Trivia / Go, Johnny, Go!

• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The last seen of Alan Freed in the flashback about Johnny's story is him being taken away by police because he took the blame for Johnny breaking the jewelry store window. Freed's career as a disc jockey ended a few months after the release of the film when it was revealed that he had accepted payments from record companies to play specific records, for which he pled guilty for bribery, which came to be known as the "Payola scandal".^note That and that he had taken songwriting co-credits in certain songs, which entitled him to receive part of a song's royalties, which he could help increase by heavily promoting the record on his own program.
  • Likewise, in the same scene, Freed pretends to be drunk so he could claim he tossed the brick for fun. He died in 1965 from cirrhosis brought on by alcoholism.
  • This one is more like soul-crushingly tragic in hindsight. By the time this movie was released, Ritchie Valens had already been dead for several months, “Go Johnny Go!” was his first and only film role. The last time we see Ritchie, he is smiling and playing the song “Ooh My Head”, which sounds like a carefree rock and roll number...until you remember he died in a plane crash not long after filming that scene, and the girls covering their heads during the chorus look an awful lot like someone bracing themselves for impact, at which point this veers very close to Fridge Horror as well.

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