A fond look back at The King’s film career

Posted by Mark Chapman on August 18th, 2010 at 6:28 pm

Jenna Lons­dale

By Jenna Lonsdale

Film & TV

It’s hard to believe that it has been 33 years since Elvis left the build­ing on Aug. 16, 1977.

Think­ing about it brought back mem­o­ries of how I was intro­duced to The King by watch­ing his films with my dad when I was very lit­tle. I’ve been an admirer ever since.

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Nat­u­rally, I wanted to know more about The King’s film career. He made 31 fea­ture films in 13 years from 1956to 1969, the major­ity of them being fluffy ’60’s come­dies that I and the rest of his fans loved but that weren’t always crit­i­cal dar­lings. Crit­ics often com­plained about the thin plots, unre­mark­able songs and pre­dictable scripts. While not Oscar-worthy mas­ter­pieces, they’re fun movies and that’s all that matters.

Basi­cally, the “Elvis for­mula” can be summed up like this: Elvis has an inter­est­ing job, whether it be a deep-sea diver, race car dri­ver or — prob­a­bly the sil­li­est — a rodeo cow­boy who moon­lights as a beauty spa handy­man. He meets a girl or two, sings a few songs and gets into some mis­un­der­stand­ings along the way. And he wins the girl.

One of the major assets of Elvis’s films beside the man him­self was the impres­sive sup­port­ing cast that shared the screen with him over the years. Future TV stars includ­ing Bar­bra Eden (“I Dream of Jean­nie”) and Yvonne Craig (“Bat­man”) were among his co-stars, as well as vet­er­ans like char­ac­ter actor William Demarest, most famous for his role as Uncle Char­lie in “My Three Sons” and Pre­ston Sturges’ screw­balls such as “The Lady Eve” and “Sullivan’s Trav­els.” Bar­bara Stan­wyck appeared in “Roustabout” as a car­ni­val employer who hires Elvis.

“Love Me Ten­der” marked some firsts and lasts for Elvis. Aside from being his film debut, it would be the only time he didn’t receive top billing. This was also the first and only time in his career where his char­ac­ter wasn’t writ­ten specif­i­cally for him (Robert Wag­ner was considered).

Elvis’s first and only death scene under­stand­ably caused quite a stir with the fans when the news that their idol was to be killed was leaked before the film’s release. An alter­na­tive end­ing was shot where he sur­vives, but the pro­duc­ers decided to use the orig­i­nal, adding  an image of The King singing the title tune over the credits.

In 1957 came “Lov­ing You,” Elvis’s sec­ond film and his first one in color. Of all his films, this one is the best exam­ple of art imi­tat­ing life. Deke Rivers is a truck dri­ver with a nat­ural tal­ent for singing, which gets the atten­tion of an agent named Glenda. Deke soon becomes a sen­sa­tion, while learn­ing first-hand that fame comes at a price. Gladys and Ver­non Pres­ley appear as extras.

Elvis got poor reviews for his per­for­mance in “Love Me Ten­der,” but that all changed with the two films that are widely con­sid­ered his best: “Jail­house Rock” in 1957 and “King Cre­ole” in 1958. The idea of an ex-convict being the hero of “Jail­house Rock” was pretty dar­ing for its time, but the film was a huge suc­cess any­way. The film’s most famous moment is the show-stopping title num­ber, which is often cited as the best of all his movies.

“King Cre­ole” was Elvis’s last black and white film and also his last pre-Army movie. Based on the novel “A Stone for Danny Fisher” and The King’s per­sonal favorite of all his films, the story cen­ters around a col­lege dropout named Danny who becomes torn between a gangster’s moll named Ron­nie (Car­olyn Jones) and good girl Nel­lie (Dolores Hart, who also appeared in “Lov­ing You”.)

“G.I. Blues” cap­i­tal­ized in 1960 on The King’s stint in the Army and intro­duced to the world a whole new Elvis. The rebel­lious screen per­sona was trans­formed into a whole­some, more mature image.

“G.I.” Blues” may have been the first musi­cal com­edy for Elvis, but it was his most suc­cess­ful film, “Blue Hawaii” a year later, that really set the tone for the rest of his film career: Pretty girls, exotic loca­tions, aver­age and above-average songs. Angela Lans­bury, who was only 10 years older than Elvis, adds won­der­ful sup­port as his mother.

By 1963’s “It Hap­pened at the World’s Fair,” Elvis was mak­ing two to three pic­tures a year. This is one of my favorites and was a decent hit with the crit­ics. Elvis is Mike Edwards, a crop­dust­ing pilot who, due to his partner’s gam­bling debts, gets his plane con­fis­cated and has to earn extra money. Oppor­tu­nity knocks at the Seat­tle World’s Fair, and, among other things, Mike is put in charge of a young girl named Sue-Lin, (played engag­ingly by Vicky Tiu in her only film appear­ance). Kurt Rus­sell, who would later por­tray The King in a TV biopic, makes his film debut here. He’s basi­cally cred­ited as “Boy who kicks Elvis in the Shins.”

“Viva Las Vegas,” released in 1964, is con­sid­ered to be Elvis’s best musi­cal com­edy. The King’s remark­able chem­istry with Ann-Margret is never more evi­dent than dur­ing their rous­ing ren­di­tion of Ray Charles’ “What I’d Say.”

And then there’s my all-time favorite, my very first Elvis movie, 1965’s “Girl Happy.” Chicago night­club singer Rusty Wells must chap­er­one his mob boss’s daugh­ter Valerie (played by Shel­ley Fabares, Elvis’s favorite and most fre­quent co-star) dur­ing spring break vaca­tion in Fort Laud­erdale. One of my dad’s favorites, Harold J. Stone, steals every scene he’s in as Valerie’s over­pro­tec­tive father.

Colonel Tom Parker was as much respon­si­ble for Elvis’s for­mu­laic films as he was for The King’s suc­cess in gen­eral. He didn’t read the scripts for most of the films; all he cared about was the money. The colonel is just as fas­ci­nat­ing as Elvis, and, at some points, even more so. Dutch-born, Parker never got U.S. cit­i­zen­ship and wasn’t even a real colonel. Parker pretty much had com­plete con­trol over the singer’s career, going as far to call him “his boy.”

There’s no doubt that Elvis owed a lot to Parker, but the noto­ri­ously greedy man­ager forced him to turn down sev­eral plum movie roles. Among them were Tony in “West Side Story,” Paul Newman’s role in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and, believe it or not, the Jon Voight part in “Mid­night Cow­boy” (that would not have worked). Bar­bara Streisand famously wanted him for the 1976 remake of “A Star is Born,” but it was not to be.

Despite this fas­ci­nat­ing case of “what could have been,” Elvis’s films con­tinue to enter­tain gen­er­a­tions of fans.

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