#322: Viva Las Vegas

Release Date: May 20th, 1964

Format: Streaming (Tubi)

Written by: Sally Benson

Directed by: George Sidney

3 Stars

Considered top-shelf Elvis (I wouldn’t know personally; this is my first time watching an Elvis flick), Viva Las Vegas is a Panavision spectacular from MGM producer Jack Cummings and director George Sidney, who by 1964 were salty veterans of numerous ‘50s/’60s-era musical comedies.

They know exactly what they’re doing in Viva Las Vegas. 

They’ve got a bankable star (Elvis), a young starlet (Ann-Margret), and big bright lights for veteran cinematographer Joseph Biroc to razzle and dazzle us with (a note on Mr. Biroc: the man saw his first film in 1910 and started working as a film technician in 1918. He received his first on-screen credit with It’s a Wonderful Life in 1946, helped pioneer the use of 3-D photography in the early 1950s, and was there to shoot everything from the real-life liberation of Paris in 1944 to the films of New Hollywood in the early ‘70s to winning an Academy Award for The Towering Inferno in 1974. What a career!).              

The dynamite on-screen chemistry between Elvis and Ann-Margret infamously carried over into a real life affair (or was it the other way around?), and it’s their easy charm and natural charisma that carry most of the film. Coupled with Sidney and Biroc’s visual pyrotechnics, Viva Las Vegas sparkles on the screen.   

Sure the film is as shallow and sweet as a dusting of powdered sugar, but if a sugar rush is all you’re looking for, you’ve found it.