Elvis Films FAQ: All That's Left to Know About the King of Rock 'n' Roll in Hollywood by Paul Simpson

Author:Paul Simpson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: musician, film
Publisher: Applause Theatre & Cinema Books
Published: 2013-10-30T16:00:00+00:00

Lizabeth Scott’s career was hurt by insinuations that she was a “baritone babe”—code for lesbian in 1950s scandal sheets.

Onscreen, her rapport with Presley is one of the strongest aspects of Loving You. They even make their brief May–September romance convincing. The mawkish scene in the cemetery, where Presley fesses up that he stole the name Deke Rivers from a gravestone, could have been lachrymose but is quite affecting.

Sadly for Scott, that was almost her swan song in Hollywood. She would have to wait fifteen years to make her next movie, Mike Hodges’s Pulp, a satire of detective movies starring Michael Caine that has acquired a cult following. Scott isn’t bad in that either. Apart from Loving You, she is best known for her role as Toni, a blonde from the wrong side of the tracks, in Lewis Milestone’s classic noir The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946).

Judy Tyler (1932–1957): Jailhouse Rock

Just the kind of petite brunette that appealed to Elvis in real life, Tyler sparks off the King so well in as record plugger Peggy Van Alden, it’s hard to believe this was only her second feature-film. Tyler had showbiz in her blood—her father was a trumpeter for Paul Whiteman and Benny Goodman—and came to prominence on the Howdy Doody series as Princess Summerfall Winterspring.

Presley was infatuated with her and was so stricken by her shocking death three weeks after the shoot finished, he couldn’t bear to watch the film. She died in a terrible road accident—police reports suggest her body was virtually cut in half—alongside her second husband, actor Gregory LaFayette. Singer/actor Kenny Baker recorded a tribute song in her memory titled “Goodbye Little Star” (1959).

Dolores Hart (1938– ): King Creole

A young actress who always gave off an innocent glow, even when the King was inviting her to enter a seedy hotel room in King Creole, Hart is now known, in tabloid shorthand, as the nun who kissed Elvis.

Another of Wallis’s discoveries, Hart co-starred with Elvis in Loving You (1957) and King Creole (1958). As Susan Jessup, she had little to do but look pure and sweet in her first Presley movie, but in King Creole she is quietly, unshowily impressive in the challenging role of Nellie, an innocent awakened by love. She and Presley blushed so much during one scene that they required extra makeup. In 2003, she said of her famous co-star: “If there is anything I am most grateful for it is the privilege of being one of the few people left to acknowledge he was an innocent.”

She later starred in the college comedy Where the Boys Are (1960), a precursor to the King’s Girl Happy, and Michael Curtiz’s biopic Francis of Assisi (1961). She retired two years later, saying, “I’d done two movies with Elvis Presley. I’d been around Hollywood for a while—and saw how needlessly competitive and negative it could be. It never held my interest.” She joined a convent and is now the Reverend Mother Dolores Hart, prioress of Regina Laudis (Queen of Praise) Abbey in Bethlehem, Connecticut.

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