Chautauqua

chautauqua

Chautauqua? I hear you ask. What has that got to do with Elvis films?

Well, in 1960, Day Keene and Dwight Vincent Babcock (his last name does not appear on the cover) wrote the novel, Chautauqua, and by the end of the year rumours were rife that it would be made into a film, starring Elvis Presley, Hope Lange and Arthur O'Connell (sounds as if they got their Wild In The Country and Follow That Dream wires crossed to me!). That fizzled out, of course, and in 1964 Dick Van Dyke was signed to star in a film called Chautauqua, but based on a different story, one called Merrily We Roll Along, written by Gary MacLaren. That didn't work out, either, but in 1968 production began on a film called Chautauqua, based on the book called Chautauqua and starring Elvis Presley. Whew! Then along came Tom Parker, Elvis's Dutch manager, who decided that Chautauqua was too difficult to pronounce (and, as he was Dutch, it probably was too difficult for him to pronounce), so he changed the title to The Trouble With Girls (And How To Get Into It). No, seriously, that's what the film was then called, so it went from one word to ten, plus brackets. The new title had nothing to do with the film, which was really quite good, and it's just a surprise that Parker didn't suggest the inclusion of a talking camel (he did suggest just that for Harem Holiday, of course).

The cover shown on this 1961 Dell edition was designed by Michell Hooks.

© David Neale 2020