WILD IN THE COUNTRY
– Elvis Presley’s Last Dramatic Role –
(Part 7)
By Mariusz Ogieglo
Forget Me Never
The day after recording songs for his next film, on November 9, 1960, Elvis, the rest of the cast, and a group of his closest friends and associates, including Alan Fortas, Joe Esposito, Sonny West, and cousin Gene Smith, left for a location shoot in Napa, more than four hundred miles north of Los Angeles.
The capital of Napa County and the main city of the Wine Country region in northern California, famous primarily for viticulture (according to the Wappo Indians who inhabit these areas, the word ‘nappa’ means ‘land of abundance’), production of the highest quality wines (red: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Pinot Noir and Sangiovese and white: Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc), exquisite cuisine and now also luxury holiday resorts and Michelin-starred restaurants.
After arriving at the venue, the singer and his group stayed at a small motel, Casa Beliveau *, located at 200 South Coombs Street, which soon became one of the most popular addresses in the entire town.
Presley’s presence in the city almost immediately caused a huge stir among its residents. The greatest sensation was, of course, caused by the crowds of his local fans (especially teenage fans), who from the first day of his stay in Napa began to fill the parking lot and the areas adjacent to the hotel where he was staying in the hope of meeting him and getting his dream autograph.
Seeing all the commotion, the production and local authorities were forced to provide Elvis with special security measures. “Elvis is heavily guarded and never shows himself unnecessarily ,” reported Hollywood correspondent Harold Heffernan. “Meals are delivered directly to his apartment, and he moves quickly and only with security. If, despite these precautions, he is caught, as was the case recently when a group of teenagers unexpectedly appeared, he stops and politely signs autographs and poses for photographs .”
For Elvis himself, his stay in the picturesque wine town began rather badly with health problems. “During the filming of ‘Flaming Star,’ Elvis spent a lot of time on his horse, which gave him a nasty ulcer ,”recalled Sonny West. “By the time he started filming ‘Wild In The Country,’ the ulcer had become such a big problem that it began to interfere with his daily activities. So Elvis finally decided to have it removed with the help of a doctor working with the film studio.
So initially he spent the entire weekend locked up in his Napa Valley motel, applying warm compresses with gauze pads that we brought him. We were just trying to heal him by following the doctor’s instructions.
It could have been a lot worse, but thanks to a free case of wine provided by the Napa Valley Wine Growing Association, even Elvis didn’t feel the pain .”
According to some sources, the decision to shoot “Wild In The Country” in Napa, California, instead of the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, over four and a half thousand kilometers away from Hollywood, where the action of J.R. Salamanca’s novel originally took place, was made by Phillip Dunne personally.
Wanting to avoid expensive travel and the entire film crew having to move to the other end of the country, the director decided to find suitable locations (closest to those described in the book) near Los Angeles, thereby narrowing his search area to California.
To that end, he decided to use his passion for aviation—Dunne was a pilot—and got in a plane and began scouting for a perfect location from the air. The filmmaker circled the area for several days until one day, flying over the Napa Valley, he spotted the old Lewelling Farm (located in St. Helena, about 20 miles from Napa), which had a beautiful house with a classic gable roof.
The building fit perfectly into the typical Southern landscape that Salamanca depicted in The Lost Country. The only problem was the vineyards that surrounded it on almost every side – not something that usually occurs in the Virginia area. But keeping them from being visible on screen was a concern for director of photography William Mellor.
The film crew settled in Napa Valley for almost two months. The outdoor scenes for “Wild In The Country” were filmed continuously from early November until Christmas.
Filming took place in Napa itself, the neighboring towns of Calistoga (located about 40 kilometers from Napa) and St. Helena, as well as along the scenic Silverado Trial route connecting both towns (i.e. Calistoga and St. Helena).
The opening sequence, used during the opening credits, was filmed near the Napa River, near the recently popular Casa Neustra Winery (now closed to visitors).
Whenever Elvis appeared at any of these locations, he was joined by the crowds of admirers who surrounded him. “It’s not hard to do the right thing ,” Astrid Edington of the local Napa Valley Register was quoted as saying when she asked Presley if he felt pressured to be a teen idol. “You see, my parents raised me to be obedient, to always do the right thing and to live a clean life. It’s not hard for me to stay out of trouble. Doing the right thing seems right to me. I believe in what my parents taught me, and that’s the way I try to live. It’s my own choice .”
Edington was one of the few journalists whom Colonel Parker, who believed in the “fewer interviews, more interest” principle, allowed onto the closed set to ask Elvis a few questions. Her interview with Presley appeared in the Napa Valley Register on Wednesday, November 16, 1960.
”
I’ve never been here before, but I think your region is really beautiful. I’ll try to get a better look at it when the weather improves, “*** said Elvis, dressed in a rust-colored shirt and khaki pants, sitting on the porch of The Ink House **** . A Victorian-style building in St. Helena (located at the corner of St. Helena Highway and Whitehall Lane), which in the film was the home of Irene Spery (Hope Lange) and in everyday life was the new residence of Presley himself, to which he had to be moved after it turned out that the Casa Beliveau motel could no longer provide him with privacy and shelter from the ever-increasing groups of his fans gathering just outside his windows.
“To be honest, ma’am, I like Tennessee better than California ,” the twenty-five-year-old singer continued. ”
That’s where my home is. That’s where my friends are. In the evenings, we ride horses around the house, have music meetings, play cards, listen to records and watch movies. Sometimes we sneak out late at night to see concerts or shows .”
During the conversation, as Edington recalled, a motorcyclist had been involved in a serious accident on a nearby highway. “Between filming scenes for ‘Wild In The Country’ for 20th Century Fox, (Elvis, author’s note) never stopped watching what was going on around him ,” wrote a columnist for the Napa Valley Register. “
A young motorcyclist, who had been watching the film crew at work, crashed on the highway about seventy-five feet away. Presley was talking excitedly about his home in Tennessee when the sound of metal scraping asphalt rang out. Before onlookers about twenty feet away could come to his rescue, (Elvis, author’s note) had sprinted the entire distance—hopping four steps at a time, running along a lawn, over a three-foot fence, and upon arrival at the scene, he picked up his motorcycle and pulled the injured motorcyclist out from under it. Before, he just said to me, ‘Excuse me for a moment, ma’am .'”
Astrid Edington, like several other journalists who had the opportunity to talk to Elvis during the filming of his seventh film, found the singer to be an affable, “extraordinary and sincere young man .”
- Today, the motel where Elvis stayed upon his arrival in Napa no longer exists. It has been renamed the Wine Valley Lodge and now provides shelter to the homeless.
- According to Google Maps, Hollywood is 2,666.3 miles from the Shenandoah Valley, which is approximately 4,289.594 km in kilometers. According to the aforementioned service, the time needed to cover this route today is over thirty-nine hours.
- Astrid Edington noted in her text that on the day of the interview ” the weather was bad ” and ” the set was cold and wet “
- The Ink House building is now an elegant hotel, where you can still rent a room where Elvis stayed during the filming of “Wild In The Country”
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