Movie review - Elvis #7 - "Wild in the Country" (1961) ***

Back from army service Elvis made two films for Fox which attempted to stretch him - Flaming Star and this one - but neither particularly found favour with the public the way that Blue Hawaii and GI Blues did and so Elvis found himself trapped like a fly in celluloid amber. 

Here he plays juvenile delinquent living in the backwoods who, in true Elvis form, lost his ma when he was a kid - he has a pa, but pa is mean, as is his brother, so Elvis is angry at the world - angry, you understand, so he punches the brother and winds up on parole. He's sent to work for his uncle, whose daughter (Tuesday Weld) is one of those cat on a hot tin roof baby dolls - married with a kid despite her youth and hot to trot for Elvis, which causes no end of concern for El's childhood sweet heart (Millie Perkins).

But actually Elvis' main romance in this film is with his shrink (Hope Lange) - making this his third film where he tangles with an older woman (four if you change "older woman" to "mentor figure" meaning you can include Jailhouse Rock), one of the less discussed aspects of Elvis movies. I wonder what prompted it? Sometimes the woman was a Col Tom Parker surrogate; maybe it was also simply a way of increasing Elvis' appeal to older women, as well as adding a dramatic tang. When Lange reads some of Elvis' short stories and declares that he's got a great literary talent you think "a ha - this is just like those three JD-rise-to-fame-films he made before going into the army simply with writing substituting for music" but the book aspect isn't really developed - he's merely a good enough writer to get a college scholarship. 

So for a third act we have a plot where there's a scandal over Lange sleeping with Elvis - which didn't happen, but the two characters spend a rainy night in a motel together, kiss and declare their love (a hot scene - Elvis eventually leaves for not very convincing reasons), then they throw in Elvis accidentally killing someone in a fight (again - just like Jailhouse Rock) and it all becomes a bit of a mess. 

Apparently the original cut of the film had Lange's suicide attempt at the film (another very effective scene - most of her moments are winners in this movie) succeed - but the changed version, where she lives but tells Elvis to go to college, is a lot more effective. Lange didn't do anything worthy of killing herself.

Actually the whole scandal-over-Lange-and-Elvis doesn't really work because the two obviously like each other and make a good couple. (If they remade the film today they'd just have the affair but then Lange would still let him go to college - just like The Heartbreak Kid). Lange is a lot more suited to Elvis than Weld (though you get the impression Weld would be great for a fling) or Perkins (in only her second role after The Diary of Ann Frank - and you can understand why Fox had trouble in finding roles for her, she's a sort of unengaging child-like figure, who doesn't seem too engaged with what's going on and has little chemistry with her male co-star). 

The third act would have been better off doing more with Elvis' writing maybe, or Weld getting pregnant to him, just something else - as it is it kind of peters out the way it is. I think this, rather than the fact Elvis was playing a dramatic role, is what hurt the film at the box office. 

Gary Lockwood plays the son-of-a-rich-man who keeps appearing at key dramatic moments to push the plot along (lazy writing this - he interrupts a liaison between Elvis and Perkins, then Elvis and Weld, then Elvis and Lange). Lange is very good and Elvis is pretty good - its wonderful to see him trying, to see him challenged, and handling himself.

Book review - "So You Want to be a Producer" by Lawrence Turman

Excellent how-to book from Turman, best known for The Graduate, one of those once-in-a-lifetime hits... as it proved for the producer, but he's since remained highly active making films and TV movies. The book is full of wisdom, enthusiasm and good stories. What I like most about it is that while Turman inevitably refers to The Graduate a lot, he talks just as much about his other less popular films (especially The Film Flam Man, which seems to have been a particular favourite - but also The Best Man, TV movies like Get Christie Love).
He admits failures and mistakes, promotes ethics and feeling positive, as well as hard work. He's a bit self serving but who isn't in this sort of book and he may well be telling the truth (for instance "working on the script" of Butch Cassidy seemed to be encouraging and reading and telling people the second act needed work).
The correspondence between Turman and William Goldman at the end is fascinating for Goldman fans (Turman tries to get Goldman, then teaching at Princeton, to write a movie about young people but Goldman declines - Goldman also says the Beatles are managed by a "faggott")

Movie review - Elvis #3 - "Jailhouse Rock" (1957) ***1/2

By the late 50s MGM were very much in decline but one gets the feeling they were still cocky enough to tackle Elvis with the attitude of "right, he's made two films for other studios - but this is MGM and we'll do it properly". And they did, too - its Elvis' best film yet and certainly his best performance.

