BLUE HAWAII
– Postcard production and… the beginning of the Presley formula-
(part 13)
Contemporary studies on the film “Blue Hawaii” are full of memories of people – fans, island residents or local artists who had the opportunity to meet and talk with Elvis during the filming. So many of these accounts have accumulated to this day that it is impossible to quote them all in such a short text as this. Besides, it would be completely pointless because David English and Pal Granlund have already done it with great success in their phenomenal book “The Making Of Blue Hawaii” (published by FTD).
Of all these stories, however, one story holds special significance for me. It was told to me personally many years ago by an American singer, Robin Luke, whose hit “Susie Darlin'” reached number five on the Billboard charts in the late 1950s.
“My sister Susie was a member of Bluebird. It was/is a group similar to the Boy Scouts or the Girl Scouts ,” the singer described his visit to the set of the famous comedy. “They were selling cookies. And then my mother asked Malcolm (her brother, who was the head of one of the departments at Paramount Pictures), who was working on the set when Elvis was filming in Hawaii, if Susie could take a picture with him – to help promote the cookies. Malcolm asked Elvis, and he agreed.
So I agreed to go with her and watch a little bit. Elvis was filming scenes near Koko Head Crater. About ten minutes from our house.
They would shoot one scene and then wait about half an hour before they could shoot another. That’s when (Elvis, author’s note) jumped on his Harley Davidson and rode up to the top of the crater where we were waiting. He took a great picture of Susie (which later appeared in the Honolulu Advertiser) and that’s when we met. I was surprised that when he heard my name he started singing ‘Susie Darlin’. I responded with a few of his hits. We really became friends then and spent the rest of the day after the shoot just walking along the road and talking. After that day I found him to be a very polite, easy-going, lovely person. Unfortunately we never met again .”
In the second week of April, filming moved to Kauai. A volcanic island neighboring Oahu that delights visitors with beautiful views and an incredible variety of nature. From high mountain peaks and deep valleys to steep cliffs and rushing waterfalls.
The island’s focal point was and still is Lihue. A census town with a population of just over five thousand, it is home to, among other things, a rather distinctive airport.
The uniqueness of this place lies in the fact that, unlike other facilities of this type, it does not have most of the traditional buildings and a large part of the airport is simply outside. Even baggage check-in takes place outside. In addition, the airport in Lihue does not handle regular scheduled flights but focuses almost exclusively on flights connecting all the islands of the archipelago.
And it was at this small airport that, on Tuesday, April 12, 1961, the Aloha Airlines plane with Elvis Presley on board landed.
Of course, the appearance of the famous singer on the island immediately caused a stir among the local community (“alerted” in advance by the local media), although it must be honestly noted that the scale of interest this time was incomparably smaller than in Honolulu a few weeks earlier.
This time, the star was greeted as he disembarked from the plane by just over three hundred of his enthusiasts and a few local photojournalists.
Shortly after arriving on the island and briefly greeting local fans, Presley, like the rest of the cast, retired to the hotel for a short rest.
During filming, the actors were billeted at the Coco Palms Resort (then Coco Palms Lodge), which opened in late January 1953. An elegant resort built on lands belonging to the former royal family (the lands were inhabited by the last queen of the Hawaiian Islands, Deborah Kapule Kekaihaakulou), which gained fame for the weddings held there and the torch-lighting ceremony (both of these ceremonies were filmed and later shown in the new Paramount production).
“The best memories from the period in which I worked with Elvis are also connected with Patti (Page, author’s note. The famous American singer and privately the wife of Charles O’Curran) , “said choreographer Charles O’Curran. “It was during the filming of ‘Blue Hawaii’ in the Pacific. Most of the filming was done then on Kauai. The island neighboring Oahu, on which there were much fewer tourists. Elvis discovered that he could walk freely there without fear of crowds surrounding him.
After the shoot, our crew spent time together enjoying the most exclusive entertainment in the world – Elvis and Patti (Patti was on vacation with me) sang until late at night. We all sat on the terrace of the Coco Palms hotel and Elvis accompanied us on guitar. The background was a lagoon bathed in moonlight.
Elvis and Patti sang dozens of songs back then. It was really surprising how many they knew. And if Patti didn’t know a song that Elvis knew, she wanted to learn it. And vice versa. Those were the greatest nights of my life .”
Not everyone was happy about these all-night meetings in the singer’s hotel suite. According to some sources, Presley’s nocturnal lifestyle particularly worried Hal Wallis, who, unable to bear the sight of young actresses (who were part of the cast of the film) who began to appear on the set not getting enough sleep and tired from constant partying, eventually forbade them from visiting Elvis’ room at night.
The fact is, however, that the visit to Kauai afforded the twenty-six-year-old Presley far more freedom and ” true liberty ” than he had experienced anywhere else in the past few years. Which, as the press rightly emphasized, did not mean that his presence on the island did not arouse interest among his fans. They were with him at almost every step.
“ About a half-dozen teenagers were waiting for him outside Coco Palms today to get his autograph as he went out to shoot ,” one newspaper reported. “ About a hundred kids showed up at the filming location — a viewing deck on a hillside overlooking the Wailua River .”
