Bye Bye Birdie grossed $233,825 in its opening week at
Radio City Music Hall in New York, a house record at that time. It was the
eighth-highest-grossing film of 1963, earning $13.1 million domestically, of which distributor
Columbia Pictures received $6.2 million in rentals.
Contemporary reviews Wanda Hale of the
New York Daily News gave the comedy a full four-star rating and said it "bubbles over with the vitality of youth and the fun of farce as it creates a teenage furor over a hip-twisting, leering rock 'n' roll male singer." Michael P. Feiner of the
Montreal Star called it "a gay musical—sometimes farcical, sometimes mildly satirical, sometimes merely entertaining, but most of the time fun to watch." A critic for the
Buffalo Evening News called it a "hilarious song-and-dance show" that "exaggerates youth's exuberance and carries its infectious exhilaration to the audience." Jay Carmody of
The Evening Star in Washington said that "the picture, glowing with color and crazy camera tricks, flatters its natural audience no end. It presents the girls as beautiful, well, mostly, the boys as abounding in animal vitality, and both sexes as given to the kinds of enthusiasm that may one day really make this the best of all possible worlds. As for the elders among the performers, they come off as no more nor less Insufferable than teen-agers know them to be." He added that "the performers, and why not, have been astutely chosen by Mr. Sidney, starting with Ann-Margret (if I can leave out that second "a” in Margret, Mr. Printer, you can do it on a linotype) as the heroine. She's just fine and so are Janet Leigh and Dick Van Dyke, of the original cast, as the managers of Conrad Birdie's adieu party. Conrad himself is played by Jesse Pearson, a mad broth of a subhuman boy in a spaceman costume which he wears with all the nonworldly distinction anyone could ask." Ann Pacey of the London
Daily Herald was critical of Ann-Margret's performance in the film, but nonetheless called it "an entertaining and undemanding send-up of the kind of girlish lunacy that used to surround
Elvis Presley and, in [the UK] at least, has now moved on to
those four young men with the hair". Dick Richards of the
Daily Mirror called it "a brash, colourful, good-humoured jest at the expense of the wild worship pop fans lavish on their favourites." A critic for
The Times, also in London, was critical of the heavy plotting, which he felt "relegated" the songs "from the raison d'être of the film to something very like awkward interruptions, especially since except for 'A Lot of Living to Do' they are staged stodgily and without flair". However, he added that "there is no point in being too unkind to the film. It does contain good things, and it is generally diverting. It is even, in its picture of the popular idol (played to produce the proper ambiguity of attraction and repulsion by Jesse Pearson) and his screaming public, perhaps not too far off the mark. The only thing is that it is just good enough to make us think how much better it should have been." The film received generally mixed-to-positive reviews in the state of Ohio itself. Brainard Platt of the
Dayton Journal-Herald said it was "an excellent follow-up to the hit stage play of the same name" and a "real fun show for the whole family". E.B. Radcliffe of
The Cincinnati Enquirer said the film "should be on your list of planned holiday fun" and called it a "good farce". Dale Stevens of
The Cincinnati Post criticized the film for lacking the satirical edge of the musical, but said "this is unquestionably among the smash films of the year" and "should be the teenage sensation of the century". W. Ward Marsh of the Cleveland
Plain Dealer wrote that "on occasion there is too much dredged up to stimulate laughter, but for the most part the film is eminently successful. Since we’ve not had a big screen musical for some time,
Bye Bye Birdie should keep the
Allen's audiences—and big ones, too—laughing." Tony Mastroianni of
The Cleveland Press called it "another example of Hollywood taking a fair stage show, giving it the full treatment, and making something extra special out of it." A more mixed review of the film was offered by David Cobb of the
Toronto Daily Star, who liked Ann-Margret's and Leigh's performances, its humor and the musical numbers; as for everything else, he said "it is professionally, smoothly accomplished [but not] very engaging or dramatically interesting". Richard Roud of
The Guardian said, "I wonder if anyone will remember any scenes from
Bye Bye Birdie (
Odeon, Marble Arch) in 20 years. I doubt it. Birdie is no
On the Town, no
Singing in the Rain, no
Funny Face. But in a year as barren of American musicals as 1963 (and 1962 for that matter) it looks pretty good [...] and it makes quite a pleasant evening out."
Bosley Crowther of
The New York Times praised several of the musical numbers but wrote that "unfortunately, Mr. Sidney and his scriptwriter, Irving Brecher, have allowed the essence of this spirited musical comedy of Michael Stewart to get away from them. Not only do they lose Conrad Birdie in the mazes of their rearranged plot, but they lose the essential idea of satire and the pace and sparkle of the show." Les Wedman of the
Vancouver Sun was more negative in his remarks, saying that the musical "as served up In the movie version, is a bit of a turkey, well-dressed but flavored with chestnuts and overdone to the point where it fell apart to reveal a pretty flimsy skeleton." Dickson Terry of the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch said it "starts out to be a hilarious satire on the Elvis-type rock and roll singers and their swooning teen-age audiences but somewhere along the way it loses its bearings and turns into just another musical." Stanley Eichelbaum of the
San Francisco Examiner wrote that "producer Fred Kohlmar has clumsily transformed 'Bye Bye Birdie' from a clever musical satire on American teenagers into a comic-strip movie for adolescents. It's true that certain vestiges of the stage work's devastating humor and vitality have crept Into the film at the
Fox Warfield and Mission Drive-In. But on the whole, director George Sidney and screenwriter Irving Brecher have bludgeoned the original into semiconsciousness. Happily, no one tried too hard to spoil the bouncy score by Charles Strouse and Lee Adams. The musical numbers are the best part of the film and
Onna White's choreography, which brightens most of the songs, is fresh and attractively original. And since the cast is generally young and eager—with Ann-Margret doing a surprisingly competent job as a nimble Ohio 15-year-old—the movie isn't exactly a total loss. But what it misses most is
Gower Champion's sleek, galvanic direction, which kept the stage musical moving like a fine Swiss watch."
21st century reviews According to
Filmink Ann-Margret "stole the show".
Accolades ==In popular culture==