He's very confident in front of the camera and he's terrific - sexy, charismatic, etc, etc. This is one of his least sympathetic roles ever - even if the filmmakers do stack the deck in his favour, he's still quite snarling and JD-y (more so even than King Creole).

This gets off to a great start, with Elvis killing a man in a fight (the guy was obnoxious and deserved it), and going to a prison run by a corrupt warden, where his cell mate bosses him around and bullies him into signing a management contract (which you see and go "how did that one get past the Colonel?"). Then he gets out of gaol, hooks up with pretty record plugger Judy Tyler and tries to break into show biz, but has little luck - indeed, he gets ripped off by one artist causing him to punch out an exec (but the guy was obnoxious and deserved it) - until forming his own record company with Tyler and making it big.

Then he grows a big head and becomes increasingly obnoxious, and the sympathies of the film shift away from Elvis - he's mean to poor manager Judy Tyler, then when his cell mate comes back said cell mate doesn't try to enforce his dodgy contract and rip him off (yeah, right) but goes to work for him and Elvis treats him mean. Aw, poor management (this is how it got past the Colonel - just like in Loving You, even when Elvis signs a contract his managers aren't out to rip him off, they're his family, and he needs them to stay on the straight and narrow).

So the film gets progressively less interesting as it goes on - why should we care about the cell mate? He exploited Elvis in prison. Fortunately, though, the terrific title number is in the second half, giving it a fillip til the end.

Judy Tyler is OK as the female lead - in his review of the film David Shipman wrote that her subsequent career wasn't much, perhaps unaware that she actually died in a car crash soon after filming ended. Interestingly, Elvis' movies number two to four all dealt with the same story - Elvis rising to fame - with Elvis playing a juvenile delinquent.

Movie review - Elvis #19 - "Harum Scarum" (1966) *1/2

David Shipman once argued that although Elvis made movies for all sorts of different studios - Paramount, MGM, Fox - they were indistinguishable. I'd agree up to a point - I think you could discern a slight difference according to the producers: Hal Wallis films had solid production values and weak scripts (e.g. Blue Hawaii), Joe Pasternak films were more traditional musicals with strong production values and better albeit formulaic scripts (e.g. Viva Las Vegas, Girl Happy), Sam Katzman films were cheapo efforts with little to recommend them - like this one.

It does have an unusual setting - the Middle East, the locale of many a Katzman "Eastern" - and plot, which has touring singer/film star Elvis is drawn into an assassination plot - making the film at times seem like one of those Easterns (some of whom starred Elvis' idol Tony Curtis, so maybe that's why they made it). Indeed, the filmmakers might have been better off had they followed more in this direction - throw in a few more swordfights and princesses on the run (there are already a few as it is), and actually work out the kinks of a potentially promising albeit clichéd plot - as it is it's a bit of a mess (why have Elvis as an assassin? Why have a scene where he serenades a 10 yr old girl who dances like a belly dancer?

There's under-developed comic relief, confusing twists - they should have just taken the plots of one of those old Katzman potboilers directly and just shoved in Elvis. Pretty girls but lacks a proper charismatic female co star, which always made Elvis movies better (I kept forgetting who the romantic lead actually was). The music is slightly odd - its got this tacky throw-away Vegas-and-cocktails quality... were they being thrifty or was this an attempt to shove Elvis in a new direction? Whatever, the results are not memorable.

But, you know, I didn't mind it - the whole concept of Elvis being in the middle east was fresh enough to keep you watching - at the end all this Arabs are sitting around watching Elvis in Vegas, which gives it a camp quality.

Movie review - Elvis #2 - "Loving You" (1957) **

This Elvis film has a lot going for it - his first proper starring vehicle, first for Hal Wallis, his first in colour, includes a cameo from his parents, a plotline that supposedly mirrors his own rise, a decent score (including 'Teddy Bear') - so I wondered why no one ever seems to get too excited by it when talking about Elvis films... and after watching it I can understand.

While it's interesting to note some similarities between the film's story and the real Elvis story (here he's a delivery boy who is discovered by a manager, who skilfully publicises his attraction to female audience), it's a dull story most of the time - little conflict, just sort of plodding along in a this-happened-then-that-happened way. Even the finale, where Elvis is effectively banned and the kids rally to his defence (years before "Footloose") is muffled - just writing it then it struck me, that sounds like an exciting situation, it should have been, but its not. (The director, Hal Kanter, was a writer.)

