Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases, premieres, current events, or occasionally just our own inscrutable whims. This week: With Zack Snyder’s Army Of The Dead bringing zombies to the Vegas strip, we’re bringing Vegas to Watch This.
Viva Las Vegas (1964)
When critics describe the arc of Elvis Presley’s career, “the Las Vegas years” are typically framed as the King in decline, cashing big paychecks while getting softer—physically and creatively—year by year. But Vegas actually holds a more complicated place in the Presley story. The city was the site of one of his first big professional failures, in 1956, when a two-week engagement at the New Frontier drew scathing reviews. Over a decade later, Elvis would conquer his Vegas demons and stage his late 1960s commercial comeback, thanks in part to a regular engagement at what he called, “the big, freaky International Hotel,” where his ferocious band bashed out both throwback rockabilly and the kind of over-the-top pop tourists loved.
In between those career lows and highs, Presley stopped off in Sin City to make one of his best movies: Viva Las Vegas, an exuberant and colorful musical about a studly race car driver wooing a sexy swimming instructor. By this point in his Hollywood career, Elvis had given up trying to be James Dean or Montgomery Clift, and had settled into a routine of pumping out two to three films a year that were essentially travelogues, featuring eye-catching locales and kitschy pop songs. Whatever the star’s feelings about Las Vegas in 1964, he was willing to put his name on a picture so boosterish that it could’ve been produced by the chamber of commerce.
The plot is thin enough to see through. Presley plays Lucky Jackson, who believes his Maserati can outpace a champion’s Ferrari in a race around Hoover Dam. But first Lucky needs money to fix his engine, which he hopes to get by winning a talent contest. His chief competition? His current lust object, Rusty Martin, played by Ann-Margret, whose form-fitting pants and swimsuits frequently fill director George Sidney’s frame.
In other words, this movie is all hot rods and curvy bods. Though the script is credited to Sally Benson—a New Yorker regular whose girlhood memoirs became the movie Meet Me In St. Louis—few would mistake the dialogue here for Dorothy Parker. (One exception: When Rusty pulls into Lucky’s garage for the first time and complains that her motor whistles, he sneaks a peek at her bare legs and says, “I don’t blame it.”) The film’s whole raison d’être is its many scenes of two impossibly beautiful co-stars enjoying all that Vegas has to offer: fabulous floorshows, serenades by the pool, goofing around in nearby ghost towns, and helicopter tours across the desert.
Still, there’s a sense of joy, hope, and even shameless sensuality in Viva Las Vegas that was all too rare for an Elvis movie. Too often on screen, Presley looked diminished, like a God cursed to wander Hollywood’s version of Earth in the body of an oaf. Here though, surrounded by the Vegas strip’s glitzy signs and colorful characters, the King looks at home, set against a backdrop befitting his true stature—and blessed with a theme song that genuinely swings.
It helps, too, that he’s working opposite Ann-Margret, who had a wild, youthful energy—bordering on dangerous—that was lacking in so many of his leading ladies. As a dancer, she was more about passionate thrust than classical elegance. With her unruly hair and knowing smile, Ann-Margret looked like she was ready to get into trouble. At one point, Rusty and Lucky sing Ray Charles’ “What’d I Say” together, and as the editors quickly cut between their faces doing the “ayy”s and “ooh”s, it looks very much like they’re making something other than music. These kids are living high and running hot, in a city they know can make or break them.
Availability: Viva Las Vegas is available to rent or purchase digitally from Amazon, Google Play, Apple, YouTube, Microsoft, DirecTV, and VUDU.
52 Comments
I’m assuming that at some point during the week, we’ll get an appreciation of The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas.Or, well, maybe not.
I would genuinely be interested to know why they included the much loathed Great Gazoo character; studio insistence to try and make a film about dating appeal more to 7 year olds?
If Go and Swingers aren’t on the list, I am going to throw such a hissy-fit.
Swingers is an LA movie though. Ah, it’s been so long since I saw it that wiki informs me they do indeed go to Vegas.And I don’t recall where Go was set but I don’t recall it being Vegas.
