Posted By Dan Greenfield on Jan 8, 2025 | 7 comments

VIVA THE KING — born 90 YEARS AGO, on Jan. 8, 1935!

By PETER BOSCH

Well, it’s one for the money, two for the show, three to get ready…now go, cat, go!

I can’t think of a better way to celebrate the 90th birthday of Elvis Presley (born January 8, 1935) than to feature 13 of my favorite Elvis movies and a video clip of my favorite song from each. (Confession: The songs made the decision for the 13 films I chose.)

So…here goes, cat… in chronological order:

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1. Love Me Tender (20th Century-Fox, 1956). Elvis isn’t the star of his first film. He plays Clint Reno, the youngest of four brothers, with the elder three returning after the Civil War, including Vance (Richard Egan, the star of the picture). Vance comes home hoping to marry Cathy (Debra Paget), his longtime sweetheart, only to discover she married Clint when she fell in love with him after she heard an erroneous report that Vance was killed in action. And so the tensions began.

Elvis sang four songs, including two in front of 1800s teenage girls who swooned at the wild gyrations of his hips. However, they were throwaway songs. The best was the title song:

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2. Jailhouse Rock (MGM, 1957). Vince Everett is possibly one of the most unsympathetic characters Elvis ever played on screen. He is hard on everybody because he feels life is hard on him. When he accidentally kills a man in a barroom fight, he is imprisoned. There, his cellmate is Hunk Houghton, a washed-up country singer, who takes advantage of Vince by recognizing his popularity after a TV broadcast from prison. Hunk tricks Vince into signing a contract, promising 50 percent of his future earnings in return for the same percentage from Vince. Vince does become a star and grows more arrogant until he has a comeuppance from Hunk.

As with many Elvis movies, one song is destined to become a popular standard. For Jailhouse Rock, it is the title tune:

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3. King Creole (Paramount, 1958). Elvis plays Danny Fisher, a troubled young man in New Orleans. From being kicked out of school the day before graduation, to being a busboy in a sleazy nightclub, to taking part in a gang robbery, it’s hard every day for Danny, and even when he tries to break free, he’s dragged back in. But ultimately, it’s a story of redemption, albeit with a lot of violence getting there. Think of it as “Rebel with a Guitar.”

King Creole stands as the most dramatic of all of Elvis’ films. Director Michael Curtiz brought his many years of making great motion pictures (including Casablanca, Yankee Doodle Dandy, and The Sea Hawk) to tell the story with incredible impact. Russell Harlan’s atmospheric black-and-white cinematography was amazing to behold. And the cast – which had Walter Matthau, Carolyn Jones, Vic Morrow, and Dolores Hart – gave performances that were superb… and the best of these was Elvis himself. He proved he was an actor, a real actor. Song pick — Trouble:

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4. Blue Hawaii (Paramount, 1961). In the first of Elvis’ three pictures set in Hawaii (plus one TV special), he plays Chad Gates, the son of a wealthy pineapple company owner and his wife (Angela Lansbury). He has returned from the Army (like Elvis did) and wants to make his own way in life. He turns down an executive position with his father’s factory and goes to work as a tour guide with his girlfriend, Maile (Joan Blackman). His first assignment is to show a schoolteacher around the islands, along with the four teenage girls she is chaperoning. And since Elvis movies require there be two attractive women for him to go for – and the current flame to get jealous about – the teacher (Nancy Walters) turns out to be not old but young and lovely.

Blue Hawaii is a bit of a silly movie, without any substance, except for a song that would become an Elvis classic: Can’t Help Falling in Love. Joan Blackman would go on to co-star in his Kid Galahad (1962). Also, look for Pamela Austin as one of the students the teacher has brought along. She would later star with Elvis in Kissin’ Cousins.

As a sidenote, in addition to the films and TV special, Elvis did a concert in 1961 in Hawaii to help raise funds to complete the USS Arizona Memorial. The concert was not broadcast, but Elvis and the USS Arizona, a 2021 TV documentary, told the story about the event.

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5. Girls! Girls! Girls! (Paramount, 1962). Another film set in Hawaii, with Elvis as Ross Carpenter, who wants to buy the boat (Ross and his father built it) he’s the charter fishing skipper on. He takes a nighttime job in a club to help raise the money but complicating matters is his old flame (Stella Stevens) who works there and his new girlfriend (Laurel Goodwin) who resents it.

