Live A Little, Love A Little (1968, Norman Taurog)

Live A Little, Love A Little is a bizarre screwball comedy that suffers, burning the candle at both ends:  not only do the screenwriters not fully embrace the full wackiness needed to elevate Michele Carey's character to a Hepburn's Susan Vance of Bringing Up Baby (or even Streisand's Judy Maxwell in the later What's Up, Doc?), it also can't emasculate Elvis.  Although Elvis never had a problem condescending for a laugh, the film wouldn't take the risk of letting him clown too much.  The couple meet cute, but there isn't anything neurotic or lacking enough in Elvis's Greg Nolan to convince us that the two need to be together.  After all, this is an Elvis that just married off three potential suitors Spinout and walked off into the sunset.

But it very nearly gets it right.  What begins as a ridiculous male fantasy with a beautiful (perhaps mentally unstable) woman relentlessly throwing herself at our hero ends with a clear domestication of the male spirit.  It's playfully subversive romance that resolves like the gender roles in (another photography movie) Rear Window. "I'm a man, I like to make decisions for myself.  If you ever start thinking like a woman, you'll understand what that means," Elvis's Greg Nolan tells "Bernice" (the stunning Michele Carey) in an argument.  But it's clear who's on the leash when, upon reconciliation at the beach, Bernice tells Greg "I'll meet you half way," only they embrace without her taking a single step.

Bernice spots Greg on the beach one morning though her telescope and sends her Great Dane, Albert down to exert a little muscle.  It's one of the few altercations Elvis doesn't win:  Albert chases him into the ocean and Greg is played for a fool.  Bernice (or is it Alice? Or Betty? Suzie?) has different names for different moods and each man in her life knows her by a different one.  She's clearly meant to embody the late '60s free spirit who uses sex to hide the fear of connecting with someone in love.  Kinda like Julie Christie in Petulia (or David Warner in Morgan!): the anarchic world is treated by youth with lunacy.  Bernice is the sexual aggressor, and that, too, is something an Elvis character is unfamiliar with.  She dangles the carrot in front of many faces, but she is played more a headcase than a tramp.  And it is such behavior that provokes Greg's jealousy, flipping the script, painting the typical Elvis role as hypocritical.

Bernice quickly loses Greg's apartment and job, finds him a new apartment and pays his back rent, making him deeply indebted to her.  In an act of counter-aggression (preserving his male dominance), he gets not one, but two simultaneous jobs as photographer (one a very professional, conservative publisher, another for a more casual girlie magazine).  Shenanigans ensue as Greg juggles two jobs and Bernice juggles men, always subverting said dominance. 

It's a real shame that throughout the many Elvis musicals, there was never anything cinematic about the numbers.  The closest he ever came was probably "Jailhouse Rock", but even that looks like it was a filmed version of something produced for a stage.  Too often, the choreography would have action surrounding Elvis, but he would just be standing, awkwardly snapping (or worse, rhythmically clapping) and staring into the camera.  Live A Little, Love A Little isn't a conventional musical, but they procure a decent number in a dream sequence that involves a man talking to Greg from inside a dog suit, Greg falling into a psychedelic rabbit hole and then performing "Edge of Reality" on a desolate sound stage.  Really?  A very visual photographer has a psychedelic dream and the location is pastel disco-lit non-location white room?

The other numbers (of which there are very few) are less performance than narrative.  They include the once obscure "A Little Less Conversation", whose remixed version would become a number one hit in the UK 25 years after Presley's death. 

Live A Little, Love A Little is full of beautiful women and, while they try to throw in a side romance with Celeste Yarnall, the chemistry between Presley and Carey is spot on.  It may be the only true Presley romance, as the formula of his prior seventeen films had the romance as a side dish: a free dessert that cost nothing of the characters and was, therefore, of little value.  That isn't to blow this light screwball comedy out of proportion, but the film is stronger because there are stakes involved.

This would be Taurog's last film before he was overcome with blindness, but his eye for comedy and beautiful women is in full force here.  Dumb touches like Elvis speeding around the beach in a dune buggy and Albert the Great Dane making faces and covering his eyes are shot without a shred of irony and fit the tone of the picture.  Elvis even decks Darrin #2 from "Bewitched".  Consider it Presley's first film as an "adult"-- formula would take a backseat in the few remaining films of Presley's career, and each are better for it.  Live A Little, Love A Little is a fine swansong to the testament of Taurog's work. -- **½ / four stars


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Speedway (1968, Norman Taurog)

In a recent episode of "Khloé and Lamar", it was revealed that Los Angeles Lakers forward Lamar Odom has been paying rent for 22 of his friends.  Victim of a big heart?  Sure.  Hanging out with the wrong crowd?  Absolutely.  But those answers are too easy.  There is a reason why over sixty percent of NBA players are broke five years after retirement: often the people with the most money have no concept of its value.  That and the entourage.