Has Elvis lost much of his relevance? I remember in the 80s/90s growing up Elvis stuff was everywhere. People talked about him like he was the greatest entertainer who ever lived and his music was played all the time. Graceland was a huge tourist mecca, Elvis impersonators were everywhere in TV and movies and comedy and I know I saw multiple independent movies where Elvis is a spiritual guide to to whatever hipster character. Wasn’t worshipping Elvis Nicholas Cage’s defining trait for a while? Now he’s barely even mentioned anymore. I wonder if Gen Z even knows who he is or could recognize an Elvis song.
I remember in the 80s/90s growing up Elvis stuff was everywhere.Story holds up.
If your store ain’t got Mojo Nixon then your store could use some fixin’…
Then this Beach Boys song came on the jukebox…
I feel like 2002 was the year where Elvis was a big thing, at least here in the UK. The Little Less Conversation remix was a huge hit, and while his #1s collection wasn’t a seller on the level of The Beatles’ collection from the previous year, it was one of those albums you’d always see in the collections of people who didn’t own many albums. A couple of years later a string of Elvis re-releases hit #1 on the UK singles chart, but that was more because single sales were so low in those last few years before they started to recognise Download sales.
I went through a bit of an Elvis phase in 2010 after buying a collection to tie in with the 75th Anniversary of his birth, and I’m sure I wasn’t alone but I don’t think I was one of millions.
Much like the rest of the country, it depends where and who you’re asking. South of the Mason Dixie and the parents are white? Better chance than being from inner city LA I’d think…
the ‘elvis is still alive’ craze kicked off hard around ‘88 and took a few years to die back down, so that probably had something to do with it.
but i recall growing up that the elvis impersonator weekend that they did had a pretty static audience of mostly older boomers and the elvis’s themselves were all middle aged guys doing sequin jumpsuit era elvis. even back in the 90’s it felt like an middle aged dad’s game that was playing to their older siblings and parents (or at least that was the demographic that was willing to go to a yearly festival to see ‘professional’ elvis’s.)
There was also the big “vote for young Elvis or old Elvis” stamp stuff in ‘92. (Honestly, I thought both should have been issued.)
the ‘elvis is still alive’ craze kicked off hard around ‘88It was a bit earlier.You can trust me on this.
Maybe look at it this way. 70s-90s were peak years to milk the early Baby Boomers sense of nostalgia. There was probably plenty of money to be made keeping Elvis in the cultural memory. That portion of the generation is now not only retired, but starting the “nursing home and adult diapers” stage of their life’s journey. Meaning, the life stage where they no longer spend much money on entertainment. Hence, there’s a much lower ROI bothering to license Elvis’s likeness or music.
It would be interesting to see an AVClub Inventory of how and where Elvis Presley retains cultural relevance. The last truly great Elvis-related experience I recall was Bruce Campbell’s moving performance in Bubba Ho-Tep…
…and the continued existence of the Red Elvises, still touring and keeping rokenrol smoky.
“People talked about him like he was the greatest entertainer who ever lived…”Well, he probably was, so…He’s not doing anything new so you don’t hear a lot about him in today’s Next Big Thing culture, but he is still a pretty big deal. Kids are too busy listening to whatever awful shit is pushed to them on social media, but actual music fans still dig him. Maybe kids will catch on when they get older, the way I did in my 40s (!). The Sirius/XM Elvis channel is fantastic. Graceland is packed 364 days a year.
I wonder if Gen Z even knows who he is or could recognize an Elvis song. Good point. Jane and Michael Stern wrote a giant coffee table book called Elvis World (the cover was imitation gold lame…). One thing they said was that although millions of people (back then, in 1987) could tell you about Graceland, about the Cadillacs he gave away, about the jumpsuits and the hairstyle, a lot of fans were fans of Elvis as a personality and icon, and couldn’t name many songs past Jailhouse Rock and Love Me Tender.It’s a pretty good book, in case you wonder. Not a biography by any means [for that you have to go to Peter Guralnik’s two volume set] but a lot of fun, with the Sterns’ breezy prose and some fascinating pictures.
I grew up in the ‘80s and ‘90s as well, and Elvis was everywhere. One of my favorite albums was one of his when it was just early demos at Sun Studios. 50 million fans can’t be wrong, lol.
I wonder if Gen Z even knows who he is or could recognize an Elvis song.Whether they’d associate it with his name, I don’t know, but surely they’ve at least heard the Christmas stuff — it still gets non-ironic mainstream airplay. And after hearing that voice once, you’d know it anywhere.The idea of impulsively eloping to Vegas and having the marriage officiated by an Elvis imitator also has some pop-cultural endurance. I think there are still several wedding chapels where you can actually do this.
