Kid Galahad

Kid Galahad

United States - 1962

Director- Peter R. Hunt

MGM Home Entertainment, 2005, DVD

Walter Gulick (Elvis) returns from a stint in the army to a small town in the hills of upstate New York where he was born. There, in a sort of hunting cabin resort is Grogan’s Gaelic Gardens, a boxing training camp where a bunch of sluggos get trained by the one and only Charles Bronson, as “Lew”, though the distinction hardly matters.
Looking for a job as a mechanic, Walter finds one instead as a punching bag for Grogan’s house champ at five bucks a match. Grogan is a charming fellow to be sure, but even without the parade of character flaws that follows his introduction you would get a slightly sleazy feeling off of him.
Elvis, er, Walter knocks his opponent out in one punch, and Grogan sleazes up a quick match with a rival agent. I get the feeling he’s going to learn his lesson with a sheepish grin at the end of the movie but I’m still going to think he’s a knob.Anyway, the stupid idiot can’t quit gambling his money away piecemeal. The only thing keeping him afloat -albeit barely- are his girlfriend Dolly who for whatever reason tolerates his disrespect, and Lew who actually does something useful.
Grogan calls his kid sister Rose (Joan Blackman) to ask for 200 bucks but instead she comes home from the Bronx all woman and showing it. Suddenly there is a promising sign of life from the glazed and overfed Elvis. Assuming staring slackjawed indicates a heartbeat. Later when they’re hanging out in the driveway he warbles out a song while looking at Rose like she’s a giant package of hotdogs. (Blackman also appeared in Blue Hawaii among other stuff but what I like best is her role as the elevator mother in Cronenberg’s Shivers.)


Walter drives to his first fight singing away while ever-ready Bronson grins like a pig in shit from the backseat. Walter manages to win the match with one punch after receiving a long string of unblocked blows to the face. It does feel good to watch something beautiful get smashed. At a picnic minutes later he busts out into a song about Rose again while all the other palookas provide harmony right behind them on the picnic table. As if Walter’s hungry gaze weren’t enough he sings about getting lucky while Rose swivels woozily in a canary-yellow dress. This guy is the popular good-looking kid who’s naturally great at the stuff you’ve struggled and practiced at forever. Everybody - especially girls - think he’s the greatest even though he’s dumb as a rock. Don’t you just want to see his face get smashed?

Otherwise useless as a man, Grogan attacks Walter for those very qualities, but in a surprising moment of clarity, (I’m guessing he just drank a glass of maple syrup) Walter synopsizes the entire films prior exposition of Grogan’s flailing impotence in a few short sentences. Just as the real cock-fight is about to begin though, Dolly reappears and confirms Walter's claims in an ego busting maneuver sure to elicit that last minute recalcitrance I mentioned. Hell, Grogan’s only got 20 minutes to win back the 2nd hottest gal in the film.
In a blind rage, Grogan arranges to have Galahad fight a professional bare-handed horse-killer.

Subsequent Bronson/Elvis training scenes confirm that the rest of the boxers have stopped training and are merely waiting in the wings to pop up as backup singers when Elvis decides to slur out a song.Grogan’s mafia debtors are counting on their killer to render the well-fatted and golden brown Walter into dog food, so they smash Lew’s hands to seal the gig. Grogan walks in on the scene, and knowing the importance of Bronson he takes the goons on himself. Just as they’re getting the better of him, Walter shows up to save the day and feed Grogan some of that happy butter cream glaze that makes a man all fat and sappy.

I guess this bears some resemblance to the 1937 Humphrey Bogart film of the same name though it’s hard to tell if Bogart or Elvis singing is more entertaining. I do like both believe it or not. But in all honesty it’s a moot point because this one features Bronson, and that seals the deal for me.

Let's see, a Spanish poster, an American poster, the original Ep cover for the songs on the soundtrack and a dandy still photo of Elvis.

It Happened At the World's Fair

It Happened at the World’s Fair

United States - 1962

Director – Norman Taurog

Warner Home Video, 2004, DVD

Of all the many Elvis films out there for consideration, this one caught my eye because it's set at the Seattle World's Fair of 1962. This holds the promise of many unintended contextual amusements when viewed across the yawning expanse of 47 years. The first of these is the Seattle Center setting. Although the majority of the film does not actually take place at the fair itself, it features many shots of the same crumbling architecture we still enjoy today and which intermittently catches fire and shoots sparks into the streets below. Keep in mind, 5 years previous Sputnik had rocketed into space and the interstellar nuclear slapstick was fully underway. Because it was the early 60's, America was hitting the peak of space-race hysteria and if we didn’t get there first and fiercest, the Commies would be delivering a payload of beets and vodka straight into the foyer of every suburban split-level ranch-style bungalow by Friday.

Space car equals 100% awesome.

Our buddy Elvis, or Mike Edwards if you will, is a low-rent crop-duster pilot, out one plane because of his partner Danny's gambling problem. Headed to Seattle to find work, Mike and Danny hit up the World's Fair where they meet a little girl, Sue Lin, and a big girl, a nurse named Diane. Mike falls for both, trying to smooth talk Diane (with the help of 11-year-old Kurt Russel who one year later would star in Guns of Diablo with Charles Bronson) while he feeds Sue Lin cotton candy.

Mike strikes out on the grown one, but when Sue Lin's uncle disappears, he takes it upon himself to care for her until he is found. Already seemingly aware of the clueless idiocy of horny males at the age of 6, Sue Lin fakes an illness so that Diane will see how "tender" Mike really is. We of course already know the truth of this because of the cloyingly saccharine kiddie-Rock-and-Roll songs he keeps warbling.

Danny meanwhile has cooked up a shady deal for the guys to get their plane back for flying some "cargo" to Canada, and calls Child Protective Services to free up Mike for the job. (In my mind, this move really seals the deal on Danny who’s been threatening to go full frat-boy the whole movie, and right now, all I want is for him to break his back and be paralyzed for life from the neck down.) That kooky Sue Lin, she's cooked up a deal too, a sexy deal to get Diane and Mike together after all. In the end they go off and apply for jobs as "space nurse and space pilot". I'm guessing that that works out about as much as the plot: paper-thin and laughably naive. Oh how the past reeks of desperate and heady optimism.

Visit Seattle Center and you too can smell the burning electrical wires in the same luxurious monorail car that once carried the late King.

There is little more point to this than to legitimize the batter-dipped pan-fried hearty-ness of Mike's personality and his inevitable high-fructose, sing-song crystallization of the girl's and audiences sensibility. (Not to mention the socially distractive qualities of such flashy garbage). So thick, so incredibly thick that it cloys at the throat. All I needed to watch was one Elvis film to understand the decay and degradation of a public persona and the fickle, scummy, and fleeting surface fascination of the public.

Want my honest opinion? I can screech a love song or two myself, and if singing them to girls worked as fundamentally as it does for Elvis...well, that would be bad news for lots of people, least of all me.