Roustabout

A Lot of fun with Elvis and Stanwyck!
In one of his best movies, Elvis Presley plays a handsome, bonafide jerk who, on route to his next job, accidentally encounters Barbara Stanwyck, her even jerkier husband, and her beautiful step-daughter (Joan Freeman). Maggie (Stanwyck) decides to let Elvis become her dying carnival's roustabout, but he does more. When Elvis sings, well, you know what happens! The carnival begins to attract attention and the money starts rolling in. But when Elvis is offered a bigger salary by another carnie, he is torn between the prospects of a better life and his loyalty to Stanwyck, and particularly, her step-daughter. Every song in the film is "a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful" experience. Elvis's fun rockin' with "Poision Ivy League" to his romantic wooing of Freeman in a ferris wheel, to the upbeat "It's Carnival Time" the big production number, "Little Egypt", and the final, memorable number, "And The Whole World's Gonna Be...

Poison Ivy League.
This Elvis flick leans to the dramatic. Not great drama, mind you, but more serious than the usual EP Grade B frolic. By 1964, Elvis was getting too old to be convincing as an "angry young man," but he gave it his best shot. Elvis is the motorbike-riding rebel whose singing peps up business at a struggling carnival. Elvis clashes with the hard-drinking ramrod, Joe (Leif Erickson). Joan Freeman and Elvis moon around each other, but find romance a rocky road. Movie veteran Barbara Stanwyck lends stature to the film as the carnival owner. The song writing teams of Giant-Baum-Kaye and Leiber-Stoller wrote some of the music, but the results are only mixed. On the plus side, the ballad "Big Love, Big Heartache" and the comic "Little Egypt" number are worth the effort of viewing. The other music is less memorable. One amusing footnote is Pat Buttram as a rival carnival owner. This was shortly before he enjoyed popular recogniton as Mr. Haney on TV's "Green Acres." Given the movie's emphasis...

One of John Rich's Best Films
John Rich later became a TV titan and directed many of the best episodes of the best TV series, as well as taking a hand at production. But his feature film career is even more interesting. Like many journeyman directors, he was assigned a brace of Elvis pictures--this one and the later, hippie-themed EASY COME, EASY GO. But he was also responsible for some of the most under-rated programmers of the 1960s, including THE NEW INTERNS and BOEING BOEING--and WIVES AND LOVERS as well. In ROUSTABOUT he demonstrates a flair for working with actors of all stripes, from the legendary Golden Age star represented here by Barbara Stanwyck, to the neophyte starlet--in ROUSTABOUT there are plenty of them, and the most sparkling is a very young Raquel Welch, who makes her film debut in the opening scene as a college coed mesmerized by Elvis' singing. Raquel looks great and seems quite believable. It's no wonder her fi;lm career soared after making this film. As Elvis' leading lady, Joan...

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