1961, United States. Starring Elvis Presley, Joan Blackman, Angela Lansbury, Nancy Walters, Jenny Maxwell, Pamela Austin, Darlene Tompkins, Christian Kay, Roland Winters, John Archer, Howard McNear, Steve Brodie, Iris Adrian, Enid Garvey, Hilo Hattie, Lani Kai. Directed by Norman Taurog.

Beach party movies get no respect. In the grand scheme of things, liking beach party movies may even rank below watching porn on the respectability scale. The average film fan may actually scramble faster to hide copies of Beach Blanket Bingo than they might to obscure from view the latest episode in the ongoing saga of the Ass Parade. And while not nearly as shameful as say, Frankie and Annette cavorting down on Muscle Beach, Elvis movies don't get much respect either. So if you put the two together and make an Elvis beach party movie, it ought to be just about the worst thing imaginable, except perhaps for my idea to remake Casablanca with Ben Affleck and Winona Ryder in the lead roles.

There are people who dream of going back in time and preventing some of the great tragedies in human history. As for me, I often dream of going back in time to taunt pop stars. I want to travel back in time to 1978 and tell Johnny Rotten that in the future he'll be VH1's man at the Grammy Awards. I want to tell Henry Rollins he'll be doing stand-up comedy on cable TV. And I want to go back to the era of hip-swingin,' censor-enragin' Elvis Presley and warn him that in a few years he'll be singing tear-jerker ballads about seafood.


Elvis didn't like his own movies, except maybe Flaming Star, Jailhouse Rock, and King Creole. Basically, he was probably OK with anything from before his stint in the Army. He idolized "angry young man" actors like Marlon Brando (before he became an island) and James Dean, and always felt that with the right coaching, he might be able to count himself among their ranks. And maybe he would have. King Creole certainly shows impressive flashes on the part of Elvis, and it's entirely likely that if the proper director or producer had taken the young singer under wing and pushed him along in the right direction, Elvis could have picked up where James Dean left off. We'll never know, unfortunately, because while Elvis dreamed of being the next Dean or Brando, his manager Colonel Parker and studio executives saw him as little more than a bubblegum sweetheart and refused to cast him in anything but family-friendly Frankie Avalon roles. In fact, compared to Avalon's smoking and sexual hijinks, Elvis was even tamer than the former Mousketeer. Quite a blow for the man who was banned from television and sent upstanding citizens into fits of moral outrage. Odd that the one-time rebel of rock-n-roll ended up making beach movies that were far more wholesome than the beach films of family-friendly Mousketeers Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello. Their beach party films dripped with skimpy bikinis, women thrusting their groins into the camera, Frankie smoking cigarettes, Candy Johnson convulsing insanely to go-go music, and more sexual energy than you'd find in fifty nudie films. Elvis, by contrast, went in the opposite direction, from notorious sex-soaked bad boy to all-American good guy and friend to all children.

It's nothing new to sit back and bemoan the memory of the King of Rock 'n' Roll, that someone so dangerous to the public and so important to the development of contemporary music and culture is these days dismissed as little more than a sweaty, overweight sideshow freak in a sparkly jumpsuit. Imagine if people constantly drummed up the image of John Lennon not as a rock 'n' roll saint and visionary, but as a woman-beating lout who abandoned his son and protested the Vietnam war by checking in to an ultra-posh New York hotel and sleeping late. Unfortunately, everything about Presley was larger-than-life, and that includes his eventual fall from grace and into Graceland, making the circus version of Elvis in his later years impossible to forget. Not that I'm implying that it should be forgotten. It's part of Elvis, after all, and I'm not so serious and humorless a fan that I can't appreciate the quirks and tacky glamour of the Vegas era. I just think it's a shame that this is almost all anyone remembers. But what can you do?

Elvis's film career never became what he hoped it would, and as The King himself grew more and more disillusioned with the lot forced upon him by Parker and the studios, he let his frustration show in his performances. Why put forth much of an effort in something so insipid as Harum Scarum? Elvis' dreams and spirits were crushed into a finer powder with each movie, and there was no way he could keep his lack of enthusiasm behind the camera. Thus Elvis came to be regarded in time as a fairly sorry actor, which is an unfair assessment of his potential. One needs only to look at his early performances where he was allowed to flex a dramatic muscle instead of being strung along by pratfalls from one musical number to the next. There was a good actor in Elvis, and no one was ever interested in bringing out that part of him, not when they could put him in a funny hat and have him sing with clowns.

