King Creole (1958)

Posted on October 21, 2025 by 4 Star Films

It might be on the nose, but Elvis Presley doing a call and response rendition of “Crawfish” from his balcony with the lady vendor (jazz singer Kitty White) on the street below places us instantly in the movie’s milieu.

We’re in the French Quarter of New Orleans, a place blessed with so much musical culture thanks to the Black community. Like many films of the era, they exist on the periphery underrepresented and unappreciated, but they must be acknowledged.

King Creole came out at an earlier juncture in Elvis’s career. He still has license to be himself, and yet the cult of Elvis doesn’t completely overwhelm director Michael Curtiz’s picture. It’s about “The King” in so many ways, yes, but it still has an identity outside of him as a genuinely absorbing story.

His movie career went down hill when everything was about formula and easy cash grabs relying solely on his personality. King Creole actually has substance and danger because it functions as both a vehicle for him and a genuine showcase for his talents and the talents of the actors around him.

Danny Fisher (Elvis) is a teenager who works bussing tables, morning and night, while he tries to squeeze in high school. It’s a tough schedule to maintain, and he’s already failed one year. But his father (Dean Jagger) is out of work so he feels there’s no recourse but to continue in the dive establishment. Danny’s a good kid dealt a tough hand.

It gets even worse one evening when a couple of drunken thugs induce him to sing for them, and then start pushing around one of their lady friends (Carolyn Jones). He comes to her defense, but he has a target on his back and his new female companion causes a mini scandal (and fistfight) on the last day of school. He flunks out again and that’s the end of his short-lived scholastic career.

I feel compelled to bring up Blackboard Jungle because although they’re set in different places, we’re dealing with the same segment of society: struggling working-class teenagers.

You could easily see Elvis in a version of that film especially because it was one of the instigators of the rock ‘n roll craze in movies. King Creole also depicts delinquency though not purely in an instructive sense. We feel like we are watching a movie that’s entertainment first without an attached agenda (aside from banking on Elvis’s stardom before he was drafted into the military).

It evokes the aesthetic of gangster movies of old with Bogart and Cagney, which were directed by Curtiz two decades prior. King Creole has a self-contained world. There’s nothing outside these sets and the interiors that make up the movie. And there’s a sweaty claustrophobia to the tenements and cruddy street corners.

The French Quarter positively oozes with atmosphere, but there’s no way to run away because everyone and everything is tied together. It just so happens that Maxie Fields (Walter Matthau) pulls most of the strings.

The money, economy, and the inertia of almost everyone gravitates in and around the big kahuna. It’s just the way he likes it. He calls for Danny since he’s heard about his voice and his tenacity. Also, Ronnie (Jones) is his girl and he’s a jealous, vindictive man. He likes to keep tabs on what’s his.

Danny takes a job singing at the only spot Maxie doesn’t have his hands in — the modest club King Creole — and he becomes a local hit. Meanwhile, he reluctantly falls in with a few ambitious street hoods led by Vic Morrow. They’re vying to join Maxie’s payroll.

It’s the old story of Danny trying to stay out of trouble, and yet he’s constantly drawn in by want of money and further ashamed of his father’s subservient role as a stooge at the local drugstore. He also starts seeing a pretty shop girl (Dolores Hart). Although his intentions seem far from honorable, there’s still something sympathetic and not fully-formed between them.

All the narrative sinews don’t fit together seamlessly, but I appreciate the dynamics with different actors rubbing up against one another like matchsticks. There is a gritty, operatic quality to it. The music elements are a case and point, allowing us to stretch the parameters of reality just a tinge as Elvis entertains his audience both in-camera and beyond the screen.

Carolyn Jones could be a kind of one note Carmen-like Vamp — the other woman pulling Danny into the web, and she does this, but it’s all in spite of her best efforts. She wants him to get away from Maxie and the same hold the gangster has over her own life. Perhaps in the back of her mind is the hope of some freedom and a life beyond for both of them outside of this private hell.

What can I say about Walter Matthau? It amuses me to even make this comparison because I had never thought about it until this film, but Matthau had a trajectory similar to Bogart’s. Based on how I perceive him in hindsight, I always find it funny he started out as a heavy, and over time he became not only a comic hero but a leading man and a love interest. Here he’s everything despicable and abhorrent about local crime.

