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The Trouble With Girls

  • Time Period: 1927
  • Location: Mid-West
  • Released: 1969

Overview:

Elvis movies are notoriously low-budget, cliché-ridden, silly little puff pieces. This one is a prime example. It's an abomination as a period piece. I don't even know why they heck they bothered to set it in a different era. The theme and ridiculously tenuous plot would have worked just as well in the 1960s as in the 1920s. It was bad -- really bad -- historically-speaking. And the overall acting and production quality were also horrible. Still, somehow, in the midst of this cinematic abortion, Elvis works his magic when he sings. He must be a magician, because it's a wonder that I ever stuck with this movie and watched it to the end.

What Was Right:

  1. The automobiles used in the film were historically accurate.
  2. The use of "Toot Toot Tootsie Goodbye" was historically plausible. The song was written/recorded/popularized in 1922.

What Was Wrong:

  1. Everything about the costume design was anachronistic with only the most superficial attempt to make the women look like they were flappers. The choir was in miniskirts, the hairstyles were right out of the sixties, the fake eyelashes and makeup were right out of the sixties. Elvis had huge lambchop sideburns and a tall bouffant.
  2. At one point in the movie, the Union leader says something to the effect of "before you can say Daddy Warbucks." Although the comic strip "Little Orphan Annie" debuted in 1925, it was not popularized until the depression years.
  3. In the first part of the movie, the black kid at the foot of the train says to Elvis, when asked how he was doing, "white folks still ahead." This is a completely ridiculous thing to say. Even the most precocious black child wouldn't have said something like this to a white man. Later in the movie, a character refers to him as "the colored kid" --- The use of the euphamism "colored" was popular in the 60s among whites, but whites didn't generally bother with euphamisms in the 1920s. A more historically accurate term would have been "negro."
  4. Although the first pop-up toaster was sold in 1926, it was a very uncommon thing to see. It is highly unlikely that a pop-up toaster would have been available in the rural, mid-west town. In fact, the electric percolator and other accessories that are in the Pharmacy are historically possible, but unlikely in this town. It would have been more accurate to omit showing any electric accessories of this type.
  5. The union lady/female lead opposite Elvis is represented as a highly educated woman who went to college, then "went to lawschool for six months." That's absolutely anachronistic. If a woman had a college education and went to lawschool in the 1920s, she damn sure would have been able to get a better job than playing piano in what amounts to a traveling circus. The truth is that working-class women weren't educated past high school in the 1920s.