Dolores Hart is charming as his proper love interest but as with the later King Creole, Elvis' real attraction seems to be for an older, more worldly woman - in this case his manager, Lizabeth Scott (she of the interesting face and Sapphic aura) - but the film then shies away from this, and pairs Scott safely off with bland Wendell Corey, who is in a band. The most effective scene is where Elvis is at a diner and all these girls fuss over him, prompting the boyfriend of one of them to start a fight - I'm sure this happened in real life all too often.

The King himself is in decent form - the script stacks the chips in his favour (as pointed out by Shipman: he's got chip on his shoulder but isn't bitter, he just needs to be mothered, he's an orphan, aw...), and he gets to swivel his hips in a way forbidden by the Ed Sullivan Show. The finale is a bit yucky - Elvis going to Hart, Scott and Corey "you're the only family I've got in the world and I need you" then going in to sign a contract - Scott's his manager, and Hart and Corey are part of his band so they're all financially dependent on him... so you can't help feeling when Elvis goes in that room it's "hello exploitation". Unfortunately, I'm sure this happened in real life all too often, too. (Col Tom Parker is credited as "technical adviser".)

Movie review - Ladd #6 - "Salty O'Rourke" (1945) **

Alan Ladd showed a flair for comedy in Lucky Jordan so this piece of horseracing whimsy comes as a disappointment. It would seem to be a sure thing - Ladd is a gambler who has to pay of a bookie in X number of days or he'll be killed, so he and his partner (William Demarest, ideal) buy a race horse and get a jockey to ride it. So far so good - then the jockey has to go to school and is a pain to a school teacher (Gail Russell) so Ladd busies himself with the school teacher.

The main problem with this film is structural - we want it to be about Ladd getting up to wacky shonky tough guy shenanigans and being charmed by Russell, but the plot of the film is really about this jockey kid being wild and Ladd and Russell having to pull him into line. Now that sort of plot would work if the jockey was a little girl or something - it's the plot of Little Miss Marker - because then you'd have the three of them forming a family, which is holistic. But here the jockey is a 17 year old and the plot evolves into a romantic triangle with the jockey loving Russell and Russell loving Ladd and Ladd loving Russell - but only after he finds out that she loves him. So the poor old jockey has to be shunted out of the way. Another problem is Ladd doesn't have that much to do - the jockey gets more screen time.

Russell is beautiful and certainly has a tragic presence - many tragic stars you can't tell from their persona but looking at Russell on screen you just get the feeling it's all going to end badly for her in real life unless someone came along to protect her (which is unfortunately what happened). She and Ladd ought to be a good combination - a tough guy and a sweet girl - but it doesn't work here since Ladd isn't really given the chance to be tough, or Russell the chance to be that sweet (she needed to look after little kids or something).

Movie review - Ladd #9 - "OSS" (1946) ***

OSS movies came in vogue briefly just after WW2 - Cloak and Dagger was another one. This is intelligent and exciting, well written by Richard Maibaum. Alan Ladd is professional in the lead but is miscast - he has such a distinct tough guy personality, you simply wouldn't believe him as a spy in Occupied France - spies should blend in, be a bit more anonymous. I wouldn't have a problem with Alan Ladd leading a mission to blow something up, say, but not go undercover. Also there is some tiresome conflict with Geraldine Fitzgerald - he doesn't like having her along on the mission because she's a skirt, which fits in with Ladd's "I don't trust dames but then eventually I'll melt for one" persona, but doesn't make sense here, because surely everyone in war time knew that women made good spies?

This is full of interesting bits of spy business - a pipe that turns into a gun, how to put a bomb on a train - foreshadowing Maibaum's later work on the James Bond series (he the great unsung hero of that series, Maibaum). You might laugh at the scene where the spy instructor says "America isn't used to playing dirty tricks like other countries so we have to work to catch up". Well, they certainly did!

Structurally the film is too episodic - "do this mission, then that mission". At the end Ladd and Fitzgerald are about to get on a plane when Patric Knowles turns up and says "just one more mission" meaning there's another 15 minutes to go and Ladd's annoyed and you're likely to be, too (though it's a good scene that follows - Ladd telling Knowles he's not going to volunteer, he's got to be ordered to go). The film also features a classic "you're going to die" moment when Ladd and Fitzgerald do this big separation scene even though they both think he's just going away for a few hours - big kisses, promises, he looks back at her longingly as he walks out the door... the film couldn't say more clearly that ONE OF THESE CHARACTERS IS GOING TO DIE. (There is some suspense, though, as Ladd often died in his movies so it could be him.)