Elvis Presley

KING CREOLE: the good Elvis movie

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Photo caption: Elvis Presley and Carolyn Jones in KING CREOLE.

If you think that Elvis Presley never made a good movie, you haven’t seen the outstanding MIchael Curtiz crime drama King Creole (1958). Elvis plays Danny, an impoverished wannabe singer who becomes entangled in the New Orleans underworld when he attracts the romantic interest of a sultry Bad Girl (Carolyn Jones), whose boyfriend is the local gangster kingpin (Walter Matthau).

There’s a lot of story packed in King Creole:

  • Will Danny survive his run-ins with Matthau’s menacing crime lord and with the street thug Shark (Vic Morrow)?
  • Will Danny will choose Jones’ Bad Girl over Dolores Hart’s Good Girl?
  • Can Danny repair the difficult relationship with his father (Dean Jagger)?
  • Will Danny make it as a professional singer? (Okay – not much suspense in that one.).

King Creole was shot when Elvis had just turned 22. Having just gotten his draft notice; it was his last film before his military service. This was way, way before Elvis was known for karate kicks, spangles and massive belt buckles. At 22. has only his voice, looks, energy and magnetism – and that’s plenty.

This was Elvis’ favorite of his movie performances, and his charisma, deployed in a grown-up story, makes us wonder what might have been had he returned to well-written screenplays.

Elvis Presley in KING CREOLE.

Of course, Elvis sings in the movie, which resulted in a pretty strong soundtrack album. The film opens with Elvis and Kitty White’s call-and-response duet of Crawfish. Then we hear Danny’s nightclub numbers, including Trouble, As Long As I Have You, King Creole and Hard Hearted Woman.

Elvis Presley and Dolores Hart in KING CREOLE.

Jones, now best remembered for her campy Morticia in The Addams Family, had 44 previous screen credits, but only one as the female lead in a feature film. Besides future stars Matthau and Vic Morrow, the cast features past Oscar-winner Dean Jagger and the reliable noir stalwart Paul Stewart. Dolores Hart was the only Elvis co-star to become a nun in real life.

I got to see King Creole on the big screen at the 2026 Noir City in Oakland, and I featured it in my festival preview. At the screening, guest host Alan K. Rode explained that Elvis was fearful that rock and roll was just a fad, and that he would need to pivot his career. Aspiring to become the next James Dean, he signed with veteran producer Hal Wallis with the request that, after Presley’s Army service, Wallis would help get Elvis into the Actor’s Studio for training.

Until Rode’s introductory remarks, I didn’t know that most of the film was shot in Hollywood. Curtiz made the most of the nine filming days in New Orleans, resulting in a NOLA-drenched effect.

I first discovered King Creole by reading one of Sheila O’Malley’s essays in her blog The Sheila Variations, well before she became one of the film critics on Ebert.com. O’Malley is the best writer about King Creole, and along with Peter Guralnick and Adam Gopnik, among the very best writers on Elvis. Here’s a sample: King Creole (1958): The Dreamspace of New Orleans.

King Creole plays occasionally on Turner Classic Movies and can be streamed from Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube and Fandango.

Elvis Presley and Vic Morrow in KING CREOLE.

EPiC: ELVIS PRESLEY IN CONCERT: pure Elvis

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Photo caption: Elvis Presley in EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, Courtesy of NEON.

The appeal of the documentary EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert is that it’s pretty much just Elvis, and that’s both entertaining and insightful. The film focuses on Elvis’ ten-year residency in Las Vegas, where he performed 1100 shows, sometimes as many three in an evening. All we see is archival film (some never-before-seen) of Elvis performing, rehearsing, getting to and from shows and being interviewed. Other than the voices of interviewers, we only hear the words of Elvis himself.

There are bits where he reflects on his mother, his army service and Colonel Parker. The most revealing elements of EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert are:

  • His unfilled aspirations to make better movies and to perform in Europe and Japan.
  • His patience and generosity to the fans who want to inavde his personal space by touching and kissing him. Asked about the frenzy of crazed adulation, he says he accepts it as part of the job and that it doesn’t bother him. He reflects for a moment and then says that he thinks he would miss it. Wow.
  • Despite his reputation for being both simple and mercurial, his calm discipline when being asked the most ridiculous and provocative questions, and his refusal to take the bait and be trapped into controversy.
  • Elvis’ playfulness, both behind the scenes and on-stage, often referencing his own image. He seemed to deal with the grind with jokiness.
  • The unusual continuity in his band over a decade, which indicates that the musicians must have liked him as a person and found him easy to work with. His corny gags and goofiness seem to keep the work fun for the band.

EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert is the first documentary feature directed by the famed Baz Luhrmann, whose work over the past twenty-five years I have despised as shallow eye-candy. After starting with the sweet little Strictly Ballroom and the visually spectacular Moulin Rouge, Luhrmann has made garish, hackneyed crap like Australia and The Great Gatsby. Here’s my rant on his recent biographical narrative Elvis.

But Luhrmann really can’t add an excess of glitz to somebody who is karate-kicking in white bellbottoms, with his fringe swishing and his massive belt buckle gleaming.

So, what we have hear is pure unfiltered Elvis, not interpreted by someone else, except, of course, for Luhrman’s choices in what to put in and what to leave out. One of Luhrmann’s best choices is an extended segment near the end of the film – an epic performance of Suspicious Minds with Elvis teasing out one faux finale after another. This clip brings together many of the themes in EPiC – Elvis’s charisma and magnetism, his showmanship and relationship to a live audience, his command of performance and his playfulness.

EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert is streaming on Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube and Fandango.