It's the (allegedly) late Big E's birthday this week, and since its kind of become a tradition around here, to celebrate it we're going to review a movie preened from his less than stellar film career. It's the least we can do. So cue up the drums, and bring in the horns, and let's get going!

This Chautauqua is under new management. Walter Hale (Elvis Presley), the son of the former owner, is under the watchful tutelage of old Johnny (Edward Andrews), and there's trouble brewing already. The city father's are already haggling over the guaranteed payment, and the Mayor wants to make sure his daughter takes the lead in the annual children's pageant. Assuring them all will be well, Hale spots a couple of youngsters, Carol and Willy (Annisa Jones & Pepe Brown), and gives them each a silver dollar and a couple of free passes to the fair, much to the delight of Carol's mother, Nita (Sheree North). An impromptu parades marches from the train station to the fairgrounds. Music plays, and as the credits are rolling we suddenly realize that Elvis isn't singing. Strange. 

The Chautauqua gets into full swing with a lecture on cannibalism in one tent, a madrigal in another, and in the kid's tent, Charlene (Marlyn Mason) auditions a bunch of rowdy children for the pageant. After several kids take their turn -- including quick glimpses of Danny Bonaduce hamming it up as a one man band, and Susan Olson a/k/a Cindy Brady singing her guts out, Carol and Willy perform a duet that wins Carol the lead in the pageant. Charlene catches Hale arguing with Clarence (Anthony Teague) about riling up the locals with his gambling, and she has some harsh words for Hale too. Needing more help keeping all the kids in line, or she'll quit on the spot, Hale sends the equivalent of the Dover Boys to the rescue. But Johnny says they've got more trouble, and to avoid it, Hale's got to convince the hot-headed Charlene to let the mayor's daughter be the lead in the pageant -- or they might lose the guarantee money. Hale promises to start negotiations right away.

Next, we meet our villain of this piece. Wilby (Dabney Coleman) finishes a *ahem* session with Nita in the back room of his drug store. He didn't miss any customers because everyone's at the fair. His store empty, and his pocketbook just the same, Wilby's hate for The Chautauqua only grows. Carol and Willy wander into the drugstore, anxious to spend the silver dollar Hale gave them. Wilby fleeces them by selling off a box of leftover fireworks from last year's Fourth of July celebration. As the kids take up the box, he reminds them if they're caught, not to tell anyone where they got them because they're illegal to set off until the Fourth rolls around again. While trying to sneak the contraband out of town, they run right into Mr. Morality (Vincent Price!), one of the Chautauqua's featured speakers. He starts babbling, quoting, and blustering, so the kids duck away. Morality moves on into the swamped hotel, but has to get by Betty (Nicole Jaffe), the dingy desk clerk, before he can get to his room. Carol and Willy wind up back at the fairgrounds, and when they hear someone coming, stash the box of fireworks under a tent flap. It's just Johnny, telling Hale that they have another crisis: The lead singer of the gospel quartet has come down with laryngitis. Hmmm? I wonder what they're going to do for a sub...Hale takes the stage and leads the quartet in a rousing rendition of "Swing Down Lo, Sweet Chariot."

And we glance at the clock, and finally, at almost thirty-seven minutes in, Elvis sings his first song. That has got to be some kind of record!

After the Chautauqua closes down for the night, Hale starts to negotiate with Charlene in his tent. It's not going well. Charlene's upset that he hired dingy Betty as a pianist for no pay. Hale swears he'd never do a thing like that -- but Johnny might. (He did.) When she asks him to put out his cigar, he happily obliges and tosses it away -- where it promptly lands in the discarded box of fireworks. As the negotiations grow hot and heavy, the fireworks  starts to smolder and burn. Hale puts the romantic moves on Charlene, and she actually starts to cave in to his advances, but when they start to kiss, right before their lips meet, Hale tells her to replace Carol in the pageant. Thinking the whole romantic interlude was a ruse, Charlene is now good and pissed. Hale swears his feeling were sincere, but before he can explain, the fireworks finally ignite and shoot off. Charlene storms off, while Hale joins the bucket brigade with the Dover Boys to put the fire out.