Elvis's own entourage, The Memphis Mafia, a group of twentysome good ol' boys, many of whom Elvis's childhood friends he "rescued" from poverty, followed Presley everywhere he went on his dime.  Historian Patrick Humphries summed up the Mafia as "Elvis' bodyguards, babysitters, drug procurers, girl-getters, mates and carbuyers."  I wonder how much of Presley's earnings were seen by him in his heyday:  not only was the Colonel reaping upward to 50%, many of the Memphis Mafia were getting upwards to $500 a week.  They partied with Elvis every day and every night, trafficking the drugs Presley requested and taking pills just to keep up with one another.  And they nearly despised Priscilla who made (most of) them move out of Graceland after the wedding in 1967.

Lechers, probably, but that isn't to say the Mafia was all bad:  in some ways the Memphis Mafia may have prevented the actual mafia from stepping in and trying to overtake Presley's career in a way that dogged Frank Sinatra's career.  Realistically, it probably wasn't too dissimilar from an actual job for many of them, waiting on the King's every whim, day or night.  To live near Elvis was to have a seat aboard the gravy train:  his concept of wealth was the ability to lavish gifts onto others.  He gave to charities and he gave frivolously.  It is only natural that people took advantage of this generosity, much like Jamie takes lecherous advantage of Lamar Odom.

Speedway is a strange narrative of a problem only relevant to such a minority of celebrity.  Elvis plays stock car racer Steve Grayson with all the same problems as Elvis:  he has more money than he knows what to do with, so he spends it on the most frivolous gimmicks imaginable with the intent to lure women.  His lecherous "manager" Kenny (Bill Bixby) is his childhood friend who Steve shares his women and bankbook with.  Kenny's love of luxury and gambling get Steve unknowingly in trouble with IRS, and agent Susan Jacks (Nancy Sinatra) swoops in to investigate.

In film is more overtly sexist than most Elvis pictures, and for much of the film Steve and Kenny live out a bros-before-hoes philosophy, pulling the obnoxious Gene Wilder trick of self-referentially stating your intentions clearly through the fourth wall though the women are too dense to pickup "I have a little trick of my own, [it'll only take a minute]" is a double entendre.  Steve is the kinda guy that can owe the IRS insurmountable sums, strong-arm (and sweet-talk?!) a female IRS agent, and still have everything work out for him.  But like any Elvis picture, it's more morally ambiguous than that.  Steve (like Elvis) is also extremely charitable, dishing out money to help an out of work racing buddy who somehow is the father to five motherless girls all between the age of three and six. 

What begins as buying a hot dog dinner turns into a real-life Elvis situation of buying automobiles to help the family.  Steve encounters Ellie (Victoria Paige Meyerink), a precocious young girl (the only way they show up in any Elvis movie), and even sings her a slightly creepy song about how it would probably be inappropriate for the two of them to get married, but reassures her that she will be a beautiful woman.  For the record, that didn't exactly pan out.

Nancy Sinatra appears courtesy of two number one singles ("These Boots Are Made For Walkin'" and "Somethin' Stupid") and a dropout by Petula Clark.  Her performance is passable, but the chemistry uninspired but, to be fair, you could probably say that about many of Presley's performances.  She does get to perform a snaky "Your Groovy Self", much in the same vein as "Boots".  Sinatra has a great mod look that isn't really used in the film, and her lip-syncing skills weren't exactly up to par.

A performance I was much more into was a straight-faced daffy, choreographed number by Presley and businessmen in an IRS office called "He's Your Uncle, Not Your Dad".  Taurog's earnest style treats the material like it's Vincente Minnelli.  You'd never use the word "sublime" to describe the musical numbers in an Elvis comedy, but it's not for any lack of effort on Taurog's behalf.  It's ridiculous, campy and a joy.

It's notable that Speedway doesn't really pan out for its hero in the end.  Unlike Viva Las Vegas, after having to also build an engine overnight, Steve fails to win the big race.  The movie ends with him still being on the hook for $137,000, still enabling (or is it, being enabled by) Kenny, and everyone is blissfully ignorant because Elvis and Nancy kiss.  It isn't troublesome that Steve wrecked his car twice in 24 hours, there is no fear of Steve falling into the same trouble as the disabled Abel Esterlake.  The moral is youth known no bounds, and the consequences are as light.  But say what you will, it can't be called hypocritical.  Elvis lived his life the same way and managed to get out of his soured movie career.  Speedway would be his last significant box-office success and his last traditional, teen-oriented musical-comedy.  He would finally be able to take on more "adult" roles, which is pretty funny considering the lifestyle perpetuated by Speedway, a Peter Pan syndrome enabled by uncountable sums of money, was how he would continue living until his death in 1977. -- *½ / four stars


