Four decades later city still celebrating with live Cafferty concert on July 4th
SOMERS POINT — A crew from PBS NJ is producing a documentary about Somers Point’s role in the 1983 cult classic “Eddie and the Cruisers,” and will be visiting the city twice to collect footage.
City Council President Janice Johnston announced last month that Steve Rogers, executive producer of “Here’s the Story,” reached out to the Somers Point Beach Committee and is making arrangements to tell the story of the city’s part in the film and highlight its unique musical history.
The 1983 film, directed by Martin Davidson, starring Tom Berenger, Michael Pare as Eddie Wilson and Joe Pantoliano and featuring a soundtrack by John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band, was shot partially at Tony Mart’s, as well as in other parts of Somers Point.
It’s about rock star Eddie Wilson, whose car plunged off a bridge — the old Route 52 causeway to Ocean City — in 1964 and was never seen again. Two decades later, a renewed interest in the band leads a reporter to question what if Wilson were still alive.
“It really drew a lot of attention to Somers Point,” city historian Kirk Gerety said of the film.
The Tony Mart Cafe, better known as Tony Mart’s, was a legendary rock ’n’ roll club at the shore for almost 40 years.
According to tonymart.com, the venue “was a window into the evolutionary popular music from late swing through the golden years of rock ’n’ roll in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, and on to the new wave sounds of the early 1980s.”
The movie “immortalized Tony Mart’s as a rock ’n’ roll institution,” according to the site.
Rogers, a 1993 graduate of Stockton University who grew up in the Long Beach Island area, said the crew would be in town June 21, when it will shoot 5-minute segments with anyone who wants to talk about their memories. The location has not yet been determined but Rogers said it would be announced at Driving Jersey on Facebook.
The crew plans to return July 4 for Cafferty’s performance during the Somers Point Beach Concert Series at William Morrow Beach on Bay Avenue.
“This will be another great way to celebrate Somers Point on the beach Fourth of July and let the world know what a great town we live in,” Johnston said. “It is very gratifying and exciting. I want all of our residents to know how important it is for all of us that a very highly respected news source, PBS, wants to come and document to the world the story of the ‘Eddie and the Cruisers’ legacy and our proud town.”
Rogers, who was coming of age when the movie was released, said it had a direct effect on his career.
“So many episodes that we do are driven by interests that I have,” he said, noting that “we didn’t have all of these endless streaming possibilities and we were mainly watching regular television, HBO and MTV.”
He said MTV in particular had a dramatic effect on culture.
“It was part of what it was to be a kid in the early to mid-’80s. It was so driven by music,” he said.
While the film was somewhat of a box office bust, Rogers said HBO, which was relatively new at the time, broadcast the film multiple times, leading to its cult classic status.
“That summer was dominated by Eddie Wilson and his Cruisers,” Rogers said. “You couldn’t turn on TV and not see ‘Eddie and the Cruisers.’”
He said that in turn led to the popularity of the soundtrack.
Inspiration for
the documentary
“Realizing it was 40 years ago that ‘Eddie and the Cruisers’ came into our lives and affected us that summer, I started looking back on that movie, realizing it was a homespun, locally made film,” Rogers said. “That added to why it was so important to me and my friends. It’s not frequent that we have a movie that we love that’s also about a place that we come from.”
He said he decided to take a look back and visit Somers Point, then “the stars aligned because John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band are playing on July Fourth.”
“I don’t know if it gets more Jersey than that,” Rogers said. “Cafferty playing a soundtrack from a movie shot in Somers Point on the Fourth of July in Somers Point — that’s about as Jersey Americana as it gets.”
He said he is hoping to get some actors from the film, including Pare, who he said told him he has not been back in New Jersey since the filming.
“It’s an amazing thought that ‘Eddie’ could be coming back to New Jersey for this opportunity to take a stroll down Memory Lane,” Rogers said, noting he hopes Pare can join Cafferty on stage.
He said episodes of “Here’s the Story” usually are about 30 minutes long but he anticipates this one being about twice that length. He said Carmen Marotta, owner of Tony Marts Presents and son of the venue’s owner, has been “a driving force behind this.”
“If I show any signs of slacking off, he calls me and gets me back on track,” Rogers said.
Tony Mart’s,
Bayshores and Beermuda Triangle
Gerety said the 1980s were certainly a different time in Somers Point.
“Me and my buddies were Tony Mart’s hangouts,” he said. “I was 26 years old, doing construction in Atlantic City on casinos, and when we would have a union meeting, we would leave and come to Tony Mart’s on weeknights.”
He said the weekends were even better.
“We were always there Friday and Saturday nights. You would start at Gregory’s or Charlie’s but you would always end up at Tony Mart’s by 10 p.m.”
He said during filming, the crew would pick people from the crowd to serve as extras but would not start shooting until the bar closed at 2 a.m.
He said there would be large crowds every night and that the actors “were basically nobodies” at the time. Years later, when they saw Berenger in “Platoon,” “it was like, ‘We saw that guy.’ That was pretty neat,” Gerety said.
Noting his father owned the former bowling alley on MacArthur Boulevard, he said they would go from there to a bar next door called Jiminy Crickets, then to DiOrio’s, the Med, the Jolly Roger and Crab Trap, then down to “the strip,” which included Tony Mart’s and Bayshores, then to the “Beermuda Triangle” of The Anchorage, Gregory’s and Charlie’s.
“Somers Point was like a rock and roll hub,” he said. “It was a pretty neat time. We heard some great music.”
Describing what was a common occurrence for many, Gerety said crowds would move from place to place throughout the evening and into the next morning.
“Friday night you were out until 9 a.m. Saturday. It was an everyday thing in the summer and you didn’t think anything of it,” he said.
But that all seemed to come to an abrupt close. Calling it “the end of an era for rock ’n’ roll in Somers Point,” Gerety said “it was kind of a sad letdown after the filming wrapped up and Tony Mart’s closed just a couple of weeks later.”
He said many of the venues in Somers Point, Margate and Wildwood that had hosted live bands started evolving into family restaurants, focusing on food and drink instead of entertainment.
Partially because of the casinos taking the entertainers, the move also was fueled by the crackdown on drunken driving, he said.
“I think everybody just started to be a little more responsible,” he said.
In addition to Tony Mart’s, other local spots that made the cut include Dolfin Dock (gone), the Clam Bar, Dick’s Dock (gone), the parking lot where Bayshores was being demolished and, in the final scene, the former causeway where Eddie drove off in his ’57 Chevy and was never seen again.
“The funny part about that is, Eddie is supposed to be leaving town but that bridge takes you to Ocean City. He’s not going anywhere,” Gerety said.
– By CRAIG D. SCHENCK/Sentinel staff