Catalina Caper

Catalina Caper, also known as Never Steal Anything Wet, is a 1967 comedy musical mystery film starring Tommy Kirk. It blends the beach party format with a standard crime-caper comedy. It was shot on and around Santa Catalina Island, California.

An ancient Chinese scroll is stolen from a museum in Los Angeles. The thief and teenager Don Pringle arrive on Catalina Island on the same boat. About half of the film involves swimsuit-clad adolescents dancing on yachts in various montages set to the singing of Little Richard, Carol Connors and The Cascades. When they are not dancing, Pringle and his friends investigate the scroll's theft and discover that the parents of one of the boys are responsible. They also attempt to woo a mysteriously depressed young woman, Katrina Corelli, from her vaguely threatening fiancé Angelo. After wrestling the scroll away from Angelo and his cohorts, bent on more dangerous results (in an underwater scuba-diving action scene), the boys secretly return the scroll to the museum to the relief of the repentant parents.

Both Never Steal Anything Wet and Scuba Party were working titles, before Catalina Caper was chosen.[1]

Produced by Executive Pictures Corporation, formed by Bond Blackman and Jack Barlett, it started filming in September 1965, on Catalina Island.[2][3] Tommy Kirk was signed to a four-picture contract, of which this was to be the first. Kirk was announced for Scuba Party in August 1965,[4] but he did not wind up making any of the other films.[5]

Kirk appeared in four other films in the beach party genre: Village of the Giants (1965); two AIP features, Pajama Party (1965) and The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966); and It's a Bikini World (1967).[6] Sue Casey was seen earlier as one of the female leads in another beach party film, 1965's The Beach Girls and the Monster.

Ted V. Mikels recalls "I loved shooting that... Little Richard did whatever I suggested. I didn’t direct him though. He was very pleasant to work with. He was just another performer.” [7]

Catalina Caper composer Jerry Long also wrote the music for another beach party film, Wild Wild Winter. The two films are his only onscreen credits. Long also wrote two songs for the film, "Never Steal Anything Wet," heard over the opening/closing credits and performed by Mary Wells; and "Scuba Party," performed onscreen by Little Richard, who is also credited as a co-writer on the song.

The Cascades perform "There's a New World Just Opening For Me," written by Ray Davies and originally recorded by The Kinks, and Carol Connors performs "Book of Love," which was written by Connors and Roger Christian.