You'd think that the king of rock 'n' roll would have a little more pull behind the scenes. Sure, Beatlemania was a gathering storm, but Elvis was still a big draw, and he'd just come from the Army. Unfortunately for the King, Colonel Parker didn't have faith in him, especially since he'd been away serving for Uncle Sam the last couple years. Would people still remember they were nuts over the guy? Better not to risk alienating people, Parker's thinking went. Better to ease Elvis back onto the scene and see where he stood. Well, he still stood at the top of the heap. Absence had made the heart grow fonder, and Elvis was still the biggest name in show biz. The teens loved him, and since he'd done his time in the army, even the old fogies had to grudgingly grant the King his due. Hell, Sinatra chickened out of World War II, staying behind to hit on the girls of the men who did go over to fight, leaving the war to be won by guys like Jimmy Stewart. Can you imagine anyone in Hollywood today volunteering for wartime duty? Parker felt it was best to cater to Elvis' more widespread appeal. This wasn't time to turn Elvis back into a censor-outraging bad boy. The money was to be made by marketing him to as many demographics as possible, milking every last dollar out of the poor kid's popularity and not really worrying about what it did to him in the long run.

And since Elvis entrusted every business decision to Parker, he found himself signed away for a multi-picture deal with no real say in the material. And studio executives didn't want anything from Elvis except singing, dancing, and slapstick silliness. He was a singer, so he had to sing, and musicals had to be goofy. There you had it. About the only issue Elvis was able to force was making sure every script had at least one fist fight where he could show off his military judo skills. Elvis left the Army as a nut for the martial arts. If he was going to be in stupid musical comedies, at least he could judo the hell out of someone every now and then to work out some aggression.

Although they're the product of short-sightedness, lack of respect for Elvis, and reek of hackwork, not all of Elvis' movies are awful. Some are rather fun, at least early on before he felt completely defeated. In fact, there for a while it looked like Elvis might even have a fighting chance to become the actor he wanted to become. GI Blues was pretty goofy, but not awful at all, and his next two films, Flaming Star and Wild in the Country, were both grittier than one might expect given the rest of Elvis' filmography. Flaming Star was actually pretty good, and Elvis only had to sing twice.

Then came Blue Hawaii, and his fate was sealed. It was all goofball comedies from there on out.


You can't blame Blue Hawaii though, nor can you lump it in with Elvis' lesser efforts later on. It's just that Elvis was so popular in this type of role that it became all he ever got. Blue Hawaii is a tremendously enjoyable film, and it was his highest grossing film and soundtrack of all time. Next to Viva Las Vegas, it's my favorite Elvis film. In fact, while the "respectful" part of me wants to keep King Creole at the top of the list, the "honest" part of me has to admit that I enjoy Blue Hawaii even more. Elvis and Hawaii just fit well, and he's helped along by breathtaking photography, lush exotic South Seas locales, a competent supporting cast, witty script, and a host of good songs.

Elvis plays Chad Gates, a former beach bum just returned from his stint in the Army and looking to finally establish his own life after spending most of it under domineering eye of his Southern aristocrat mother (Angela Lansbury) and the comfort of his captain of industry father's wealth. Elvis is more interested in palling around with his Hawaiian surf buddies down by the beach bungalow than he is establishing his career in his pop's pineapple canning company. And he's more interested in wooing half-Hawaiian Maile (Joan Blackman) than he is in meeting any of the uppercrust white girls his mother keeps pushing on him. But his resistance to his parents' plans for him isn't mere youthful rebellion. He simply wants to prove himself on his own, without his family's money or nepotism. With Maile's help, Chad begins a career as a tour guide around Hawaii.

