Pat Boone and Shirley Jones Find April Love

Pat Boone.Pat Boone as a bad boy? Well, he doesn't really play a bad boy in April Love (1957), but his character Nick is sentenced to probation after being arrested for joyriding in Chicago. To keep him out of trouble, his mother sends Nick to his uncle's rural Kentucky farm. Aunt Henrietta welcomes him, but Uncle Jed (Arthur O'Connell) isn't so sure about the big city troublemaker. Nick feels like a fish out of water until he meets a pretty neighbor named Liz (Shirley Jones) and gets involved with harness racing.This remake of Home in Indiana (1944) was clearly designed to showcase Pat Boone, who was already a popular singer. His recording of "April Love" would turn out to be one of his biggest hits. The song also earned its writers, Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webster, an Oscar nomination for Best Song (it lost to "All the Way" from The Joker Is Wild). Boone's co-star Shirley Jones, despite starring in the earlier Oklahoma! (1955) and Carousel (1956), doesn't even get a solo number…