Girl trouble

Next up on my list of movies that are on my DVR and getting another airing on TCM soon is one of Elvis Presley's final films, The Trouble With Girls. The TCM showing is tomorrow, November 24, at 8:30 AM.

Elvis Presley plays Walter Hale, who runs a traveling "Chautauqua" in the 1920s. These were named after Chautauqua in New York, which in the 19th century was the site of the Chautauqua Institution, a sort of forum of ideas and the fine arts. (The Institution still exists and hosts summer programs, but the traveling counterparts died out during the Depression.) So back in the 1920s before mass media become more prominent, programs like these functioned as somewhat higher-class versions of the traveling carnivals and medicine shows that show up a lot more often in popular culture to this day.

Walter's Chautauqua rolls into the town of Radford Center, Iowa, which is clearly the MGM backlot rather than location shooting, which is one of the many problems with the movie. He's got various musicians and lecturers (including Vincent Price in a small role as "Mr. Morality"), but is having the biggest trouble with Charlene (Marlyn Mason), the "Story Lady". She's joined up with Actors' Equity, and knows all of the employment rights that are due Equity members. She keeps reminding Walter of these, and trying to get all of the people involved with the show signed to an Equity contract.

One of the things that Walter's Chautauqua likes to do is hire a local child for one of the pageants they put on. There's an interracial pair of kids who would do, although ultimately the choice is little Carol Bix. Carol is the daughter of Nita (Sheree North), who works at the local pharmacy run by Wilby (a very young Dabney Coleman) in the days when drug stores did all sorts of things like serve floats as well as fill prescriptions. The only problem is, Wilby seems to have is eye on Nita's legs as much if not more as his business.

Radford Center has a nearby lake, and another of the lecturers is a swimmer modeled on Gertrude Ederle, who not long before the action in the movie would have been the first person to swim the English Channel. But the other purpose of the lake is that it's a place to dispose of Wilby's body after somebody offs him. Obviously, suspicion falls on some of the more shady characters who accompany the itinerant Chautauqua, because if you were somebody looking to con people and get away with it, what better way to get away than be part of a traveling show? Clarence, a gambler, is charged, although he's not the actual murderer. Will the authorities be able to find the real killer? Well, you might guess that Walter figures things out, and after the Chautauqua moves on to the next town we're told that it was only a few more years until various advanced technologies like radio and talking pictures would consign Chautaquas to history for good.

Having seen The Trouble With Girls, I can see why Elvis didn't make many more movies after this. He's out of place here with the beginnings of his "fat Elvis" hair. He's also not given much to do. The plot is all over the place, and worse, the big finale has some terrible editing in that it cuts constantly for no good artistic reason. The production values feel cheap, too, with the obvious use of all those buildings on the MGM backlot when movies were really beginning to spread away from the studios. The Gypsy Moths, which was released at just about the same time as The Trouble With Girls and which shows up on TCM at the end of this week, actually filmed on location in Kansas for example.

If you're looking for a good Elvis movie, I'm sorry to say that there are other movies you should watch instead of The Trouble With Girls.