It Happened at the World’s Fair *** (1963, Elvis Presley, Joan O’Brien, Gary Lockwood, Vicky Tiu, Yvonne Craig, Kurt Russell) – Classic Movie Review 2,712

The smooth 1963 musical comedy film It Happened at the World’s Fair stars Elvis Presley and Gary Lockwood as crop-duster plane fliers, and Joan O’Brien as Elvis’s girlfriend, with Kurt Russell in his film debut.

Elvis Presley starts his 10-year contract for the MGM studio with the 1963 American musical comedy movie It Happened at the World’s Fair, which sterilises and tames the erstwhile Fifties bad boy rock ‘n roller and aims him relentlessly at the bland family movie market.

Director Norman Taurog’s smooth musical-comedy stars Elvis Presley and Gary Lockwood as crop-duster plane fliers Mike Edwards and Danny Burke. Joan O’Brien plays Elvis’s girlfriend and Kurt Russell has a small uncredited role in his film debut.

Because of Danny’s gambling debts, a local sheriff seizes their crop-duster Bessie. If they cannot come up with the money in 12 days, Bessie will be auctioned off to the highest bidder. So they become reluctant hitchhikers to try to make some money, and end up in Seattle, Washington, location of the 1962 World’s Fair.

While Danny tries winning at poker, Mike takes care of a small girl, Sue-Lin (Vicky Tiu), whose apple farmer Uncle Walter (Kam Tong) has disappeared.

The boys also look for love while they are at the World’s Fair of course – and young nurse Diane Warren (Joan O’Brien) reluctantly makes that happen for Elvis’s character Mike Edwards. Mike gives a quarter to a boy (Kurt Russell, in his film debut) who kicks him in the shin so that he can be treated by Diane. But ladies’ man Mike also courts Dorothy Johnson (Yvonne Craig).

It is a pleasant, if too conventional and old-fashioned (even in 1963) vehicle for the King, who sings his big hit ‘One Broken Heart for Sale’, plus ‘Cotton Candy Land’, ‘Happy Ending’ and ‘A World of Our Own’. New ideas are pretty scarce in Si Rose and Seaman Jacobs’s screenplay, and that’s disappointing considering this movie is still early in Presley’s film career.

Lockwood made his film debut in Presley’s 1961’s Wild in the Country. He made 40 movies but he is best known for his role as the astronaut Dr Frank Poole in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

It is filmed in Seattle, Washington, site of the Century 21 Exposition. The governor of Washington, Albert Rosellini, suggested the setting to MGM executives and the hit film that resulted made $2.25 million at the US/ Canada box office. The Seattle Centre, including the Monorail and the Space Needle, serve as backdrops.

Nearly 10 million people attended the Century 21 Exposition (aka the Seattle World’s Fair) from 21 April 1962 to 21 October 1962.

Vicky Tiu later grew up to be the first lady of Hawaii when she married Governor Benjamin Cayetano.

Joan Marie O’Brien (February 14, 1936 – May 5, 2025) 

Joan O’Brien enjoyed a brief but successful career on TV and film in the 1950s to the mid-1960s. She co-stars with Cary Grant and Tony Curtis in the 1959 Operation Petticoat.  She plays survivor Susanna Dickinson in John Wayne’s 1960 epic The Alamo, and in 1961 plays his love interest in The Comancheros.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2,712

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com