Tag Archives: Hal B Wallis

BLUE HAWAII – Elvis

Elvis Presley Picture Slideshow Movie In HD. Blue Hawaii (1961) is quintessential Elvis: plenty of songs, plenty of girls, and a setting that accents both. This time, the scene is Oahu and Kauai and the girls are his sweetheart (Joan Blackman), an attractive school teacher (Nancy Walters) and her four teenage students. The film also represents one of the biggest successes in the long collaboration between Hollywood powerhouse producer Hal B. Wallis and Presley. The legendary Wallis (Casablanca [1942], Rooster Cogburn, [1975]) first encountered Presley on a 1956 broadcast of a Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey show and predicted to his wife that “Elvis would soon be the most talked about newcomer in the business.” He called Colonel Tom Parker the next day and told him he’d like to sign Elvis to a film contract. “I knew instinctively that the Colonel was interested but playing it cool. He was a genius at getting every possible inch of financial mileage out of his astonishing protégé,” Wallis said in his autobiography Starmaker. After badgering Parker, Wallis finally succeeded in getting Elvis to Hollywood for a meeting and a screen-test, the results of which were electric: When I ran the test I felt the same thrill I experienced when I first saw Errol Flynn on the screen. Elvis, in a very different, modern way, had exactly the same power, virility, and sexual drive. The camera caressed him Under Wallis’ tutelage – and Parker’s approval – the camera would continue to caress Elvis