reached its 40th anniversary in 2026⁸

Spoilers

Story: The film

Story. Jim MacLaine is raised by his single mother after his father's abrupt departure. Academically bright, he throws his schoolbooks off a bridge on the day he should be sitting his A-levels, spurning university for a series of dead-end jobs. He falls in with Mike (Ringo Starr), a tough Liverpool-born friend who teaches him "the ways of the world," and the two work fairgrounds and a holiday camp before Jim pursues his ambition of rock stardom.³^•⁹ The film is set in the late 1950s, the period just before the Beatles, and its band within the story is Stormy Tempest & The Typhoons, with Billy Fury as Stormy and Keith Moon as the group's drummer.³

The film

Origins. The screenplay grew out of a spring 1972 conversation between Ray Connolly, then a London Evening Standard journalist who wrote interviews with rock stars, and producer David Puttnam, who had recently gone into partnership with Sandy Lieberson. Puttnam suggested the idea came from a Harry Nilsson album track, "1941," about a boy whose father abandons the family and who later leaves his own wife and son; Puttnam proposed "what if our boy runs off to join a fair?" Connolly, who had never written a screenplay before, learned the form while drafting the script. The two wanted to capture their own teenage years in the 1950s through the music of their youth, about what they called "the day before yesterday," rather than make a wartime picture or a kitchen-sink drama.¹⁰

Casting and production. David Essex, then starring as Jesus in the West End musical Godspell, was given special leave to take the lead, his first film role.³^•⁷ Shooting began in October 1972 on a seven-week schedule on the Isle of Wight, with locations including Pontin's Little Canada Holiday Camp at Wootton, Sandown High School, Shanklin Pier, and Southsea's Clarence Pier funfair; filming ran from October 16 to December 14, 1972.³^•¹¹ The supporting cast drew on well-known British musicians, including Fury, Moon, and (in the sequel) Marty Wilde, Dave Edmunds, and Adam Faith.⁷

Release and reception. The film was given a general release in the UK at Easter 1973 (IMDb lists May 13, 1973), and in the United States it opened on October 29, 1973, distributed by the newly formed Mayfair Film Group, where it broke house records at the Beverly Cannon Theatre in Los Angeles.¹²^•⁵^•¹³ It received two BAFTA nominations.⁵ A contemporary account in the Story of Pop series judged that Starr, playing essentially a version of himself, was "easily the most authentic thing in the film."¹² Retrospective assessment has been divided: the film holds a 56% Tomatometer on Rotten Tomatoes from two critic reviews, with over 1,000 audience ratings, and one critic wrote that it "perfectly captures the England that gave rise to" the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, The Who, and Eric Clapton, while finding the central character unsympathetic.⁹ The film's commercial success established David Puttnam as a producer and made Essex a pop star.¹⁴

Sequel. Connolly and Essex returned in Stardust (1974), directed by Michael Apted, which follows Jim MacLaine's rise and fall as a rock star; Larry Hagman played the American manager, a role rewritten from a New York Italian into a Texan during production.⁷^•¹⁰

The song

The film borrows its title from "That'll Be the Day," written by Buddy Holly and Jerry Allison and released in May 1957 as a single by The Crickets, from the album The "Chirping" Crickets, with Norman Petty given a co-writing credit though he was involved in production rather than composition. It was recorded on February 25, 1957, at Norman Petty Recording Studio in Clovis, New Mexico, runs 2:16, and was certified Gold by the RIAA.⁶ According to an account in Mix, the song was written in the spring of 1956 in Allison's bedroom after Holly and Allison saw the John Wayne film The Searchers, in which Wayne's character repeats the phrase several times.¹⁵ The song also has a Beatles connection: it was the first song ever recorded by the Quarrymen, the skiffle group that became the Beatles, albeit only as a demonstration disc.⁶ Linda Ronstadt's later cover version won a Grammy and refreshed the song's mass popularity in the mid-1970s, around the time the film was in release.¹⁶

The stage show

A separate That'll Be The Day is a British touring rock 'n' roll variety show created by Trevor Payne and Prestige Productions, combining music, impersonations, and comedy across hits from the 1950s through the 1980s. It has been described as the UK's longest-running touring theater show, marked its 40th anniversary with a 2026 performance at the London Palladium, and has raised over £1 million for charities including Childline, Make A Wish, and Help for Heroes through post-show collections.⁸^•¹⁷

Legacy

The film was made only about fifteen years after the era it depicts, and it is frequently read as a portrait of the Britain that produced the British Invasion: one critic called it a perfect capture of the England that gave rise to the Beatles, the Stones, and The Who.¹⁸^•⁹ Its title song carried its own intertextual weight by 1973, having already been quoted in the refrain of Don McLean's "American Pie" and later refreshed by Ronstadt's Grammy-winning cover.¹⁶ The film has been released on home video in the Vintage Classics line, listed at 87 minutes on the current DVD against the BFI's cataloged 91 minutes.¹⁹^•¹⁸

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Musical and music films (individual works) › Musical films of the 1970s and 1980s

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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