Sixteen years later Fort Lauderdale is still the scene of vacationing students and still where the boys art. 'See what life down here can do to you?' said De La Vergne. The movie starred an ingenue named Paula Prentiss in her film debut, as well as George Hamilton, Jim Hutton, Yvette Mimieux and Dolores Hart, who later abandoned her Hollywood career for a Connecticut nunnery. 'Those were the good old days,' sighed Ed De La Vergne, a resident of Fort Lauderdale for 20 years and now public information officer for the police department. The beach-blanket movie was based on Glendon Swarthout's lurid novel about college kids in Fort Lauderdale, portraying the warm and witty side of spring vacation - throwing hammerhead sharks into hotel swimming pools, blanket-tossing, building 40-foot high pyramids of empty beer cans on the beach and checking in and out of no-tell motels with handsome Ivy Leaguers. ' sang Connie Francis in the 1961 sun 'n' fun film of the same name.
'Where the boys are, someone waits for me.