Dean Jagger could play characters with such bearing and integrity, and yet in a picture like Bad Day at Black Rock or here, he isn’t squeamish about portraying a bona fide weakling. It’s not a showy part, but there is a sense of bravery to it.

Vic Morrow’s still fairly early in his evolution as he moves on from Blackboard Jungle in the next stage of his dashing hoodlum career. It would be easy to typecast him in the role since it fits so seamlessly.

The same might be said of Dolores Hart but for completely different reasons. She embodies the good girl of the movie reminiscent of Eva Marie Saint a few years earlier, representing a reach for something more tender and resolutely decent opposite Brando in On The Waterfront.

Hart’s eyes are always so vibrant even in black & white. I find it fitting when she divulges to Danny about Father Franklin, a man of the cloth she’s known her entire life — someone who’s excited to meet him. And yet Danny’s despondent over his own failings. He cannot bear walking into a church given his current crisis. Nellie represents a level of graciousness to him and of course, Hart famously gave up an ephemeral acting career to become a nun driven by a similar higher calling.

There’s weight to everything Danny does and every mistake comes back to haunt him. His sister (Jan Shepard) strikes up a relationship with the older owner (Paul Stewart) of the King Creole; their relationship also hangs in the balance.

We see Elvis at his most tortured and earnest because he actually gets some material to tear through and try his hand at acting. The part gives him even a small sliver of what Brando had in Waterfront or Dean in Rebel. You can’t put them on the same plane, but then Elvis did what they could never do on the stage with his voice and his pelvis. King Creole is the finest showcase he got to do both in the same film.

The fist fights are pretty epic, and they mean something. Violence is not glorified, but it is an integral and unabashed element of this story. It’s one of the few ways to bring equilibrium to the world.

I’m no pre-germ medical theorist, but a lot of these Classical Hollywood movies seem to function by their own unique humoral theory where you have imbalances of all these different fluid forces at work: the good and the evil, the apathetic and the weak. There’s constant interplay and war between them until finally some kind of stasis is found at the behest of the production code.

The bad is lost and all the abscesses, both corrupt and sullied, are excised until all that’s left in the primordial moral soup is the good. It doesn’t matter how wild the undulations. Finally, our hero is given an existence made up entirely of hope and happiness as everything is brought back into balance.

With the antagonist gone and the promise of a pretty girl’s love, Elvis is able to sing out one final ditty as all the most important people in his life look on with smiles. It’s a classic denouement that doesn’t devalue the seedy sides of humanity. It really is a fine piece of work and it just might be Elvis at his very best. It’s a shame his career took a more insipid trajectory going forward. Because he had so much more to offer beyond a pretty face and peppy music.

3.5/5 Stars

CMBA Blogathon: Fun in The Sun 1967 Double Feature

Posted on May 19, 2022 by 4 Star Films

In honor of the Classic Movie Blog Association’s latest spring blogathon “Fun in The Sun,” I wanted to highlight two movies that might be outside the normal purview of what we cover on the blog.

However, if it’s not apparent already, I do have at least a minor interest in the subgenre of beach party movies that proliferated with Gidget and then Frankie and Anette during the 1960s. Here, without further ado, are two films that fit into the tail-end of this craze.

Clambake

My blog was initially founded on the idea of looking deeper at the best movies, but somedays you just need to lighten up and watch Elvis in Clambake. I’m no authority on the Elvis musicals, but Viva Las Vegas always feels like the standard by which to measure all future entries.

By my own admission, Clambake follows the same pattern and so you’re not watching to get blown away by the plot. This is purely a sun-soaked excuse to watch Elvis sing some tunes and woo the prettiest girl in the picture.

Scott Hayward was born into the family of a rich oil tycoon. Being Elvis, he’s also devilishly handsome and hopped up on fast wheels. However, he’s a young man who doesn’t want to be a victim of his money and possessions. If he meets a girl and falls in love, there shouldn’t be any strings attached. Like that would happen.

Still, he meets Tom Wilson (Hutchins) during a pit stop at a gas station on the way to Miami Beach. They strike up an immediate liking and look at each other’s life with a certain amount of relish. So they quickly agree to switch places and continue their journeys.