There are a lot of songs in the film but the real standout was not intended for the movie. Return to Sender was being included as an extra song on the Girls! Girls! Girls! album, which Elvis recorded in March 1962. He liked it and wanted it added to the film, which was released in October of that year.

One lyric of the song is “No such zone,” referring to postal zones, which existed when the song was written in 1962. However, in 1963, zip codes came in – making the song lyric out of date. But rather than get hung up on trivia, since this song is about a letter being given to the postman, here is the first United States Postal Service stamp of Elvis, issued Jan. 8, 1993.

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6. It Happened at the World’s Fair (MGM, 1963). Elvis is Mike Edwards, a crop-duster pilot whose plane is confiscated by a sheriff for non-payment of bills due to the gambling problem of his flying partner (Gary Lockwood). They are forced to hitchhike and get a ride from a Chinese farmer and his niece, Sue-Lin (Vicky Tiu), traveling to the Seattle World’s Fair. When the farmer is called away for a special job, he leaves Sue-Lin with Mike for a few hours so she can see the Fair. She overeats on junk food and he takes her to a nurse’s station where Mike meets a lovely nurse (Joan O’Brien), who won’t give him a tumble. Song choice — One Broken Heart for Sale:

It Happened at the World’s Fair was filmed largely on location in Seattle in 1962 at the time of the exhibition. The movie is very light in content but it does provide a nice travelogue of the event. There is also an entertaining song early in the film as Mike tries to seduce a curvaceous brunette, played by future Batgirl Yvonne Craig (who would have a starring role a year later in Elvis’ Kissin’ Cousins).

And if I didn’t add this clip, I’m sure I’d get many complaints. It’s young Kurt Russell in his first screen appearance. (Russell would later portray Elvis in a 1979 TV-movie):

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7. Fun in Acapulco (Paramount, 1963). Elvis is Mike Windgren, who takes on two jobs at a hotel in Acapulco, as a nightclub singer and as a swimming pool lifeguard. He asked for the latter position because, through a flashback, it is shown he was once in a circus trapeze act and missed catching his brother, who then fell to his death. He hopes being on the high board at the pool will cure him of that trauma, but even the sight of the board makes him break out in a sweat. On the ground, however, he is a success as a singer and with two women, one who is a female matador (Elsa Cárdenas) and the other the daughter (Ursula Andress) of the hotel’s chef. Song choice — Bossa Nova Baby:

Elvis was limited to the Paramount lot in making this movie. He was not welcome in Mexico because of a made-up story six years earlier in a powerful Mexican newspaper saying that he had criticized the country and its women. It was actually a revenge piece concocted by a politician there who was angry that Elvis did not agree to a personal appearance at a birthday party of a rich man’s daughter. All the scenes of Mike in Acapulco were done by a double, plus a stunt man doing the high dive from a cliff.

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8. Kissin’ Cousins (MGM, 1964). Fans got two Elvises in one picture with Kissin’ Cousins. Elvis played Josh Morgan, an Air Force pilot who was born in North Carolina near the Great Smoky Mountains, as well as taking on the role of his distant cousin Jodie Tatum, a hillbilly whose family lives on the other side of the Mountains in Tennessee. When the military wants to build a rocket base on the mountaintop, they assign Josh to help work out an agreement with the Tatums who own the land. There he meets Jodie, as well as two more cousins, beautiful ones (played by Yvonne Craig and Pamela Austin, both of whom, as noted earlier, appeared in previous Elvis films).

This time, I have a tie in picking out a favorite song. The first is after Josh meets his two lovely cousins (One Boy, Two Little Girls) and the second is the title song at the end of the film (in which future star Teri Garr in a blue dress was among the dancers).

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9. Viva Las Vegas (MGM, 1964). “Lucky” Jackson (Elvis) arrives in town for the Las Vegas Grand Prix. However, he loses his bankroll for a new engine for his sports car and takes a job as a waiter at the hotel he was staying at in order to pay off his bill. A romance develops between him and the hotel’s pool manager, Rusty Martin (Ann-Margret), but she is worried he will get killed in the race. Don’t worry, everybody, happy endings are all around.

