IT HAPPENED AT THE WORLD'S FAIR: Blu-ray (MGM, 1963) Warner Archive
The film career of pop sensation, Elvis Presley, begun
with budding aspirations to be a ‘serious’ actor, arguably realized in
movies like his 1956 debut, Love Me Tender, Jailhouse Rock (1957)
and King Creole (1958) officially evaporated into the thinnest of ether
with director, Norman Taurog’s It Happened at the World’s Fair (1963), a
cloying and occasionally obscene bastardization, even of all those uber-glossy
precepts to have buoyed many a great MGM musical from the thirties and forties.
Taurog, the second youngest director to ever win an Oscar (for 1931’s Skippy),
and uncle to Metro’s child star, Jackie Cooper, ought to have known better. An
ex-child performer himself, turned director in 1919, Taurog was already a veteran
of the industry, to direct 42 silent films by the time ‘sound’ came in. In the
intervening decades he proved adept at helming intense melodramas like Boy’s
Town (1940) as well as lithe musical comedies like Broadway Melody of
1940. A workhorse director, who eased no less a Metro luminary than Judy
Garland through three fondly recalled outings from the early half of the decade
- Little Nellie Kelly (1940), Presenting Lily Mars (1943) and Girl
Crazy (1943), Taurog knew his way around the highly polished and monied
playgrounds of the Hollywood movie musical a la MGM’s in-house style. Nothing
seemed too grand for Taurog. So, it is perhaps a bit disheartening to discover
him here, foundering on the edicts of Presley’s ‘wrangler’ – Colonel Tom Parker
who, in 1960, assigned Taurog to the first of the hip-swiveler’s feather-weight
musicals, G.I. Blues – the picture to effectively kill off Elvis’ ambitions
of becoming a great dramatic actor.
G.I. Blues created the
template for what followed: Elvis, singing enough songs to sell a soundtrack
album, fitted into a thimble of a plot and requiring nothing more than his
presence in the midst of a harem of attractive girls. Parker valued Taurog’s
contributions so much he became the de facto ‘go-to’ on eight more Elvis
pictures, the best – arguably, 1961’s Blue Hawaii, followed by the
utterly disposable Girls! Girls! Girls! (1962), and then, the equally as
silly, It Happened at the World's Fair. For the record, Taurog also
directed Elvis in Tickle Me (1965), Spinout (1966), Double
Trouble (1967), Speedway (1968), and, Live a Little, Love a
Little (1968). While virtually all of the aforementioned movies are very
much ‘factory-assembled’ from a prototype, Taurog nevertheless safeguards
against their over-familiarity by keeping the comedy light and swiftly paced,
and the songs executed with ole-time panache. It Happened at the World’s
Fair is not so much a tiresome effort, as it proves a relatively
forgettable one – over-loaded with threadbare reasons for Elvis, shorn of all
his earlier cagey teenage angst and rebel-esque brooding, to get up and sing ten
disposable ditties, ranging from ‘Beyond the Bend’ and ‘Take Me To
The Fair’ to the total gum-n’-floss, ‘Cotton Candy Land’. In lieu of
that taut and tenacious rogue with an edge, barely able to contain his bellicosity
from escaping under his perpetually pomaded dome, we get our first real/reel taste
of the ‘Elvis-lite’ - a regally coiffed and homogenized milquetoast; a shadow
of his former self, built into burgeoning ‘fatherhood’ for a too-too precocious
Chinese moppet. In hindsight, it’s not so much the tediousness of either the
songs or plot that tank the picture as anything better than a Presley
travelogue, but rather the haphazard assemblage of this meat and potatoes,
slickly marketed as grade ‘A’ filet mignon, merely to exploit ‘the king of rock
n’ roll’, regurgitated into pre-processed cooked ham for his adoring fans, who
likely would have – and did! - pay to see him in anything.
In this potboiler, Elvis is crop-duster, Mike Edwards whose
best pal, Danny Burke (Gary Lockwood) has gambled away virtually all of the
money Mike scrimped together for a rainy day – also, to pay off their $1,200
debt on a Boeing-Stearman byplane they call Bessie. So, the plane gets
repossessed by the local sheriff. If the boys can’t come up with the cash in just
twelve days, Bessie will be auctioned off to the highest bidder. Hitchhiking
their way to…well…anywhere…Mike and Danny are picked up by Asian apple
farmer, Walter Ling (Kam Tong) and his prepubescent niece, Sue-Lin (Vicki Tui).