Nevertheless, each of the above meetings passed peacefully, and the singer was finally able to do things he had not done (and which, for his own and others’ safety, he simply could not do) almost since the beginning of his career. Such as swimming, watching television, or eating meals in public places… “Elvis was neither besieged nor accosted by anyone, and his personal associates, sometimes called ‘Cousins,’ who occasionally act as his bodyguards, had little to do ,” the journalist continued. “Elvis, who seems to be somewhat shy, was even seen on several evenings at the regular hotel restaurant, where he dined with said ‘cousins’ in full view of other guests. In Honolulu, this was rather impossible .”
Presley’s new film was shot on location on Kauai for ten days, producing many unforgettable and now iconic scenes.
The first shots on the island were filmed on Wednesday, April 13, 1961, and according to preserved documents and work schedules, they focused on the scene in which one of the protagonist’s charges, Ellie Corbett (Jenny Maxwell), escapes from the hotel and tries to drown herself (to get the right effect, the actress had to enter the water at least three times). Luckily, she is saved at the last moment by a handsome guide, who, after pulling her to the shore, has a serious conversation with her and… gives her a good slap! “He had to give a good slap so that it would look good on screen later,” Maxwell recalled in one of her later interviews. “And on top of that, not only was my skimpy costume all wet, but the distance between Elvis and the place where he was hitting was really small. Hell in a way that cannot be described .”
The above sequence was shot using the then popular “day for night” method, which usually involved underexposing a given shot in the camera or using special effects or additional darkening in post-production to make it seem like a scene shot during the day actually took place at night. A similar solution was used in the film “Wild In The Country.”
The next day, the filmmakers focused on the horseback riding scene, which was made even more charming not only by the fabulous landscapes of the island (the filming took place in the Opaekaa Falls area, among other places) but also by the lovely ballad, “(Kauai) Island Of Love,” sung by Presley. Interestingly, considering all the above circumstances, some of the actresses who took part in the filming did not recall the shoot with much enthusiasm (some of them had never even ridden a horse before! ” I’ve never ridden a horse, but I’ve seen them in Westerns ,” one of the stars reportedly said). Particularly for Jenny Maxwell, who had been “smacked” by Elvis just the day before, sitting on a horse for several hours was not the most pleasant experience. “ For the next three hours, Elvis and Joan Blackman filmed a horseback riding scene in some pretty rough terrain ,” one account said. “ And as Jenny hovered precariously over the saddle, everyone understood her perfectly .”
To make matters worse, according to some sources, during the filming of the above scene, a gust of wind knocked over a heavy spotlight on the actress and seriously injured her legs. The injury was so serious that the doctor even recommended that she use a cane between takes. “The cane helped with my sore foot, but it didn’t help alleviate the real problem ,” recalled the actress who played Ellie.
Without a doubt, however, the scene that not only stayed in the viewers’ memory for many years (becoming almost an emblematic scene for the entire film) but above all left a permanent mark on the further activity of the Coco Palms resort was the wedding scene of the main characters – Chad and Maile. Of course, it took place to the sounds of the song “Hawaiian Weeding Song”.
Preparations for filming began on Sunday, April 16, 1961. However, the cast members of the film were not involved in rehearsals at that time. If necessary, they were replaced by stunt doubles.
Elvis, Angela Lansbury, Roland Winters, John Archer, and dozens of extras hired especially for the occasion did not arrive on the set until the next day. Most of them, except for Elvis, had flown in directly from Honolulu.
Many years later, during one of his concerts in the 1970s, Elvis looked back on that day and shared with the audience an amusing anecdote about filming the above scene. “Wait a minute ,” he suddenly told the band members, halting the intro to “Hawaiian Weeding Song” that had just begun. “I have to tell the audience who saw the movie what happened. Have you ever seen the movie? It was really funny. My screen partner was Joan Blackman. She was wearing a beautiful purple dress and a white flower lei. I was wearing all white and a red wreath (and other things). And so, we were floating down the moat and people were standing on the shore throwing flowers and singing the ‘Hawaiian Weeding Song.’ When we first shot it, (Paramount, author’s note) they hired a couple of people to pull the raft under the water that we were standing on. The first time they did it, they hit the bank so hard that we both fell into the mud. It took us three hours to get ready to do the retake. So, well, we got married twice that day .”
The aforementioned sequence, filmed at the Coco Palms resort (and then shown in the final minutes of the film), turned out to be such a huge success that for the next few decades the hotel authorities had to recreate it ‘live’ for thousands of tourists who flocked to the resort from all over the world just to get married in the same – fabulous way as the legendary singer.
The scene with the song “Hawaiian Weeding Song” turned out to be the last one shot in Hawaii. On Thursday, April 20, 1961, the entire crew returned to Hollywood, where work on the film continued for the next five weeks. Ultimately, filming of “Blue Hawaii” ended on May 23, 1961 (after a series of promotional photos had been taken).
Article written and provided by Mariusz Ogieglo, EP Promised Land (Poland) http://www.elvispromisedland.pl/
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