Elvis becomes the anonymous water ski instructor and Hutchins puts on his most pronounced Texas accent to carry off the overblown bravado of an oil kid. Arguably, the only other person to top him is James Gregory going for the fences as Presley’s dear old dad, who shows up later to check in on his boy.

For now, Bill Bixby is the most obvious antagonist as a wealthy moneybags who represents everything Elvis rails against. He can be found regaling all the pretty girls with his exploits and then picking the loveliest one to ride at his side. He’s accustomed to this kind of entitlement.

The movie itself is compromised of all the outlandish camp color schemes one would expect because it’s this kind of backdrop making these studio films what they were. There’s not one shred of nuance. There isn’t meant to be.

Clambake also feels like a last bastion of the teen films earlier in the decade even as Elvis’s own celebrity was in this complicated state with the cultural storm whipped up by The Beatles and Britishmania. Regardless, his charisma is undeniable whether he’s on the playground messing around with kiddos or dancing with pretty girls shimmying around at the clambake in their bikinis. I don’t actually remember too many of the tunes, it’s more so the experience that leaves a mild impression.

In a former life, Hayward was also an engineer who created “goop,” the colloquial term for a hardener that earns its own pop song replete with dancing girls and a refurbished boat hull. Beyond getting the pretty brunette Dianne Carter (Shelly Fabares), his other goal is to win the local Orange Bowl Regatta.

Like all the perennial Elvis movies, there’s a climactic race, this time on speedboats, and he gets the girl. What else? Shelly Fabares starred in three films with The King and their chemistry is affectionate even if the vehicles themselves are mostly paint-by-numbers and inane.

There’s a time and place for everything under the sun and given your disposition, Clambake definitely seems to fit the bill of “Fun in The Sun.” It’s easy enough to enjoy watching them drive off into the sunset. And it’s not so much about the foregone destination but the goofy, totally outlandish journey to get us there.

Don’t Make Waves

Don’t Make Waves stands at a strange crossroads as a starring vehicle for Tony Curtis, whose box office was mostly waning. You had the international appeal of Claudia Cardinale, and then the emerging allure of Sharon Tate.

Curtis was also reunited with director Alexander Mackendrick a decade after the prominent acclaim of Sweet Smell of Success. This is a much more puerile brand of satire extrapolated from the novel Muscle Beach by Ira Wallach.

Vic Mizzy, who famously penned the incomparable theme to Green Acres, composed the music, while the titular theme song was sung by none other than Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman of the Byrds! It’s unmistakable even as they aren’t normally associated with the surf music scene.

The screwball antics of the movie are instigated with Curtis and Cardinale. She’s a fiery painter leaving a Malibu panorama behind and unwittingly sending his car freefalling down the coast. When it careens into the road below and causes a collision with her and an oncoming bus, she has the nerve to blame his incompetence. He’s left running around in his tidy whities, clothes on fire, with a car totally demolished in a matter of minutes. It’s a decent, if slightly exaggerated, way to begin a movie.

His Carlo Cofield, though destitute, takes an immediate interest in the local beach scene, and it’s true the ocean feels alive with activity, from bodybuilders, surfing dogs, and pretty girls. Despite all the bad juju, she’s brought into his life, Laura Califanti feels slightly responsible for him. Through her male friend (Robert Webber), Curtis somehow gets a gig as a swimming pool salesman, and although there are things that happen and these vague romantic hijinks, there’s not much of a motor to the picture.

Alexander Mackendrick had a fine pedigree with comedies in the U.K., but he can’t do too much with Don’t Make Waves because there doesn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason to the plot. Nor does its attempt at satire feel especially original or inspired.

But like a picture such as Harper or Bob Carol Ted and Alice, it’s another film looking to do its own pastiche of the counterculture. The funny thing is, it feels quite twee and out of touch if not exactly in the best taste. It tries its best to be salacious and cheeky.

Curtis gets manhandled and tossed around in his wince-inducing introduction to Sharon Tate’s bronze beauty Malibu. But it gets worse. He’s totally smitten spending extra time watching her acrobatic exploits doing flips on the nearby trampoline with the point of view shots lingering over her tanned figure.

