Stay Away, Joe * (1968, Elvis Presley, Burgess Meredith, Joan Blondell, Katy Jurado, Thomas Gomez) – Classic Movie Review 9990

Director Peter Tewkesbury’s 1968 romantic musical comedy drama Stay Away, Joe stars Elvis Presley as a mixed race American Indian rodeo champ called Joe Lightcloud who helps out back home on his family’s traditional Native American reservation territory, where he talks a Congressman into granting cattle-herding rights.

In even more peculiar casting, Burgess Meredith plays Elvis’s dad, Charlie Lightcloud, while Mexican star Katy Jurado plays Annie Lightcloud and New Yorker Thomas Gomez plays Grandpa.

Stay Away, Joe is a misguided later vehicle for Presley that tries to sell his (frankly more or less non-existent) talent for comedy in an entirely wrong setting.

Presley appears at his least dynamic and charismatic here, and Stay Away, Joe is unsatisfying, exploitative nonsense that uses an intriguing cast to play up to awful Hollywood stereotypes of how American Indians behave ‘at home’.

The best advice is Stay Away, though there is some comfort in the performances of the support cast, especially of Joan Blondell, Katy Jurado, Thomas Gomez, Henry Jones and L Q Jones.

The songs include: ‘Dominic’, ‘Stay Away, Joe’, ‘Lovely Mamie’, ‘All I Needed Was the Rain’, ‘Stay Away’ and the one hit, ‘US Male’. It has been pointed out that the opening song ‘Stay Away’ has the same melody as ‘Greensleeves’.

Also in the cast are Quentin Dean, Anne Seymour, Douglas Henderson, Angus Duncan, Michael Lane and Susan Trustman.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9990

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