Everyone ends up in Seattle Washington, of course, to take full advantage of
the ’62 World’s Fair. Ling gets called away on business (convenient) but
persuades Mike and Danny to show Sue-Lin a good time at the fair. During a
visit to a fairground’s doctor, Mike predictably falls for an attractive, but
rather authoritarian nurse, Diane Warren (Joan O’Brien). To remain in her care,
Mike pays a small boy (Kurt Russell…yes, that Kurt Russell) to kick him in
the shin. Feigning a deeper injury, Diane’s supervisor orders her to give Mike
a lift back to his apartment. Miraculously, Mike’s pain abates on the car ride
and he and Diane instead end up dining at the revolving restaurant atop the
fair's iconic Space Needle. Alas, here the plot gets muddled by the introduction
of Dorothy Johnson (Yvonne Craig) another love interest for our fickle Lochinvar.
Another wrinkle: Ling fails to collect Sue-Lin as promised. The girl fakes
illness to get Diane to come back to their apartment. However, upon learning
Sue-Lin is not related to either Mike or Danny, Diane attempts to alert child
welfare and have the child removed from their care. Now, the boys become inveigled
in a plane delivery conducted by their fair-weather friend, Vince Bradley (H.
M. Wynant) who is actually involved in the illegal smuggling of valuable furs. After
much consternation, a few minor complications with the law, and, of course, the
return of Ling to collect his niece, our story ends happily with Mike and Diane
in love. Dorothy? Forget her. The screenplay by Si Rose and Seaman Jacobs certainly
did!
It Happened at the World’s Fair is the sort of cornball
nonsense, ironically, to keep Elvis Presley’s movie career hermetically sealed
in its artistically bankrupt vacuum, nevertheless, to remain afloat and quite viable
with audiences for nearly a decade thereafter. Perhaps, Colonel Parker knew his
stuff. Retrospectively, however, it is difficult not to see how Parker’s
influence proved self-serving (fattening his own wallet at the expense of undervaluing
Elvis’ innate gifts beyond the pop charts) as well as proving rather
destructive to Elvis’ own eager aspirations and, in the long run, to derail his
prospects of ever being taken seriously as an actor of merit (which he was), instead
of just some rock-a-billy juke-box martyr, dispensing hit tunes to be
sandwiched between snippets and sound bites of a plot. The rest of the cast
here is throwaway. Parker and Taurog
might just as well have featured Presley doing 108-minutes in front of the
Space Needle before driving a go-cart through the fairgrounds, signing
autographs. The songs herein, penned by
a small army to include Ben Weisman, Fred Wise, Dolores Fuller, Sid Tepper, Roy
C. Bennett, Otis Blackwell, Winfield Scott, Don Robertson, Ruth Batchelor, Bob
Roberts, Bill Giant, Bernie Baum, Florence Kaye and Sid Wayne, abysmally fail
to attain even that base level of hummability to make them standards on the hit
parade. When all else fails, there is Joseph Ruttenberg’s plush cinematography
in Panavision and MetroColor to recommend the movie – also, retrospectively, an
immersive alter-experience to actually having attended the World’s Fair, now as
much a bygone relic from that era in American exceptionalism where optimism and
progress reigned supreme. It Happened at the World’s Fair ought to be
considered for Elvis completionists only. Others can easily pass and be very
glad that they did!
Warner Archive’s (WAC) new-to-Blu, at least, is
welcome. As with anything WAC touches, this one’s been given all the bells and
whistles consideration to spiff it up for hi-def. The 2.35:1 image teems with
the sort of gorgeously saturated hues, expertly balanced contrast and
wonderfully indigenous levels of film grain we have come to expect from Warner’s
in-house mastering facilities. With the studio’s more recent acquisition and
merger plans, and the forced retirement of long-time alumni responsible for
this level of quality, it remains debatable whether future releases from WAC
after 2022 (if, indeed, any are planned) will be as fortunate to receive such
consideration and attention to detail.
The mono Westrex soundtrack has been lovingly preserved in 2.0 DTS and
it shines. Odd, any Elvis picture, reliant on the ‘king’s ability to rock the
house, ever should have been released in anything but 6-track magnetic stereo,
but there it is – and remains so to this day. Barring an original theatrical
trailer, there are no extras here. Just as well. This movie isn’t deserving of
any. Bottom line: while WAC continues to pump out quality physical media for
the connoisseurs of old Hollywood, it occasionally fails to distinguish between
content considered truly classic in their seemingly bottomless wellspring of
titles yet to be released, and movies which might best be considered as merely ‘old’.
The disc is solid. The movie…anything, but! Judge and buy accordingly.
FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the
best)
2
VIDEO/AUDIO)
5
EXTRAS
0
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