Out of the 31 films Elvis Presley made, most of them are cheerful, sunny things with a few songs and a pretty girl.
When people asked Elvis which one was his favorite, he never picked those. He picked the darkest film he ever made — a black-and-white story about a poor boy pulled into a life of crime, with an unhappy ending. It’s called King Creole, and he almost didn’t get to make it at all.
The United States Army nearly stopped it.
The story didn’t start with Elvis. It was based on a novel by Harold Robbins about a boy trying to box his way out of poverty, and it was originally being developed as a serious, non-singing film for James Dean. Then Dean was killed in a car crash in 1955. Marlon Brando’s name was thrown around. In the end, the studio changed the hero from a boxer into a singer, moved the setting from New York to New Orleans, and handed the part to the most famous young man in America.
The Making Of King Creole
They also gave him a real director. King Creole was made by Michael Curtiz — the man who had directed Casablanca. Curtiz expected trouble. He assumed Elvis would be a conceited kid. Then he actually worked with him and completely changed his mind, telling people: “No, this is a lovely boy, and he’s going to be a wonderful actor.” He wasn’t soft on him, mind you. Before filming, he told Elvis to lose ten to fifteen pounds and get rid of the sideburns.
Then, on December 20, 1957, everything nearly collapsed.
Elvis picked up his military draft notice from the Memphis Draft Board. Paramount had already spent $350,000 getting the film ready and hadn’t shot a frame. So Elvis did something people misremember — he asked for a 60-day deferment, and he was careful to explain his reasoning publicly. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to serve. It was that the studio had put its money down and he wanted to finish the job.
The draft board granted it the day after Christmas. His comment afterward is pure Elvis: “I’m glad they were nice enough to let me make this picture, because I think it will be the best one I’ve made.”
Elvis Presley – A Great Actor – Clips from King Creole – 1958
He was right. Look at who he was acting opposite — Walter Matthau, one of the finest actors of the era, playing a New Orleans crime boss. Matthau’s verdict on the singer everyone assumed couldn’t act was blunt and generous: “He was no punk.” The reviews when the film opened on July 2, 1958, were startled. The Los Angeles Times said he delivered his lines with good comic timing, real intelligence and flashes of sensitivity. The New York Times review opened with three words that must have felt very sweet: “Elvis Presley can act.”
And then it was over. Two weeks after filming finished, on March 24, 1958, Elvis Presley was inducted into the US Army. He was gone for two years. When he came back, the film studios put him into a run of light musical comedies and largely kept him there.
He never forgot what he’d nearly had. Years later he told his co-star Jan Shepard the simplest thing imaginable about the film he made under a ticking clock, with a draft notice sitting on the table at home: “Honey, that was my favorite picture.”