Lousy Last Ever Movie Performances - Elvis Presley - Change Of Habit

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Elvis films were nearly all pretty dumb. He proved that he can act in some of the early ones, especially 1958’s King Creole and 1960’s Flaming Star but his manipulative manager, Colonel Parker wanted The King to only appear in cheaply produced beach movies where the songs could quickly promote a soundtrack album. Whether he was a boxer, a convict or an Acapulco Cliff-Diver, Elvis was never far from a guitar. Change Of Habit was Elvis’s last acting role, and a late attempt to return to straight-forward dramatic acting. It has only four songs on the soundtrack. Its plot is a typical Hollywood chestnut, the man who falls in love with a pretty woman oblivious that she is a nun forced to go incognito. The film tries desperately hard to deal with contemporary big issues; nuns struggling with their faith, inner city crime, homelessness, prostitution, etc. Though to his loyalist fans, Elvis could do no wrong, his films were faring badly at the box office, so the main studios were economically wary of giving him more screen time. The Colonel bullied Universal into letting Elvis into Change Of Habit which was being pitched as a vehicle for the leading nun performer, Mary Tyler Moore, who sadly died the day before I wrote this up here. Suddenly, Doctor John Carpenter, played by Elvis, was the real star of the movie. The story would focus on his point of view. Scripts were revised accordingly. The rest of the cast did not appreciate the imposed change of direction. Elvis tries his best, but he is torn here between a return to his earlier serious acting stance and the singing hero persona of most of his movies, and this time with no hope of getting the girl. The action goes on around him as if the rest of the cast and crew are still largely following the story they had in mind in the first place. A pivotal scene has Elvis singing by the bedsides of sick children while the assisting nuns watch on adoringly. Mary Tyler Moore’s attention switches between an effigy of Jesus on the cross and Elvis to show her division of feelings between the two very different forms of idol-worship. The closing song, Let Us Pray, has Elvis going all Gospel calling on the church congregation to support the nuns as they take their final vows, but with a tinge of sadness that Mary Tyler Moore chose God over him. Had Elvis been Elvis her choice might have been more difficult, but he is supposed to be a humble doctor – it’s just that the film makers can’t help reminding us who is playing the part, which makes everything terribly self-conscious. Elvis’s future ventures would be on the Vegas stage, where he would do what he always did best, singing to live audiences. The film did more favours for Mary Tyler Moore, and Ed Asner, a minor co-star here, who shares no actual screen time with her in the movie, would become her leading man in her forthcoming and long-running Mary Tyler Moore TV show. Elvis could have been a great actor, as Sinatra proved to be. His last real serious stab at the screen had been with Flaming Star where he was very passable as a half-Indian, half Texan mixed blood figure with severely divided loyalties. Like his last movie, it carried only a few of his songs, and also showed a potential in Elvis that the Colonel regrettably never allowed to flourish. Youtube of the only song from the film to be released as a chart single, Rubbernecking. Arthur Chappell