The plot is an excuse for two things - Elvis songs and gorgeous tropical travelogue shots. Even so, that doesn't mean the script is as throw-away as the scripts would be in later Elvis films or many of the Frankie and Annette beach movies. The plot may not be all that complex, but the dialog is well-written and witty. Elvis gets to fire off a lot of laugh-out-loud funny one-liners, and he shows a keen knack for comedic timing and delivery. When Maile admires the tiny little European bikini Chad brings back for her from Italy, she remarks that she can't believe he was thinking of her all those miles away. "I wasn't thinking of you," explains Elvis. "I was thinking of me."

OK, so it's not Monty Python cleverness, but it's about the best you can hope for from comedies at the time, and Elvis delivers each line with a zest and wink that we wouldn't see in another Southern performer until Bill Clinton won the Presidency. We also get one of the more believable Elvis romances. The relationship with Maile is established in the beginning of the film and continues to evolve throughout the story. This is quote different than the usual where Elvis would meet a woman in one scene and is smooching her just a scene later.

But the real meat of the plot is the conflict between Chad and his parents. Neither of his parents are awful people. The tendency in teen drama like this is to make the parents such broadly drawn caricatures of evil and oppression that you can't do anything but cheer for the young protagonist to overcome their backward thinking and vileness. But Chad's parents, played wonderfully by Roland Winters and a wildly over-the-top Angela Lansbury, are basically likable people. They simply have different values than their son. His dad doesn't want to do anything but fix his son up with a nice job. He couldn't care less who the boy hangs out with or who he dates so long as the financial future of his son is secure. Lasbury's Sarah Lee Gates is a little less sympathetic than the father, but she's also more entertaining. She's a spoof right out of Faulkner or Williams. Her only concern is prying Chad away from his native friends and installing him in the circles of upper crust white society on Hawaii. She has a streak of racism in her, but ultimately her motivation isn't a lack of respect for other races so much as it a fear that her son won't be accepted by others in the upper class social circles because he dates a Hawaiian girl and goes surfing with local boys. Her concern isn't race so much as it is class.

Elvis' character, on the other hand, represents what Elvis himself represented. Much to the consternation of people around him, Elvis was fond of palling around with blacks and other people of color. Although he's rarely cited, and some people even call him a racist, Elvis did a lot to break down racial barriers during his career. In Blue Hawaii, his character doesn't see people as a particular race or class. He sees them only as people, and what he sees is a lot of hypocrisy on the part of the whites who consider themselves better than the natives. His mother, for all her preaching about Southern morals and sophistication, drinks herself silly every night. And a drunken guy at a luau who tries to force himself on a one of a group of girls Elvis is in charge of (because there always has to be a group of girls) finds himself on the receiving end of some of that judo Elvis loved. And while the whites in the movie favor inheriting money and comfort, Chad, Maile, and their Hawaiian friends are fonder of making it on their own and proving themselves without having a financial windfall handed to them. In essence, they embody the hard work ethic of the South that Chad's mother seems to have forgotten.

Elvis' exchanges with his parents also contain one of my favorite examples of how you can take the boy out of the South, but you can't take the South out of the boy. When his dad resorts to the "my house, my rules" argument to get his son to start acting in line with their plans for him, Elvis leaves home and tells them off in the most polite way imaginable, even ending his goodbye with, "I'm sorry, sir." As some of y'all might know, I do my best to promote old style Southern manners and simple politeness, and Elvis always did his best to exhibit Southern kindness, even when he was fighting with his cinematic parents.

Of course, whatever social messages are embedded between the musical numbers are easily swept away by the cinematography. I'm a big fan of the travelogue portions of films from this era. They tackled each locale with wide-eyed awe, and I'm not cynical enough to consider the wonders of the world boring. Blue Hawaii's cinematography is simply lovely, taking full advantage of its lush island setting and leaving no famous feature unfilmed. Casting Elvis as an aspiring tour guide is the perfect excuse for wandering all over the islands and indulging every forest, mountain, cove, tiki resort, and pineapple field. We also get plenty of aloha shirts, hula girls, colorful bikinis and sarongs, and other early 1960s tropical fashion.


