Clambake

Today would be Elvis' 76 birthday and TCM has a couple of his movies on.  I missed the 1st one, 'Kissin Cousins', one I'm not sure I've ever seen.  The 2nd is 'Clambake', made in 1967 and according to Ben Mankiewicz,  released just 4 days before Elvis' wedding to Priscilla.  He said that there were wedding pictures autographed by both of them in random soundtrack albums.  Can you imagine what that would be worth today?

Anyhoo...

'Clambake' is a really bad movie.  Elvis is the son of an oil tycoon named Duster, played by veteran actor James Gregory.  Scott (Elvis) wants to meet a girl interested in him, not his money so he trades places with Tom (Will Hutchins), a ski instructor.  He falls for Diane, played by  Shelley Fabares, who only has eyes for JJ of JJ's Jammies (Bill Bixby) and his money.  We all know the ending so I won't go into much about the movie, except again, it's horrible.  But I do have a little of what I think is interesting trivia

1.  According to Ben, this was Shelley Fabares' 3rd movie with Elvis in 3 years. Oddly, my favorite Elvis movie also stars Shelley and that one is 'Girl Happy'.   Rumor has it (not from Ben) that Elvis slept with all of his co-stars so it must have seemed strange to have her around near his wedding day.  Of course, his relationship with Priscilla would keep a therapist busy for a lifetime.

2.  I own this movie.  It has 2 of my favorite ever Elvis songs:   'A House That Has Everything', where he points out "Better just a shack, where two people love, than a house that has everything, everything but love",
a song I wish they would put on Itunes.  The other is 'You Don' Know Me', a song later recorded by Mickey Gilley, among others.   This movie also has a song called 'Hey, hey, hey',  aka the goop song which must have been embarassing for all to film.

3.  There is another song called 'Confidence' and although uncredited, I think the little girl at the top of the slide is Maureen McCormick,  Marcia Marcia Marcia from the Brady Bunch.

4.  It also has Marj Dusay who was the final Alexandra Spaulding on Guiding Light.

5.  Has anyone else noticed that Elvis wears long sleeves in all his movies, even when all the girls are in bikinis?  

I'm typing this in the middle of the movie so even though it's a stinker, I'll get back to it.