Elvis Looked Very Obviously ‘Disgusted’ and ‘Ashamed’ on the Set of ‘Blue Hawaii’
In 1961, Elvis Presley starred in the film Blue Hawaii. The movie was not a critical success, something Elvis seemed to understand as he was shooting it. According to Anne Fulchino, a publicity director who worked with Elvis several years before, he seemed completely humiliated to be in the movie.
Elvis Presley did not seem happy on the set of ‘Blue Hawaii’
While Elvis was working on Blue Hawaii, Fulchino visited him on set. Several years before, they had mapped out Elvis’ career. It was clear to Fulchino that Elvis didn’t think things had gone to plan.
“It was a while before he came over and talked to us, and when he did — you see at the beginning I used to call him Chief and I said, ‘Hi, Chief,’ and he just looked at me like he wished I hadn’t come,” Fulchino said in the book Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley by Peter Guralnick. “We made some small talk, and then he said something like, ‘This isn’t what we had in mind at Klube’s [the German restaurant across from RCA, where they had drawn up their plan], was it?’”
Fulchino could understand why Elvis was upset.
“I said to myself, ‘If I was making these crappy pictures, I wouldn’t want to see anybody from my past either,’” she said. “That’s the reason I didn’t hang around.”
Fulchino said she left early because of how clear it was that Elvis was uncomfortable.
“He was obviously uncomfortable with what he was doing, he was frustrated and disgusted — it was all in his face,” she said. “The emotion I respected most was that he was ashamed of it, which meant that he knew better — but you could see that he was trapped.”
Elvis played a frightening prank on the set of ‘Blue Hawaii’
In order to get some of his frustration out, Elvis played pranks on set. His girlfriend, Anita Wood, visited him on set, and she joined in on a prank where Elvis pretended to be dead. Wood began shouting that he wasn’t breathing as they drove with some of his friends.
The members of his entourage were in a panic and rushed to Elvis’ house to call an ambulance. When they got there, though, Elvis abruptly sat up.
“I just wanted to see what you guys would do,” he said by way of explanation.
Priscilla Presley shared why Elvis didn’t think he could demand better roles
Though Elvis did not enjoy roles like the one he had in Blue Hawaii, he continued to take them. Priscilla Presley explained that he did not think he could demand better.
“He could have demanded better, more substantial scripts but he didn’t,” Priscilla wrote in her book Elvis and Me. “Part of the reason was the lavish lifestyle he had established and become accustomed to. The main reason, however, was his inability to stand up to the Colonel. In Elvis’ personal life, there were no stops in letting anyone know how or what he felt. But when it came time to stand up to Colonel Parker, he backed off. Elvis detested the business side of his career. He would sign a contract without even reading it.”
As a result, he continued to act in movies he could not stand.
