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On November 27, 1963 Paramount released "Fun In Acapulco". It was Elvis' 13th movie, but certainly no unlucky one. It earned the studio rentals of 3 million USD, so one can estimate a box office gross of 6 million USD. Translated to the present with our factor 15 the audience would have bought tickets for 90 million USD with 45 million USD going to Paramount. And that was just the business in the USA and Canada. So "Fun In Acapulco" beat MGM's "It Happened At The World's Fair" and Paramount's own "Girls! Girls! Girls!".
In Germany the movie was brought into the cinemas on December 20, 1963 and was simply called "Acapulco". Well, maybe the studio thought a typical German didn't know what "fun" was anyway.
Mike Windgren (Elvis), a former trapeze artist with vertigo, is in search for work and befriends a boy named Raoul, who promtly gets him work in a hotel as a singer and substitutional pool attendant. Dolores as well as Marguerita try to win Mikes heart, which leads to to several complications. To make it worse, Moreno, the chief pool attendand, has fallen for Marguerita and is extremely jealous.
Hal B. Wallis (producer), Richard Thorpe (director), Allan Weiss (script), Joseph J. Lilley (music), Daniel L. Fapp (camera), Stanley E. Johnson (editor).
Elvis Presley (Mike Windgren), Ursula Andress (Marguerita Dauphin), Elsa Cardenas (Dolores Gomez), Paul Lukas (Maximilian Dauphin), Larry Domasin (Raoul Almeido) und Alejandro Rey (Moreno). The German voice of Elvis was dubbed by Claus Wilcke, who had also done the job for "Blue Hawaii".
For Elvis working for Paramount meant to feel underpaid. Because of the poor contract from 1956 he received no more than $175,000 while other studios paid more than twice as much. He not even got the see the beaches of Mexico, because producer Hal B. Wallis sent just a small team to Acapulco and had his star act infront of projections at the studio lot in Los Angeles.
Just as MGM had looked at what Wallis had done with Elvis, the producer observed what worked in MGM's "It Happened At The World's Fair", too. And so he also used a child as popular figure. Because Ursula Andress had become every man's dream since she stepped out of the water in "Dr. No" (the first James Bond movie), he hired her as Presley's leading lady. Her husband was so jealous of Elvis, that he often appeared on the set unannounced and even hired a private eye to observe her. A well known fun fact is the appearance of Gene Simmons, the future lead vocalist of Kiss. In one of the scenes he is seen in the background as one of the cliff divers.
RCA Victor released a single and an album. Both reached the top ten and sold 5.25 million copies combined. By tapping on the covers you'll be forwarded to the accordant reviews.
Back in 2007 Paramount included "Fun In Acapulco" in their "Elvis - 8 Movies DVD Collection". For a short review just tap on the cover.
With a more exotic backdrop, the voluptuous Ursula Andress and better songs Paramount was able to surpass the success of MGM's rival product by a million USD. In its third year the well established formular showed no symptoms of fatigue.
Movie Posters and DVD Cover (C) ParamountM, Record Cover (C) RCA Victor