I used to be at The Las Vegas Hilton every year for the Consumer Electronics Show. The Hilton was where Elvis had his LV residency back in the day. (Now it’s Barry Manilow. The gift shop still has Elvis stuff but it’s mostly Manilow). There was an Elvis statue out in front of the hotel by the cab line and there were always people, sometimes in costume there paying tribute. The number of people dwindled as the years went on.I’ll tell you one thing though. Elvis lives on in my heart always and forever!!!!!
This one’s a lot of fun, but I was shocked that the only hint that gambling even exists in Las Vegas is in the theme song. I assumed there’d be a scene of Elvis at the craps table, but it’s so squeaky-clean you’d think Vegas was just a bunch of hotels with swimming pools.It also has an insane “you have 40 seconds to end the movie starting… now!” ending. They don’t make ’em like that any more!
I would never hold them up as the pinnacle of theatrical arts – but I find that most of The King’s movies are fun. They’re energetic, dumb, goofy, optimistic fun. Elvis isn’t a great actor, but dear god does he have charisma. And while not the best western I’ve ever seen, I thought Charro was pretty good boilerplate.So yeah, I could find worse ways to waste an evening now and again.
This siteIt also has an insane “you have 40 seconds to end the movie starting… now!” ending. This. (Warning – if you’ll be incensed about having an almost 60 year old Elvis movie spoiled, read no further). As I recall, the film spends an awful lot of time building up a sort of rivalry/friendship relationship between Elvis and Ceasare Danova – both in terms of the race, and for Margaret’s affections. Though they are fierce rivals, the two are shown to have some genuine respect and even affection for one another. Very cookie cutter stuff – what else do you expect from an Elvis movie?
During the race, Danova appears to suffer a very bad, possibly fatal accident. We see Margaret react in horror, then it’s back to watching Elvis win the race. Then, abruptly they cut right to the wedding scene, Danova’s fate unresolved.**This site claims Danova is shown in the wedding scene, apparently unharmed, but I don’t recall that being the case:
http://www.elvis-history-blog.com/viva-las-vegas.html
And it can’t be understated how quickly those plot points flash up onto the screen. It’s seriously, race-accident-finish line-wedding-credits in under a minute.
The other thing worth noting is that on one had Elvis’ racing “team” is a rather dinky shoestring operation – it’s basically just uncle Charlie from My Three Sons, financed by gambling winnings. On the other hand, they appear to be the only racing team with a helicopter at their disposal to track his progress during the race.
I remember being in at college in 1990, and this movie started playing in the cafeteria kitchen we shared. It started with 3-4 guys sitting at one table mocking the song at the beginning of the movie.Then Ann Margret showed up in the white hot pants.By the end of the movie there were 50-60 guys crammed in there, some sitting on the floor. I’m pretty sure that’s the key demographic for this film.
They show Elvis skiing shirtless in Viva Las Vegas.
They usually show him skiing in a jacket.Like Fonzie when he jumps the shark.
While there are plenty of arguments for Elvis’ theft of style and moves from the Black artists he was surrounded by, watching and comparing him to the other dancers up there, you realize how timeless he is. Dude has the moves and swagger to look like he could be leading a band RIGHT NOW, while everyone else, even Ann Margret, is doing things that are quite firmly identifiable as “how white people from the 60s moved”.
Ann Margret does a really good job in that clip conveying how intensely attracted she is to Elvis, all within the confines of early 60’s Hollywood mores. Like, that is definitely a woman who wants to jump that dude’s bones.
Did… that’s the running joke about this film. Those two were fucking.
He always claimed to have slept with all but one of his leading ladies, and never said which one.
Dolores Hart? She’s the one who became a nun.
Mary Tyler Moore has said it wasn’t her.
But dude was probably just bragging.
According to a book I read, she really thought they were gonna get married. They spent lot of time together in California, he sorta led her on, but he ended up going back to Priscilla. It was sad.
That is sad.
Dude has the moves and swagger to look like he could be leading a band RIGHT NOW
Damn… young Elvis still takes my breath away.
All I knew of this film was that it had a title song the Dead Kennedies covered:I don’t think I’ve actually seen any Elvis movies. But then again, I didn’t see any James Dean films until Unspooled covered A Streetcar Named desire and I figured I should have a Kazan triple feature. I still think Rebel Without a Cause is completely overrated: he’s not even a rebel!