The next morning at the hotel, Wilby conspires with the disgruntled Mayor and several other businessmen. When the Dingy Betty escorts the latest speaker, Professor Drewold (John Carradine!), the hotel owner glumly tells her they'll be no Chautauqua next year.  The disgruntled Wilby has convinced the others not to put up any guarantee money. And no money = no show. That also means no business at the hotel, which means no job for Betty. So she begs Hale for a full time job with the traveling show, and Hale's got the perfect job for her: The special assistant to his Channel Swimmer (Joyce Van Patten). So Dingy Betty is put in a *heh* dinghy, and rows behind the swimmer as she recreates her epic swim across the English Channel in the local pond. Things go well until she bumps into a dead body floating in the water. It's Wilby.

After the big dust-up over the gambling fiasco, Clarence is the prime suspect. As the constable tosses him in the clink, Clarence protests his innocence but the cop says save it for the judge. Hale visits him, and Clarence admits to cheating with the cards -- but swears he'd never kill anybody. Hale believes him, but is afraid no one else will. And with a member of the show accused of murder, the Chautauqua suffers a massive drop in attendance. Word travels fast and the next two stops have already cancelled their bookings. Charlene finds Hale. Moved by his actions of leaving Carol in the lead, putting talent in front of money, she's decided that he's a man of great character. (But I think he just wants to get in the sack with her.) So she confides in him the incriminating conversation overheard at the drug store between Nita and Wilby. Hale arranges to meet with Nita, and she thanks him for all he's done with Carol. We've gotten the impression that Nita is kind of the town tramp, and this is the first real break her kid ever got. Hale assures her the girl is very talented, and could really go places and do great things. He then asks if the drug store will stay open. Nita breaks down, sobbing how would she know? Hale starts turning the screws, saying Clarence hasn't got much of a chance at all with the murder rap. On the other hand, if someone else did it, and did it in self-defense, he could probably get them off -- and make a bundle of money in the process. 

Suddenly, Bradford Center is abuzz as the town is littered with posters promising that a killer will be revealed at the Chautauqua that very evening -- and if you buy a ticket, you too can hear an actual murderer's full confession. Obviously, the show sells out rather quickly (the leeches! Kind of a pre-depression Jerry Springer show), with the Constable particularly interested, taking up a spot in the back row. Charlene finds Hale in his tent and retracts everything she said about him having character. Harboring a fugitive, and exploiting the poor woman for a quick buck has got her miffed at him again. Hale says not to worry -- they'll have to return the money anyway because the killer hasn't shown up liked she promised too! While the crowd grows more anxious, Nita finally shows up at Hale's tent, soused to the gills and stumbling drunk. Hale puts Johnny in charge of sobering her up while he rounds up the Dover Boys to go and stall the audience. 

Hale finally sings again (almost an hour after his last song!) He then leaves the Dover Boys to stall some more while he goes and checks on Nita. They need more time, and the Dover Boys are dying, so he sends them to find Charlene -- and to tell her to bring Carol and Willy over to the big tent ASAP. That they do, and Hale puts them on stage much to the audiences delight. He also forces Charlene on stage and they do a forced impromptu duet about the signs of zodiac or something. Hale keeps pulling acts in to stall, and while Charlene does a rousing flapper number, he sneaks out to check out how the sobering up is going. Nothing else seems to be working, so he reforms the bucket brigade and douses Nita, again and again, until she comes to her senses. Escorting her to the main stage, right as the constable was about to break up the meeting, all the audience stares at Nita. She fidgets for a few moments, and after composing herself, calmly states: "I killed Wilby."

Slam-bam-thank-you-ma'am!

