King Creole **** (1958, Elvis Presley, Carolyn Jones, Walter Matthau, Dean Jagger, Dolores Hart, Vic Morrow) – Classic Movie Review 2198

Just a couple or so of times, Elvis Presley had great film directors to work for and here he is in his third film, which is perhaps his best movie, working with the legendary Oscar-winning Casablanca director Michael Curtiz in 1958.

The King stars in this fascinating mix of film noir crime drama and rock ‘n roll musical, as Danny Fisher, a nightclub singer caught up in the New Orleans underworld as he rises to stardom. Playing a nightclub singer rising to stardom is fairly easy for fledgling actor Elvis as it’s a character he’s played before and also a role close to his heart and experience, apart from the wholly invented melodramatic underworld plotting of course.

A Harold Robbins novel called A Stone for Danny Fisher supplies the decent, feverish plotting, which manages to be both sufficiently involving and reasonably cliché-ridden, with a sharp enough screenplay by Herbert Baker and Michael Vincente Gazzo.

While Elvis is doing his thing as Danny Fisher who takes a job as a singer in the King Creole nightclub, Walter Matthau, Dean Jagger and Carolyn Jones provide the outstanding star support and real acting as, respectively, Presley’s smarmy crook boss Maxie Fields, father Mr Fisher and girlfriend Ronnie, an innocent five-and-dime store assistant.

Presley’s fledgling acting, under Curtiz’s authoritarian direction that angered him, impresses and promised much for his film future. Russell Harlan’s black and white cinematography looks chic and is very striking, though arguably colour would have been even nicer.

The 13 nifty new songs include ‘King Creole’, ‘Steadfast Loyal and True’ and ‘Trouble’ (all by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller), ‘Hard-Headed Woman’, ‘As Long As I Have You’, ‘Lover Doll’ and ‘Crawfish’.

Also among the cast are Dolores Hart as Elvis’s girlfriend Nellie, Paul Stewart, Vic Morrow, Liliane Montevecchi, Jan Shepard, Brian G Hutton, Jack Grinnage, Dick Winslow, Raymond Bailey, Ned Glass, John Indrisano, Franklyn Farnum, Val Avery, Sam Buffington, Charles Evans, Alexander Lockwood, Walter Merrill, Ziva Rodann, Ric Roman and Fred Winston.

 Hart was also cast as Elvis’s girlfriend in Loving You (1957).

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2198

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