It Happened At The World's Fair
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This musical drama opens with Mike Edwards (Elvis
Presley) and Danny Burke (Gary Lockwood) piloting a crop duster
over a field of potatoes. When the guys catch sight of two beauties in a convertible,
Mike descends to fly parallel to the highway and just narrowly misses
crashing into a hydro pole. They safely navigate the plane back to the
airfield to collect their pay. Mike, aware of Danny's gambling habit,
locks the money in the plane's safe box. Danny finds the key, takes all
the cash and quickly loses it by playing cards. With no cash to make a payment, the sheriff
confiscates the plane and orders the pair to come up with $1200 in a week or else
lose the plane permanently. They need cash fast. But how will they
get it? Simple. They decide to hitch-hike up the coast to the World's Fair
in Seattle and look for jobs. While there, Mike encounters a 6-year-old Chinese girl
named Su-Lin (Vicky Tiu) whose father has gone missing. He takes her under his
wing while Danny goes off to play poker. Of course, this is an Elvis
film so it's not long before our hero meets and falls in love
with a beautiful woman: in this case it's nurse Diane Warren (Joan O'Brien).
He schemes to get her attention by paying a young boy ( Kurt Russell)
a quarter to kick him on the shin. Ironically, Kurt Russell,
who achieved movie stardom in films such as Tequila Sunrise, Backdraft,
Escape from LA and Vanilla Sky, also played Presley himself in the 1979 TV movie,
Elvis. Vicky Tiu, the little Chinese girl, later became
the First Lady of Hawaii when her husband Ben Cayetano became Governor.
It Happened At The World's Fair was the fourth Presley
film directed by Norman Taurog whose previous credits with
Elvis were G.I. Blues (1960), Blue Hawaii (1961) and
Girls!
Girls! Girls! (1962). Elvis croons
10 songs including Take Me To The Fair, One Broken Heart For Sale, I'm
Falling In Love Tonight and Cotton Candy Land. The film is definitely not one of Presley's finer
efforts. His reactions seems slow and his singing lacks the sparkle of
earlier performances. A saving grace of this mediocre film are the
scenes filmed at the 1962 World Fair in Seattle. The
views of the fairgrounds and the Seattle Space Needle provide an
interesting historical panorama. If you are a diehard Elvis fan and must have
the original VHS edition of this film, then be prepared to pay big bucks. It's been out-of-print for
quite awhile. If you can temper your enthusiasm until the summer of
2004, you'll probably be able to purchase a DVD version.
Rumor is that copyright issues have been resolved and a digital
version is finally on the way.
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