​And then there was Frankie and Johnny. It just kind of sat there on the list. It didn’t seem to have any kind of theme or personality. It didn’t have any songs that I knew. It didn’t seem really good or bad. It just kind of was.

​

Watching it didn’t change that assessment at all. It’s not really much of a movie. Not good, not horrible. It feels like at every point, they just said, “Good enough. Moving on…” When I’m done watching all of the movies, I suspect I won’t be able to recall much about it.

​

It’s a musical with some really unremarkable music. It’s set sometime in the late 1800s on a Mississippi River riverboat. It’s hard to say exactly when. At first someone tries to use confederate money at the onboard casino, so I thought late 1860s, but later they arrive in New Orleans and there’s a sign for Gay 90s Girls. You can’t tell from the sets or clothing because they all look like typical 1960s pop culture versions of the late 1800s. Think Wild Wild West. 

​

In fact, the whole movie feels like it a TV show. It’s got cheap sets and TV show lighting and even actors who were later staples of TV sitcoms. Elvis is Johnny* and his main love interest is HSW Frankie**, played by Donna Douglas, who later became famous for being Ellie Mae Clampett. They are entertainers on the riverboat, and their pianist is played by Harry Morgan, the future Colonel Sherman T. Potter of MASH.

​

Johnny’s has a gambling problem, and owes everyone on the boat a bunch of money, including his boss and Frankie. He tries going to a gypsy fortune teller for advice. She says that a red head will bring him luck. In walks HDW and redhead Nellie Bly. She’s the boss’s woman, kind of, and Johnny is really only interested in her to be his good luck charm. But Frankie is jealous and the boss is jealous and all kinds of sitcom mixups have to happen before things get worked out.

​

Sadly, none of those things are very interesting. There’s a point where Frankie, Nellie and another member of the riverboat show, Mitzi, all get identical costumes for Mardi Gras. It has the potential to create some interesting plot developments, but it ends up going nowhere.

​

There is a lot of music in Frankie and Johnny, and mostly it’s like everything else in the movie. Just kind of Meh. What would on its own be one of the worst songs ever, “Petunia The Gardener’s Daughter” actually gets saved by context in the movie. It’s a campy song that’s part of a show on the riverboat that is set up as intentionally campy. Other songs don’t fare so well. Toward the end they don’t even try to stay in period and start adding electric guitar to arrangements when earlier they stuck to accurate to the time instruments like banjo, clarinet, trumpet and tuba.

​

In the opening credits, I saw that the movie was directed by Fred de Cordova, which I recognized as the name of the old director of the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Turns out it was the same guy, and that the other movie he directed was Bedtime For Bonzo with Ronald Reagan. I definitely won’t be doing a Fred de Cordova film festival. Ever.

_____________________________

 

ACTING: 4 Elvises

MUSICAL PERFORMANCES: 1 Elvis

BEST SONG: “Come Along” I guess

STUNTS: A couple of fights

CRINGE FACTOR: Duet with shoe shine boy in New Orleans

KISSIN’: Here and there

_____________________________

​

*Just Johnny

**Just Frankie