Live a Little, Love a Little

Live a Little, Love a Little
October 23, 1968
MGM
Comedy, Romance, Musical
VHS
B-

Although directed by Taurog, this is not a typical Elvis movie.  It's based on the book Kiss My Firm But Pliant Lips, which I've read but no longer own.  (And, yes, that would've been a more typical late '60s movie title than LaL, LaL, but it wouldn't sound like an Elvis movie.)  From what I recall, the wackiness of the book is actually toned down for the movie, but you still have Michele Carey, who was Michele in How to Stuff a Wild Bikini, as Bernice/Betty/Susie/Alice Baby, the ex-wife of Dick Sargent, chasing after Elvis-- to the point of making him lose his job and apartment and then renting him a house, and that's just for starters!-- which of course makes Elvis fall in love with her.  (It was the age of the "adorable kooky girl," so I don't think she's meant to be as annoying or felonious as she comes across now.)  Meanwhile, Elvis finds not one but two full-time jobs as a photographer, one at an ad agency, the other at a girlie magazine.  Mrs. Baby has a great dane played by Elvis's dog Brutus, except in the dream sequence where there's a man in a dog costume.  Oh, and Elvis sings "A Little Less Conversation," which became a huge hit about 35 years later, remixed by Junkie XL.

Thirty-five years earlier, International House featured two of the performers in this movie, Sterling Holloway and Rudy Vallee, who in Live a Little play a milkman and one of Elvis's bosses respectively.  And, yes, that's Gidget's most famous dad, Don Porter, as Elvis's other boss, the one at Classic Cat magazine.  Not surprisingly, two of the models, Veronica Ericson and Heidi Winston, were in girlie-magazine-centered The Swinger.  Another model, Brooke Mills, would be Mrs. Gibbons in Freaky Friday.

That's Joan Shawlee, best known as Some Like It Hot's Sweet Sue, as the new tenant in Elvis's apartment.  Larry Billman was a dancer in Beach Ball as well as here.  Thordis Brandt was in Spinout, Hal Riddle in Speedway.  Phyllis Davis, who plays the 2nd secretary, was in Spinout and The Swinger.

This time Elvis's buddy Red West plays a newspaper vendor, while his friend Joe Esposito plays one of the workmen at the newspaper that Elvis gets fired from.  And this time Myrna Ross, formerly one of Von Zipper's Mice, plays a "female companion" (I don't know whose).  Paul Sorensen would do some '70s Disney movies.

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