I agree about Rebel Without a Cause, and Dean himself behaves like no other person in the history of people has ever behaved. He’s just ridiculous. Plus- he must have been the world’s oldest teenager, at least until Grease came along.
This movie reminds me why Ann-Margaret was on Schmidt’s time travel bang list.
What’s interesting about this film is where it sits in contemporary pop culture trends at the time of its release. So, up to just maybe even the year prior, Vegas was probably most closely associated with the Rat Pack, which I think (aside from Elvis) you might consider the epitome of cool in the late 50’s and early 60’s. But by 1964, post JFK’s death, I suspect the Rat Pack was looking pretty long in the tooth and possibly quite square to the young boomers of the age.So then you have this movie featuring Elvis, who again had been about the hottest thing going up to this point (though I would argue that the focus on trite movie musicals over his recording career was already cooling his popularity amongst many teens). Anyway, the year is 1964 and even though Elvis is still very popular and Viva Las Vegas is a successful film, tsunami known as the British Invasion was already in the process of swamping Elvis into irrelevance.Viva Las Vegas came out in May of ‘64. In July-August of that year (depending on which side of the Atlantic you were on), A Hard Day’s Night was released. That latter film, though also a rock ‘n roll musical comedy, was practically a universe removed from the former in terms of style, outlook, and (arguably) quality.
My (mis)understanding is that Colonel Tom Parker’s shoving him into lousy movies and accompanying soundtrack albums didn’t help. He would of course enjoy an artistic renascence and big comeback around the end of the decade, but then hanging out with Nixon, publicly decrying drug use while privately indulging in it to an epic and ultimately tragic extent, a tendency to pull out a gun and blow holes in things one usually wouldn’t, etc., probably didn’t buy him a lot of credibility with a younger audience.
…decrying drug use while privately indulging in it to an epic and ultimately tragic extent, a tendency to pull out a gun and blow holes in things one usually wouldn’t, etc., probably didn’t buy him a lot of credibility with a younger audience.It worked for Hunter Thompson.
I mean, I guess they could be, but let’s not rush to judgement.
Lol, that clip:“Let’s just slide this hobby-horse into frame re-e-a-l slowly, and then pull it back out again. Thanks guys.”
George Sidney is kind of underrated, right? The musical in Viva Las Vegas cannot be more different than the one on The Harvey Girls, but he nails the numbers and the visuals on both.
By this point in his Hollywood career, Elvis had given up trying to be James Dean or Montgomery Clift Thing is, he really could have been as good if not better. Check out King Creole or the other (I think two) movies he made before his Army hitch. The magnetism he had in his music performances translated really well to his acting roles.I kinda like his later, silly movies, and Viva Las Vegas is a good one… but I do wonder what would have happened if Colonel Parker hadn’t been so much in the mix…
He’d have been a better actor but not as popular, methinks
Yeah, I don’t think anyone would have approached James Dean’s level of popularity. Which is… okay, I know he just made the three movies and a smattering of tv stuff, but I’ve never been much impressed with Dean. Could be because he looked like he was 35 in Rebel, and didn’t look as old as he was supposed to in the later scenes in Giant. I liked him in East of Eden. And I’ve liked Montgomery Clift in everything I’ve seen him in. Elvis with a real acting career is one of my alternate universe scenarios. He would have made Streisand’s A Star is Born bearable at least…
I have a multiple channels that I’ve curated over the last 10+ years on my Pandora, and I just keep it on shuffle anymore. Anytime one of my older managers (I’m in my mid-40s, so figure it out) happens to stop in to my kitchen and Elvis is playing, they’re always flabbergasted. “You like Elvis?”“Who doesn’t?”
I also love how a long running joke with one of my Latino chefs was singing up whatever I was making to “Viva Las Vegas”.“Viva con carne”“Viva los pollo”“Viva this bullshit”
The Comeback Show from (I think) 1968 is still a classic. Elvis and his crew just nailed it perfectly. There’s a reason Elvis is still a presence: Swagger, charisma, and that voice.
Wait he didn’t sing about running out of speed? I think this is the first time I’ve heard the original version… I always thought Dead Kennedys were just leaning in on the sleaze not giving new lyrics.