Today would have been Elvis Presley's 90th birthday. Flaming Star (Don Siegel, 1960) So, not seeing many Elvis Presley movies—a fan of his music, and his stage performance, but not so much of the "programmers" that Col. Parker insisted he make—I've always wondered about his potential as an actor. He was a great admirer of James Dean, and there's "talk" about how good he was, but there isn't much proof of that in his movies, where he's given songs to sing every ten minutes or so and he's given a persona that comes down to "Elvis with a job," merely. Not much to work with, and certainly no room to grow beyond the parameters of what was expected, and though he kept working on them (at the Colonel's insistence), he grew tired of them—they weren't challenging and were basically fluff for fans. They still have fans to this day—those movies crop up on "Elvis festivals" all the time—but nobody (except those same fans) would consider them great films. What's great about them is Presley and frequently the only reason to see them. Him and the songs. But, Flaming Star was a chance to break the mold. Elvis sings a couple songs at the beginning and that's it—they're disposed of quickly. This one has a story, a good "theme" backing that story, and a terrific director, Don Siegel, who was still making B-pictures, but good ones that would become classics like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and he would make The Killers, Coogan's Bluff, Madigan, The Beguiled, Dirty Harry, Escape from Alcatraz, The Shootist. He was a quick filmmaker and "cut in his head," imagining just the camera-angles and enough footage to make the splices go by unnoticed (a skill he'd honed working for the Warner studio in the editing department—you can see his name in the credits for "montage" on Casablanca, Now, Voyager, They Drive By Night and Edge of Darkness). The setting is Texas in 1878 and two brothers, Clint (Steve Forrest) and Pacer Burton (Elvis Presley) are approaching their family cabin warily as all is quiet and dark even though it is still evening. There is tension in the air as the nearby Kiowa tribe has a new chief, Buffalo Horn (Rodolfo Acosta), having replaced the old chief of the tribe, and there have been aggressive attacks to take back their traditional hunting grounds, now "settled" by whites. But, despite drawn guns and quickening pulses, they find that the lights are out for a surprise birthday party for Clint (belated though it is). and L.Q. Jones (briefly).Briefly, because after the party breaks up for the night, three of the returning party are killed by Kiowa warriors when "the Howard place" is attacked in the middle of the night. Being isolated, the Burtons don't hear of it until Clint and Pacer ride into town for supplies and are nearly set upon by the Pierces (Jaeckel and Eden) for even setting foot in their place—Pacer being half-Kiowa. They manage to get what they need, but the hatred towards Pacer by association lets them know that the entire Burton clan is not going to have an easy time of it, from the settlers in town or from the Kiowas (Buffalo Horn already having made a nighttime visit to their homestead to palaver with Pacer). It's only emphasized when a posse hunting Buffalo Horn visit the Burtons with one question—whose side are they on? Tempers are high with the men referring to Clint as "the only white man in the family" and shots are fired when things get too heated. The next morning, Pa and Clint find that the posse has stampeded their cattle and shot them all down out of spite, prompting Clint to vent that the white are worse than the Kiowas—"An Indian will rob you blind if he can but this is all waste and meanness." The Burtons are in an extreme situation, but where Pa says they've always been, "folks in the middle."This is an atypical Elvis vehicle (which were basic celebrity vehicles) but not an atypical Western for the time in which it was made, on the cusp of a society-changing civil rights movement, where hearts and minds were in a process of retrospection of the country and what it's ideals really meant. Considerate directors who had moved beyond the early tropes of "cowboy movies" and considered not only the challenges of the European western expansion, but also its costs...and it's crimes. History is more complex than the dictates of a popular entertainment, and Flaming Star slots perfectly well in the genre's still-early reappraisal.But not for an Elvis vehicle. But, Presley, fresh out of his military service, rises to the challenge. In his previous movies...and future ones...he wasn't required to do much but be a version of his star persona. If anything the range only required a befuddlement over who his next dance-partner would be. But, this role requires a stretch, far beyond the dictates of a musical format...he's embattled, hated, conflicted, and constantly challenged, all of which comes through without an audience having to compensate for his celebrity. And, although helped by a fine crew of stuntman, he's also good in the action sequences (especially in a vigorous and violent third act). It's a terrific performance, far beyond what you'd come to expect from one of his similarly mononomic contemporaries. For a similar performance, look at the best movie-work of Dean Martin, Bobby Darin, or Sinatra. It was what he aspired to, and though he may be best remembered for his rock n' rollin' higher profile films, this was him at his dramatic best.