Still, some of the holdovers from earlier generations are a pleasure. Although it was based on a novel, I feel like we could have entertained a movie with just Cardinale and Curtis if the writers had figured a way to flesh out this story around them. We also get a cameo from Mr. and Mrs. Jim Bachus. Future couple Mort Sahl and China Lee turn up and there’s even Edward Bergen in a bizarre supporting spot.

The finale does nicely to top the chaos of the opening as a notorious California mudslide swallows up Cofield’s new home on a hillside. It’s another totally outrageous setpiece that actually does the movie a few favors. At the very least, it’s memorable. Cardinale literally has to scramble for her life suspended over the abyss below.

There are a lot of curious elements in this movie joined together, and it makes for a few minutes of diversion even if it doesn’t always work too well. If any of the talents piques your interest, it might be worth some mild consideration.

Viva Las Vegas (1964)

Posted on January 25, 2018 by 4 Star Films

Viva_Las_Vegas_1964_Poster Previously, whenever I thought of Elvis and films, my first inclination was to think musical and then secondly because, by some form of osmosis the culture had taught me this, Elvis went with Ann-Margret. In truth, they were astoundingly only ever in this one picture together but what a picture for them to be in. It left an indelible impact on both stars as much as it did their audience.

Sure, it’s at times utterly laughable, light, and saccharine with gaudy color schemes that make Las Vegas the flashiest spectacle known to man (which it might actually conceivably be), but there’s something still so winsome about it.

The story is one of those contrived Hollywood love stories that we know the rhythms of before they have begun. Boy meets girl. Boy becomes infatuated with girl. Girl keeps him at arm’s length. Girl begins to fall for him. Girl gets turned off because of some trivial misunderstanding. In the end, girl gets boy or vice versa. Whichever you prefer because either way it still proves a formulaic picture.

But gosh darn it, Viva Las Vegas has a vibrant energy that probably makes every man, woman, and child wish they could go back to that era, especially all those rock ‘n rollers and beboppers who grew up with Elvis for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

There’s no doubt that he had a magnetic charisma that went beyond a voice or a look but the very way he shimmies, snaps, and shakes his way into the heart of every gal. However, the real vivacity of the picture comes from the same kinetic friskiness that seems to charge through Ann-Margret as well. Because in most any given equation Elvis Presley is bar none going to be your dominating force commanding the screen as the indisputable Elvis the Pelvis, the King of Rock and Roll. But put him up against Ann-Margret and they tease and prod each other this way and that — the perfect romantic counterpoints.

It’s as if they both have a sense of the game that they are playing — the back and forth — the one-upmanship and playful toying that gives the story a hint of sensuality while still maintaining that squeaky clean sensibility allowing a picture like this to remain more charming than most films we are introduced to today.

And when it’s all said and done, aside from the title track which will undoubtedly be most familiar and exhilarating for audience members in its numerous refrains, there are quite a few truly dynamic sequences that go beyond tedious asides in a musical love story.

They reflect how Hollywood seemed to understand the collective power that musicals could have. Director George Sidney is not necessarily a noted name of great repute but if you look down the list of his directing catalog you see many a diverting musical (ie. Annie Get Your Gun, Kiss Me Kate, Bye Bye Birdie, and a whole slew of others).

With Viva Las Vegas it’s easy to acknowledge that he has a knack for the spectacle that remains light and amusing to the end including the notable Ray Charles tune “What’d I Say” played out on a giant roulette wheel, our leads making eyes at each other, surrounded by a crowd of fellow shimmy and shakers. But also the hip swinging, finger-snapping crowd pleaser “C’mon Everybody” that puts our stars on full display. They even end up making the smaller trifles like “The Lady Loves Me” and “If You Think I Don’t Need You” more than a complete drag.

To top it all off, far from being corny, the final Grand Prix sequence is actually quite marvelous as the cars speed through the desert past Hoover Dam and we see Lucky win out against his good-natured rival. The film truly does benefit from the on location shooting only topped by the breezy chemistry of its leads. More than The Rat Pack or Bond, this film gives me at least an iota of desire to visit Las Vegas. Although that might simply be the fact that Elvis and Ann-Margret, in particular, imbue the lifestyle with so much verve. Anyways there are no qualms in proclaiming, Viva Las Vegas!

3.5/5 Stars