Elvis Presley's Lost Film Career

                                                     With Dolores Hart in King Creole

Elvis Presley’s film career has long been on the receiving end of many jokes and much derision.  Just how bad were those films?  In an interview recorded in 1972, Elvis said that not all of them were bad, though he did think that most of them probably were. 

While struggling to develop a recording career in the early 1950s, Elvis harbored a longer-term ambition to star on the silver screen.  The underpinnings of his ceaseless loyalty to his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, may be difficult to understand, but they include the Colonel delivering on his promise to take Elvis to Hollywood. 

Elvis’ film career began with promise and his acting skills and comfort before the cameras grew in the early years.  While Love Me Tender marked a tentative beginning in 1956, and Elvis was far from a polished actor in the film, he showed genuine potential and clear intent to be taken seriously as an actor.  His 1950s follow-up efforts showed improvement and offered him decent scripts, challenging roles, and solid supporting players.  Although Elvis didn’t want to do musicals, it seemed inevitable that he would sing on screen.  He was unhappy with the songs in Love Me Tender, considered them “silly,” and the musical numbers still look jarringly out of place in a film set in the Civil War.  But things improved in his next three films: Loving You, Jailhouse Rock, and King Creole, which included some classic numbers written by the legendary Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, as well as iconic musical moments, such as Elvis singing “(Let Me Be) Your Teddy Bear” in Loving You and the “Jailhouse Rock” production number.  The films also included the occasional rock classic, like “Mean Woman Blues,” also from Loving You.

Those early films were strengthened by strong supporting players, including Richard Egan, Debra Paget, Mildred Dunnock (who had starred in Death of a Salesman), Lizabeth Scott, Wendell Corey, Carolyn Jones, Walter Matthau, Vic Morrow, Paul Stewart, Dean Jagger and at least one legendary film director, Michael Curtiz, who helmed King Creole.  Curtiz's CV included Casablanca, Mildred Pierce, White Christmas, and Yankee Doodle Dandy, and five Oscar nominations for Best Director, including a win for Casablanca.

                                                     On the set of Jailhouse Rock

Elvis was poised to resume his film career when he returned from army service in 1960 and shot Flaming Star, which co-starred Barbara Eden, Dolores del Rio, Steve Forrest, and John McIntire.  The western featured only one musical number, “A Cane and a High Starched Collar,” and the title song, thus allowing Elvis to focus on his acting, which still showed promise.  Wild in the Country also focused more on story and acting than on musical numbers and co-starred Hope Lange, Tuesday Weld, and Millie Perkins.  The film featured more than one forgettable, contrived musical number that seemed out of place and disrupted the action, which was already hampered by a less-than-credible story.  Elvis’ acting also was panned by some critics who felt he had reached beyond his thespian capabilities, but the film did offer him a more challenging role than he was to receive again.

Flaming Star

For better or worse, these more serious celluloid efforts were weak box office performers compared to the far lighter musical comedies that became Elvis’ Hollywood staple and cash cow.  Both G.I. Blues and Blue Hawaii were smash hits, earning vastly greater revenues that the non-musicals and they became the mold for Presley films thereafter, which were increasingly cheap to make, unimaginative, weaker musically, and featured Elvis in nearly interchangeable lightweight roles. Still, some of the later movies were not bad at all, including Roustabout, which featured co-stars Barbara Stanwick and Leif Ericson.  The issue was not so much how bad most of the scripts and songs ultimately became, but how rapidly any trace of serious roles that might challenge Elvis vanished.

The decline in Elvis' films corresponded with the stagnation of his recording career.  Colonel Parker saw maximum profits in confining Elvis to the ever-weaker songs written for his movies, rather than investing in quality studio recording sessions unrelated to the films.  Upon his return from the army Elvis cut Elvis Is Back, a quality studio album that found him in fine voice.  However, that voice was increasingly squandered on mostly lame movie songs.  Elvis would not engage in another serious studio effort for nearly a decade.

Although Elvis was clearly unhappy with the direction of his Hollywood career, the Colonel easily persuaded him that this was the way to make money, which was all that really mattered to Parker.  As usual, Elvis went along and only expressed his frustration to those closest to him.  In that 1972 interview, Elvis admitted to routinely signing four-year movie contracts with no provision for script approval.  Thus, the studios might have cast Elvis as a singing monkey and, technically, he would have been obliged to do it.  Although film studios were unlikely to enjoy seeing one of their top money-makers look foolish, it is mind-boggling that a star of Elvis' magnitude would sign such ludicrous contracts and, worse, his manager's inability to see any problem with them. 

The Rev. Mother Dolores Hart, who appeared as Dolores Hart in two of Elvis’ earliest films, Loving You and King Creole, was aware of what was happening to Elvis in Hollywood.   In this clip, she reflects on the career Elvis dreamed of and wanted so badly, but lost: http://tinyurl.com/ln7ryf8.

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Channeling Elvis: How Television Saved the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll by Allen J. Wiener is available in paperback and Kindle e-book editions from Amazon.com in the U.S. at this link:  http://tinyurl.com/mhyaouz; and in the U.K. (paperback): http://tinyurl.com/kyolbnm; (Kindle): http://tinyurl.com/qdbk9cb