With that statement, all is well. With Clarence exonerated the Chautauqua's future bookings cancel their cancellations -- and they even get guaranteed money to return to Bradford Center next year. As the tents start to come down, people scurry all over to pack up so they can move on to the next town. But all is not quite well: Charlene is still furious with Hale and quits. He tries to talk her into staying, saying his way was Nita's only chance to confess without getting lynched. He almost clinches it by telling her he gave Nita all the gate money from her true confession performance, so she can hire a good lawyer and use what's left to move her and Carol somewhere else to get a fresh start. With all that startling news, Charlene is almost swayed. Almost. She resists and says goodbye. No hard feelings, Hale gives her three hundred dollars to get back to Chicago on. Later, as the train prepares to pull out, Hale talks to the constable and reports that Charlene stole three-hundred dollars from him, and that Bradford Center is no place for a girl like that. The constable agrees, and as the train pulls out of the station, he and his deputies round-up Charlene and run her out of town by throwing her on the moving train. Hale catches her, and she tries to get away before eventually giving in to his embrace.

The End

Hale seems to be an odd role for Presley, and reason is obvious when you realize why. The project was developed as a musical vehicle for Dick Van Dyke, but was eventually morphed into an Elvis movie. The original title of the film was Chautauqua, but the studio thought that the word was too big and might scare off or confuse the audience. So they changed it to The Trouble With Girls and later added the tagline And How to Get into It -- which is kind of retarded because it really has nothing to do with the movie. Then again, we are talking about movie execs here. The film does a wonderful job of capturing the era and essence of the tent shows, and the waning years of the flapper and straw hat era right before the Great Depression hit. The film oozes a warm and hearty atmosphere, and the music is really quite good. 

The most fun to be had with this movie is playing spot the cameo, or identifying some of the bit players. Not only do you get Vincent Price and John Carradine (both sorely lacking screen time), but sharp eyes will also spot baseball great Duke Snider, and John Rubenstein as the Dover Boy with the P on his sweater. Upon closer inspection, we spot Memphis Mafiasos Joe Esposito and Jerry Schilling during the card game. Sharp B-Movie eyes will spot Kevin O'Neil (the R sweater Dover Boy) from Village of the Giants, and Robert Nichols who helped fight off The Thing From Another World. Also, aside from having both a kid from The Partridge Family and The Brady Bunch, sharp ears will also clue you in that we've got half the Scooby-Doo gang here as well. It took me half the movie before I finally placed Nicole Jaffe's familiar nasally voice, and realized "Jinkies!" that's Velma Dinkley! To top that off, I also realized that the third Dover Boy (the one with the Y on his sweater) was none other than Frank Welker -- better known as Freddie Jones. Alas, I didn't recognize the Dover Boy with the A on his sweater. Waitasecond. P? R? A? Y? Holy frijoles, if you put all those Dover Boy sweaters together they spell out YARP! It's a miracle.

One sad note: Annisa Jones, the little girl who played Carol, also played Buffy on Family Affair. Things didn't turn out too well for her as she was destined to die of a drug overdose just seven years later in 1976.

Big E does his thing, barely. But to his defense, the role calls for a lot of pratfalls that were meant for Van Dyke, a very gifted physical comedian, so it's his supporting cast and gonzo bit-players that keeps things moving. There's a great running gag where a local band keeps popping up out of nowhere, trying to audition, only to be foiled, but then finally get their big chance during the big stall. Also watch for an almost throwaway scene between the Dover Boys as they argue the social and political ramifications of the Sunday Funnies (comic strips to all you young-ins.) 

The Trouble With Girls was Elvis's 30th movie. It started filming just two months before his famous '68 Comeback Special aired. (And if you look real close, the white coat he wears at the beginning of the film was worn during the special.) After that, he started touring again and would make only one more film, Change of Habit, and then officially closed the book on his, for the most part, disastrous career in Hollywood. And one can only wonder what might have been.

Posted: 01/10/02. Copy and paste at your own legal risk.

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