Girl Happy remains, for me, the most memorable movie in the Elvis Presley catalogue. Why you ask? Sometime during my 15th year on this earth I screwed up the courage to actually ask a girl out on a date. The gods must have been in a good mood that day as she agreed. What better place to go than to the newest Elvis Presley movie playing at the Park Movie House in Woonsocket, R.I. The movie was Girl Happy. While the girl, whom I would take to my prom several years later, and the Park are long gone; Girl Happy retains a wonderful place in my memory bank of life.
Girl Happy was an excellent outing for Elvis. The movie actually made sense as Elvis was a singer who was sent to Florida to look after his boss’ daughter who was there for spring break. Shelley Fabares played the daughter and while the chemistry between her and Elvis may not have been of the Ann-Margret caliber, I do consider her to be number two on my list of Elvis’ romantic movie interests. Shelley could act, she could sing and she looked fabulous.
The soundtrack from the movie was issued March 1, 1965 and reached Number 8 on the national charts and earned Elvis another Gold Record. The music is strong and works well within the context of the film and on its own as a stand alone album.
“Girl Happy" is a fine up-tempo pop number that still makes a person smile 40-plus years later. Elvis is in fine vocal form as he belts out what could have been a successful single release. It is vocals that like this one by which Elvis should be remembered.
“Spring Fever,” in the movie, was a duet between Shelley Fabares and Elvis. The album release contained just an Elvis vocal. The duet was superior and did not surface as an official release until it was added as a CD bonus song decades later.
Article comments
1 - greggers
Great reviews of Elvis albums! I added your writer page to my Elvis Songs page above. I gotta admit Girl Happy is one of my favorites too! Sort of typical Elvis mid-60s stuff, but much more tolerable than a lot of the other films he was doing around that time, and Elvis' stuff holds up better than most of the other teen 60s flicks. Soundtrack to this one not bad either. Not quite Viva Las Vegas, but not bad.