Themes: Playing the Field, Musician's Life, Car Racing
Main Cast: Elvis Presley, Shelley Fabares, Diane McBain, Deborah Walley, Dodie Marshall, Jack Mullaney, Carl Betz
Release Year: 1966
Country: US
Run Time: 93 minutes
Plot
Elvis Presley plays rock singer and racecar driver Mike McCoy in the typical musical romp Spinout, directed by Norman Taurog. His band includes Curly Jack Mullaney, Larry Jimmy Hawkins and the female tomboy drummer Les Deborah Walley. Mike is coveted by a bevy of beauties that include the intellectual journalist Diana St. Clair Diane McBain, Susan Dodie Marshall and the spoiled rich girl Cynthia Foxhugh Shelley Fabares. Cynthia's millionaire father Howard Carl Betz wants Mike to race his newly built auto. All the girls want Mike, but he manages to marry them off to different paramours and in the end falls for his replacement drummer Susan. The 12-song album of the same title contained a musical curiosity, Bob Dylan's Tomorrow Is A Long Time. It was the only Dylan song ever recorded by Presley -- and the longest, at over five minutes in length. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
Review
Take Elvis Presley and put him into a plot involving music, race cars, and girls, and you'd have a winning formula at the box office in 1966 -- that's the easiest way to explain Spinout (and, for that matter, Speedway, made a couple of years later) to anyone who wasn't around at the time. The movie actually functions as a pop-culture artifact on several levels: it's the next-to-last film production of musical/musical-comedy specialist Joe Pasternak (whose career went back to the 1920s) -- but the screenplay was co-authored by director/satirist Theodore J. Flicker; the cast includes '50s TV veteran Will Hutchins, future Emmy-winner Carl Betz (cast alongside his longtime TV daughter Shelley Fabares, once again playing his daughter), and veteran performers Cecil Kellaway and Una Merkel; and the movie shows off Elvis using an array of decidedly up-to-date equipment in his band, including a cool-looking 12-string guitar and a double-necked instrument that just might be the first use of such a guitar onscreen in a feature film. Oh, and the presence of some great second-unit material -- essentially all of the racing sequences -- only enhances the value of an otherwise fairly routine, if complicated, romantic comedy/musical. The latter aspect includes an operetta-like plot involving mismatched romantic couples, a father who wants the hero as an employee but not as a son-in-law, and a daughter who feels differently. It's all lighthearted enough so that anyone with the patience will likely love this picture as unassuming entertainment. Serious Elvis Presley fans can add a star to its potential appeal, and Hollywood mavens a half-star. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
Will Hutchins - Lt. Tracy Richards; Warren Berlinger - Philip Short; Jim Hawkins - Larry; Cecil Kellaway - Bernard Ranley; Una Merkel - Violet Ranley; Frederic Worlock - Blodgett; Dave Barry - Harry; Victoria Carroll - Award Beauty; Nancy Czar - Platinum Beauty; Hosh Harding - Bit Man; Inga Jacklin - Brunette Beauty; Jay Jasin - Race Announcer; Deanna Lund - Redhead Beauty; Jo Ann Medley - Blonde Beauty
A soundtrack album of the same title as the film was released to coincide with that of the motion picture. The first nine songs were recorded in mid February 1966 at Radio Recorders in Hollywood, California with the final three recorded in May/June at RCA Studios in Nashville, Tennessee. The album is noted for the inclusion of three non-film "bonus tracks" that had been recorded during the sessions that produced Presley's acclaimed How Great Thou Art album. These songs included Bob Dylan's "Tomorrow Is a Long Time" which, with a running time of more than 5 minutes, was the longest Presley track released to date. Elvis had heard it off of Odetta Sings Dylan, released one year prior (Dylan's own recording was made in 1963 but didn't come out till 1971.) Also included was a blues number, "Down in the Alley", and a ballad, "I'll Remember You". The opening track of the soundtrack album, Joy Byers' "Stop, Look and Listen", is notable for being a cover of a song previously recorded by Bill Haley & His Comets in February 1965.[1]
In Europe and England the film and the soundtrack album were titled 'California Holiday'. Side 1