The songs in Elvis movies have a reputation for being even more throw-away than the scripts. They weren't churning out Sun Studios hits, after all. This was gutless Hollywood music, and since Elvis has to break into song at the drop of a hat (sometimes with less than a minute gone by since his last musical number), bad songs make for bad movie. Blue Hawaii, however, has more than its fair share of memorable songs, something that wouldn't happen in any of the subsequent films, where you were lucky to get even a single decent tune for Elvis to perform. But I like old exotica music a la Martin Denny and I like Elvis, so combining the two may be a bit ironic (since one was old folks' music and the other was the raging voice of youth) but it's quite pleasing to me.

"Blue Hawaii" is a wonderful ballad that would be covered but damn near everyone, and "No More" is another great song similar in spirit to "Now or Never," only with Polynesian influences instead of Mexican. The runaway hit here is "Can't Help Falling in Love," which ranks as one of my top five Elvis songs of all time, alongside tunes like "Marie's the Name of His Latest Flame," and "I Love You Because." Other songs are a wonderful blend of exotica and Elvis' unmatchable singing. Only the calypso-influenced "Ito Eats" is not worth listening to, but at least that one is accompanied by a heavyset guy making funny faces and stuffing his face full of food. All in all, there are fourteen musical numbers, the most elaborate of which is the "Hawaiian Wedding Song." Sometimes, there's hardly one or two lines of dialog before Elvis starts singing again, so you better like listening to the man sing. Of course, as far as I'm concerned, the only people who don't like to listen to Elvis sing are commie pinkos who drink the blood of murdered babies. No sir, you simply cannot trust someone who doesn't like Elvis' singing.

The King is in fine form here, both in the musical numbers and the film itself. He's looking lean and handsome and, well, like Elvis. One need only compare his appearance in this, his first beach film, to his appearance in his final beach film, Clambake, to see how quickly he started to go downhill once The Beatles hit the stage and people started losing interest. Even by Paradise Hawaiian Style, Elvis was keeping his shirt on through most of the movie. Here, he's frequently shirtless and wearing those tight little swimming trucks that were so popular in the 1950s and 1960s. Why? Because he could. He's also putting a lot of energy into his role, and the charisma that made him such a phenomenon oozes through.

The supporting cast gives him the support he needs. Joan Blackman is competent as his girlfriend. The guys who play his Hawaiian friends mostly have to sing, goof off, and have a hukilau. Nancy Walters plays a beautiful schoolteacher accompanying a gaggle of teenage girls Elvis has to chaperon around the islands, and she does well even if she's there ultimately to do nothing more than set up the unannounced walk-in that leads to the wacky romantic misunderstanding. To the film's credit, at least the comedic misunderstanding is cleared up quickly. Other movies would have stretched that out to be the entire plot. The group of girls are mostly interchangeable except for the late Jenny Maxwell (she and her husband were both murdered during a robbery in 1981) as the spoiled rich girl who must learn self-respect and respect for others. She also has to hit on Elvis and end up getting spanked by him. You know, in the admonishing way you'd spank a spoiled rich girl in a bikini to teach her a lesson; not in the kinky way.

MGM figured that if people liked Blue Hawaii then they might as well cast Elvis in films exactly like Blue Hawaii, playing characters exactly like his character in Blue Hawaii, for the rest of his career. Blue Hawaii itself was a wonderfully enjoyable, lighthearted romp through America's Polynesian paradise. It showcased an Elvis still energetic about acting and featured songs worth remembering. Although the exotica music movement of the 1960s highlighted by such conductors and performers as Martin Denny could be seen in a way to be diametrically opposed to the brash rock 'n' roll of Elvis, the merging of the two in Blue Hawaii probably did more to increase the popularity of exotica than any number of tiki bars and mai tais could have done on their own. Likewise, the film version of Elvis took his hard life, low-income roots and blew them up to giant proportions while conveniently leaving out most of what made him seem offensive to parents. The result was an Elvis parents could almost handle, one who sung show tunes about shrimp fishing and ice cream socials.

And if Blue Hawaii was popular, then why not repeat a winning combination and shuffle the King off to the South Seas again as soon as they could get the tickets?

Labels: Beach Party Tonight, Musicals, Stars: Elvis, Year: 1961