It Happened at the World's Fair (Norman Taurog, 1963) I'm something of a lunkhead about Elvis Presley, even though I grew up in the Elvisian Era. Fact is, I was born into the Presley presence—he was a fact of life and nothing revolutionary to me, and by the time I was actually cognizant of him, aware, he had moved on from being a rock n' roll revolutionary to being something of a lounge lizard. He'd evolved on to the Hollywood Elvis period, where there was less emphasis on picking good material and taking chances and more on banking on his success and name recognition, while also taking the edge off his persona to be more acceptable to "Mom and Dad America." The films started out somewhat inspired, even special, then settled into a pattern of sticking the King into formula scenarios pulled from the screenwriters' template that had the feel (and factory precision) of romance novels. They did the job, but had all the nutritional and aesthetic value of a TV-dinner, circa 1960.
Culturally, the U.S. had swiveled away from mambo (Castro's overthrow of Cuba being the main reason, as well as the inevitable momentum of faddishness) and gone Polynesian—the American Eagle had sunk its claws into Hawaii permanently, folding it into statehood, and Tiki had started to invade American dens and Trader Vic's was the big restaurant. At the same time, Seattle was looking to the future, Sputnik having launched America's fledgling space program into a panicky orbit, and the plastic revolution bombarding American kitchens. City fathers (one of whom was my father's employer) started a campaign to bring another World's Fair to the home of Boeing (its first being the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exhibition in 1910—on the site of what is now the University of Washington). This one would be more forward thinking, embracing science and technology, and the 1962 Seattle World's fair was dubbed "Century 21." It was surprisingly successful, managing to turn the city's "Warren Avenue slum" where the Armory was housed into a central hub of the downtown era...and—a rarity for World's Fairs—turn a profit.
The organizers were particularly good at attracting celebrities and entertainers to the Fair, and only the Cuban Missile Crisis kept President Kennedy from officiating over the closing ceremonies. They even managed to make a movie deal with M-G-M for Elvis to make a movie, no doubt paying the studio a handsome sum for the privilege, while also getting some of the corporate sponsors of the Fair to contribute towards the film (probably the reason why G-M's "car of the future" figures so prominently in the film—for no apparent reason). If it was to promote tourism and the Fair, they might have worked out the timeline a little better—The film opened in April of 1963, six months after it had closed!
It Happened at the World's Fair (It's rather tough to determine what "it" is) is a fairly lousy Presley programmer, short of plot (Elvis is a pilot of a crop-duster, in partnership with Gary Lockwood, and gambling debts force them to try and raise money to buy their plane "Bessie" back) but it's the gristliest of connective tissue between songs that were barely charting and love scenes for the fans. Director Norman Taurog was an efficient, if uninspired, director who moved from silent pictures through studio series—his peak years were directing the Martin and Lewis comedies before Lewis got the directing bug—who could be counted on to bring things in on-time and under-budget. He was good at logistics, and managed to keep the studio accountants happy that his films were managed enough to be able to make a profit at the box-office. And his experience with comedies made him a good candidate for making things light and airy and moving fast.
Which is what this one needed. Seeing it as a kid, I thought it was the dullest thing in the world and needed more shots of The Space Needle and, frankly, The Fair. Seeing it as an adult is a grim experience when noting that your tastes haven't changed much. There are faint flashes of wit once in awhile, but it goes without for long stretches of obvious, perfunctory film-making. But, face it, the thing was a commercial enterprise that had outlived its usefulness except to sell records for M-G-M, rather than break them. It does have one oddity worth noting for trivialists: in the role of a kid who kicks Elvis in the shins (to fake an injury to see a pretty nurse) is Kurt Russell, who would play Presley in John Carpenter's biographical film (produced by the late Dick Clark, by the way).
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