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Stay Away, Joe (1968, Peter Tewksbury)

The worst of the worst, Elvis takes on an unforgivable role of a Native American, eating up every stereotype in the book.  Elvis in redface doesn't look much different than tan Elvis in Paradise, Hawaiian Style, and doesn't attempt (though probably a good thing) to sound like anyone but Elvis.  Katharine Hepburn's role in Dragon Seed was unforgivable, and that was 1944.  At the height of the civil rights movement, it is a wonder this ill-advised film got off the ground.  Native Americans are drunks, loafers, brawlers and brothers in the worst possible sense.  Always played for comedy, one Native American character falls asleep in an outdoor bathtub (see, the Native American is uncivilized-- nay-- savage, as even their modern homes and vehicles are rundown) with a drunken smile, up to his neck in beer cans.  Unlike the typical Elvis brawl for loyalty or chivalry, here much of the tribe comes together in a bar and duke it out for kicks.  No one is even upset with each other, that's just life on the rez.  A similar scene happens earlier when Elvis and co. wrestle around, treating women like cavemen dragging women by the hair, before the good ol' boys all splashdown in the watering hole.  All of the fighting action is accompanied with Looney Tunes thunks, boinks and whistles, missing only a laugh track that could be useful in something of such ill-humor.

Filmed in Sedona, Arizona, Stay Away, Joe stars Presley as rodeo star and half-breed Navajo Joe Lightcloud.  But this is no Flaming Star.  The characteristics that make Joe a success are in direct opposition to the things that make him Native American.  He has pull in the "real world" because he has stepped away from the reservation.  He makes his money away from his tribe and, though he has a strong family loyalty, this isn't represented so much as a Navajo trait but a decent, human one.  After all, Joe has been to the enlightened side and his return to the reservation seems more of a responsibility.

To prove that the Navajo aren't altogether worthless, Joe has somehow convinced his congressman to give him a bull and 20 heifers upon his return to the reservation.  It seems like an impossible task, but he wants to train up the tribe in how to raise cattle on their land.  Working alongside his father Charlie (Burgess Meredith in war paint), the challenge is a treadmill.  The Keystone tribe quickly barbeques the bull, and Joe sells off the remaining cattle to modernize his stepmother's house.  Meanwhile, Joe is being chased by naive Mamie (Quentin Dean) who has her shotgun toting mother convinced the savage laid her.  The conflict culminates in a wedding in which the mother proclaims, "I've never been so ashamed in my life."  While certainly a racist sentiment, the quote should have been a public apology for everyone involved in the film's production.

The film is full of slapstick, but it certainly is not humorous.  The fighting and action is all over the place, but its anarchy is indecipherable with no narrative purpose other than stereotype.  The film ends with everything in shambles.  The government aid was floundered, the upgraded home disheveled; it's as if the filmmakers had been given a potentially strong metaphor of what Navajo life must have been like at a rocky time in our nation's cultural history (a metaphor, perhaps, spelled out in the book and completely misinterpreted?), and squander it without the slighest recognition.  Worse, the movie ends with the tribe looking the most irresponsible in a film of buffoonery.  If the lesson to be gleaned was to let the tribe be happy on its own terms, the terms are spelled out through mindless inebriation and guffaws.

It's something similar to Billy Jack (white guy trained in Karate plays a half-Indian the white women can't stay away from) but, where that suffers from amateurish, one-dimensional contrived moral sympathies, at least it's wanting you to feel something.  Billy Jack uses politics as a narrative device without giving them any depth beyond brutality (which, too, is pretty irresponsible in a movie about the Natives' "loyalty" played by a white man), while Stay Away, Joe skirts political debate to laugh it all off.  The final laugh isn't a cynical, hopeless one in which to laugh is our only response to the world's anarchy, it's a cop-out-- a filmmakers' irresponsibility that paints the Native irresponsible.

Also, Elvis sings a song to a bull.

Strangely, outside of some really bad grease paint, Elvis looks not only healthy, but happy in the motionless narrative.  Perhaps the shiftless hi-jinks of the movie played right into the attitude Elvis's Memphis Mafia were used to on the earlier movie sets.  Elvis's entourage had to be warned on the set of Clambake to keep the practical joking to a minimum.  Here, instead, two of them (Joe Esposito and Charlie Hodge) were given bit roles.  Perhaps Presley was finally resigned to the contractual nonsense (and in this way, maybe the metaphor to the Native Americans dealing with bureaucracy finally does make a little sense) and realized, if you can't beat 'em, laugh. -- ZERO/four stars

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