No tie this time when it comes to favorite song, because the title piece is clear and away the winner — but I really need to also feature Ann-Margret as this is Elvis’ best film (and my favorite) because of her. The song The Lady Loves Me highlights the fun interplay between them. It also shows at the end of the clip how he came to lose that sweet bankroll. And, while she is not in this number, Teri Garr is back again, dancing in three other scenes.

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10. Roustabout (Paramount, 1964). Elvis plays Charlie Rogers, riding along on his motorcycle but is run off the road by an irritable father of a pretty daughter (Joan Freeman) when Charlie flirts with her while crusing alongside their vehicle. The man’s employer, Maggie Morgan (Barbara Stanwyck), is a carnival owner and hires Charlie on while his wrecked motorcycle gets fixed and his broken guitar is replaced. He becomes a singing sensation at the carnival, but when romantic problems ensue he is tempted away temporarily by a successful rival carnival owner who puts him in a bigger showcase. Song choice — Big Love, Big Heartache:

The casting of Barbara Stanwyck brought distinction to the picture and Elvis always treated her with respect during the filming, calling her “Miss Stanwyck.” The movie also had an early film appearance by Raquel Welch, plus Garr was back as a sideshow dancer.

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11. Tickle Me (Allied Artists, 1965). The film starts as many Elvis pictures do. He sings, gets into a fight, gets fired, which forces him to take on a job outside of his normal occupation. In this case, as Lonnie Beale, a rodeo rider, he gets a position at a ranch… to be more specific, a health farm, so he has a lot of women in this picture coming on to him. However, he only has eyes for Pam Merritt (Jocelyn Lane), the health instructor. And it is good he is there because masked criminals keep trying to kidnap her. It turns out what they are after is a letter she has from her grandfather with directions to where $100,000 in gold coins is hidden in the nearby Silverado ghost town. But Lonnie and Pam intend to find it first.

There are a number of good songs to enjoy in Tickle Me. However, none of them were written for the movie. In order to save money on the film’s budget, they were selected from previously released Elvis records. This one, Slowly but Surely, occurs at the end of the film.

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12. Harum Scarum (MGM, 1965). Elvis gets a role that should be an easy fit, that of a movie star, Johnny Tyronne, who sings and is also a master of karate. But while in an Arabian country for a premiere of one of his movies, he is kidnapped, captured by a league of assassins and instructed to kill the good and rightful king of the country. Meanwhile, he falls in love with the daughter of the king, so clearly killing him is out and he turns the tables on the assassins, as well as the man within the royal palace who hired them.

 OK, this is not really a favorite. As a matter of fact, Harum Scarum is plain awful. The longer the film goes on, the quicker you want it to end. But it does have one saving grace: The song So Close, Yet So Far (From Paradise) is sung with all the power that is Elvis at his best.

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13. Frankie and Johnny (United Artists, 1966). Take an old ballad, add in Elvis Presley and Donna Douglas (Elly Mae on The Beverly Hillbillies) as entertainers on a Mississippi riverboat in the 1800s, a mistaken identity plot, gypsy luck, a few love triangles, and you have Frankie and Johnny. She wants him to quit his gambling ways and marry her, while he wants to win a bankroll at the gaming tables so they can go to Broadway.

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And now that you’ve been in high gear with all these clips, it’s time to relax with Elvis singing Relax to Yvonne Craig as previously mentioned in It Happened at the World’s Fair:

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MORE

— JUNIOR AND THE KING: 13 CAPTAIN MARVEL JR. COMICS That May Have Inspired ELVIS PRESLEY. Click here.

— PETER BOSCH’s Illustrated History of AMERICAN MOVIE COMIC BOOKS Slated for 2025. Click here.

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13th Dimension contributor-at-large PETER BOSCH’s first book, American TV Comic Books: 1940s-1980s – From the Small Screen to the Printed Page, was published by TwoMorrows. (You can buy it here.) A sequel, American Movie Comic Books: 1930s-1970s — From the Silver Screen to the Printed Page, is due in 2025. (You can pre-order here.) Peter has written articles and conducted celebrity interviews for various magazines and newspapers. He lives in Hollywood.