King Creole

1958

PG

Yacs here again with another movie review and I want to try to get into a groove of doing movie reviews. I have piled up a bunch of Elvis movies over the last few months in my movie collection and I wanted to start watching some of them. I reviewed Love Me Tender and Viva Las Vegas over the last year and I thought both of them were decent, but not great. I wanted to check out King Creole for a couple of reasons. For starters, I knew the soundtrack very well and it happens to be the highest rated film in Elvis’s repertoire. I wanted to see if it lived up to the hype.

The story revolves around Danny Fisher (Elvis Presley), who is a young man trying to juggle graduating high school and supporting his family. He lives with his sister Mimi (Jan Shepard) and his father (Dean Jagger). His mother died just a few years before and his father had a difficult time with her passing. Mr. Fisher lost his job as a pharmacist and was forced to move out of their house. Now they live in the French Quarter of New Orleans and Danny works as a busboy at a popular nightclub in the area. At the nightclub, we are introduced to a lady named Ronnie (Carolyn Jones) and when the man she was with that night starts to belittle her and push her around, Danny defends her. We then see him at high school and it happens to be the last day of school. His teacher and principal inform him that he will not graduate and he wants nothing to do with school any more. Mr. Fisher wants him to finish school, but Danny wants to work to help support him and his sister. Danny also doesn’t approve of the way they treat his father at his new place of employment, which is another thing on his mind.

After having a spat with his father, Danny runs up on some guys in an alley. Shark (Vic Morrow), who happens to be the leader of the little gang, found out that Danny attacked his brother in school. Danny is prepared for the attack and has Shark against the wall and then he eases up. Shark makes an offer to Danny to aid in robbing a local five-and-dime store. Instead of actually robbing the store, he causes a distraction by singing and playing the guitar, which gets the attention of everyone, especially Nellie (Delores Hart), who happens to work at the store’s snack bar. She likes him, but has trouble understanding why.

Danny goes back to work as a busboy at the nightclub and we are introduced to crooked nightclub owner, Maxie Fields (Walter Matthau). Ronnie is now in what appears to be a forced relationship with Maxie and he gets abusive when it appears that Ronnie knows who Danny is. She tells Maxie that he was singing at a club that she was at and Maxie request that Danny sings with the band. In the process, Maxie and another club owner in the area, Charlie LeGrand offer Danny a job to sing every night. Danny decides to take the job with LeGrand and in the process, he finds himself in a few predicaments along the way and the rest of the film is about him dealing with conflicts with Maxie Fields and choosing to pursue a relationship with Nellie or save Ronnie from her miserable relationship with Fields.

This was Elvis’s 4th film that he was featured in and to be honest, it was his best. I think I can confidently say that despite only seeing a handful of his films. King Creole was a great movie. The story seemed to flow naturally and Elvis was great in the role of the main character. The movie was loosely based on the book, A Stone for Danny Fisher, which is one that I haven’t read, but it seems interesting enough. The film is in black and white, which is a turn off for many people, but I personally don’t care as long as the story is interesting and it was.

Elvis was surrounded by a really great cast as well, which helped boost the intrigue. Carolyn Jones was most famous for her role in The Addams Family series, but she was already an established actress prior to King Creole. Walter Matthau was a star in the making and he was known for Grumpy Old Men, The Odd Couple movie, and I personally remember him most from The Bad News Bears. Delores Hart had a promising acting career, but only acted in a few other films after King Creole, because she went on to become a nun. I don’t think I have ever seen that in Hollywood before, but I guess there is a first for everything. She still happens to be an active nun today at age 81.

I enjoyed King Creole, but it is difficult to ignore minor details in the movie. Some of the camera shots weren’t the greatest, but I feel like I have to be a little forgiving due to the fact that the film was released in 1958. This was the last film that Elvis shot before going into the Army, which made it a little bittersweet at the time I’d have to imagine. Another interesting fact about this movie is that in Mexico City, the film was banned in all of Mexico due to a riot that took place at a local cinema in town during the premiere. Besides the fact that I wanted to watch some movies that Elvis starred in, the thing that drew me to this movie was the soundtrack as I mentioned earlier. It is, by far, the best movie soundtrack in his library. Two singles were released from the album and both reached number one in some capacity. “Hard Headed Woman” was his biggest hit from the album and “King Creole” reached number one in Sweden, but wasn’t released in many countries, including the US oddly enough.

I’m not a big movie musical guy, but I guess if I have to watch them, ones with Elvis in the film are probably ideal. Like I said before, I can confidently say already that this was his best film, without seeing the majority of his films. On record, Elvis even said that this film was his most fun to shoot and I can see that. This role came natural to him, because in many minor ways, Danny Fisher was pretty similar to himself. Some may think that I am slightly overrating this film, but based on the fact that I think it is his best, I think it deserves a solid 4/5.

GRADE: 4.0/5

Yacs

Movie Review: King Creole