Tickle Me: Tickle Me (1965)

U.S. Promotional Photo

Note: Since this is an Elvis Presley movie subjected to tons of publicity and analysis through the years, and with me being an Elvis fan, I am going to try to avoid too much analysis of the Elvis angle and remain primarily focused on the subject of this blog, Jocelyn Lane. For that reason, I am not going to delve into record releases associated with the film. If you have interest in even more information about the movie, a good place to start is Joseph A. Tunzi's quality 2007 publication, Elvis in Tickle Me. It has a lot of great photos and information about the movie, some of which I will quote in this post.

In Tickle Me (Elvis Presley's 18th motion picture), Elvis plays, Lonnie Beale, a rodeo rider who has arrived in a small town looking for a job in the rodeo off-season. He lands a job at the Circle Z Ranch, a "fat farm" of sorts that caters to rich women, models, and actresses that want to get whipped into shape. The ranch is owned by Vera Radford (Julie Adams). Brad Bentley (Edward Faulkner) is her ranch overseer, and Pam Meritt (Jocelyn) is her exercise instructor. Stanley Potter (Jack Mullaney) is a goofy ranch hand.

Brad, a wannabe muscle guy, is immediately jealous of the attention that Lonnie receives from the ladies. Lonnie becomes friends with Stanley, and he quickly sets his sights on Pam for romance. Much of the action revolves around several fights scenes and zany comedy, usually involving Stanley and/or Brad. Also, the eagerness of the ranch beauties to chase after Lonnie drive the storyline, with even owner Vera getting in on the action. Elvis gets plenty of opportunities to sing and serenade the ladies. The rest of the plot revolves around an old letter/map that Pam received from her grandfather, which describes $100,000 in gold coins that he hid in a nearby old west ghost town. Although Pam plays hard to get, Lonnie ultimately helps her find the hidden treasure, wins her heart, and marries her at the end.

Let me start by saying that this is not an Elvis movie that I was ever able to watch on TV growing up in the 1970's. It just never played in my area of the U.S. I was an adult when I watched it for the first time, and I was mostly underwhelmed. However, after repeat viewings, I have developed an appreciation for this movie that makes it one of my favorite Elvis movies, right alongside the favorites from my childhood. To fully appreciate this movie, you need to know some of the back-story.

From Tunzi's book: "Although often stated that Elvis and the Colonel took a pay cut in order to help Allied Artists, who were close to bankruptcy, this is unlikely. Reportedly, Elvis received $750,000 plus fifty percent of the profits for this film, which is very much in line with what he was receiving for film contracts during this time period. The Colonel is said to have stated that the studio 'met his terms' so he agreed to do the picture with the financially troubled studio. At one point, when it was rumored that the studio would not be able to raise the $1.48 million budgeted for the picture, the Colonel offered to rescind the contract. The President of the studio, Steve Broidy, stated 'if I never make another movie, I am determined to make Tickle Me.' Broidy's decision paid off as the film grossed at least triple what it had cost, and was the third largest earner in the studio's history up to that point."

So, the idea was that a very tight-budgeted Elvis Presley picture would be shot on a Hollywood back lot, in order to virtually guarantee that the studio would make enough money to save itself. One of the ways that the budget was held in check was by not recording a soundtrack written specifically for the film. This was the only such film that Elvis ever made. For Tickle Me, the production used some studio cuts that had been recorded and released on albums between 1960 and 1963. That turns out to be one of the strengths for the movie, because the songs range from decent to good, and are a cut above much of the soundtrack material from Elvis movies in the mid-1960's.

The film had a very tight schedule, with a plan for it to be shot in 21 days. For reasons that are not clear, it ended up taking 23 days to shoot the film, starting on October 12, 1964 and lensing the last scenes on November 11, 1964. Allied Artists rented out space at Paramount Studios to shoot the film, using Stages 5, 8, and 9, as well as inside one of the large, dry water tanks, the B-Tank. The also used Paramount's Western Town, which had to be scheduled around shooting for Bonanza. A second unit did a bit of outdoor, long-shot shooting in Palmdale without the stars.

It seems that they tried to throw everything into this movie: more fights, even more gorgeous girls (in bathing suits and short-shorts as much as possible), western scenes, sight gags, and more songs. It HAD to be a hit at the box office. And, you know what, it actually works.

At this point Elvis was entering a period in his film career in which he was really upset with the quality of the scripts, the songs, everything. He became disillusioned about what was happening with his acting career. However, in Tickle Me, Elvis hasn't quite hit that point yet. By all accounts, he was very professional and a pleasure to work with on the film, which was right up his alley, really. He was very good at light comedy. Director Norman Taurog was good at shooting good-looking films with tight budgets and capturing improvised comedic moments. There are a number of those in this film, but I am not going to get bogged down in those elements. Taurog had worked on a number of the Jerry Lewis/Dean Martin films earlier in his career. I'm going to remain focused on Jocelyn, though. Let's just say that the cast and crew churned out a decent movie, certainly as good as could be hoped for under the imposed limitations. Every movie doesn't have to be an all-time classic to be enjoyable. In March 1972, while doing an interview segment for the documentary Elvis on Tour, Elvis said: "not all the movies were bad. In between I would do something that was entertaining to people...of a pure entertainment nature, like Tickle Me...they work well on television."

As for Jocelyn, she makes a stunning entrance in the most overtly sexual scene in any Elvis movie. As he approaches a group of exercising ladies being led by Jocelyn, she is bent over in white, impossibly-short-shorts, with her rear end pointing toward Elvis, as she looks back at him through her legs. The look on his face is priceless, as was I'm sure the look on every heterosexual male that ever watched this film. Folks, this scene puts everyone on notice that Jocelyn Lane has ARRIVED on the scene. If you take Ann-Margret out of the debate, then Jocelyn Lane is hands-down the sexiest woman to have appeared in an Elvis movie, and that's saying something.

Given the fact that Elvis films were not generally well-regarded by the snobs in the industry and that this particular film had even more limitations than normal, the most amazing thing to me is that this is the first film in which Jocelyn was presented with an opportunity to really ACT, to stretch herself out into more situations on-screen, and to be more demonstrative. To her credit, she stepped up to the plate and absolutely hit a home run.

I will argue with anyone until I'm blue in the face that this was Jocelyn's best acting performance to that point in her career, perhaps the best one of her entire career. She was great with the light comedy, and I contend that no actress in the world could have handled that role any better than she did. Goodness knows, there was no actress in the world that was any more beautiful than she was in this film. She's tanned, with gorgeous red hair, an impossibly sexy wardrobe, and many of the scenes highlight just how petite she was.

In Tickle Me, Jocelyn speaks without a British accent, although if you pay really close attention, there are a couple of times that she lets a hint of it slip into a word or two. If you didn't know her background, you would not guess that she had a British background based on watching her in this movie. Unlike any other work that she had done to date, Jocelyn does several little things that bring out her performance, the kinds of little things that dedicated actors do to bring their characters to life. For example, in the final scene of the movie, as Lonnie and Pam are riding down the highway in a jeep after getting married, Pam is snuggled up next to Lonnie as he sings Slow But Surely (a catchy tune). As Elvis sings "Slowly but surely, I'm gonna wear you down...," Jocelyn looks lovingly at him with an impish look on her face and gives a little nod in response to the words that he is singing. Also in that scene, Elvis and Jocelyn are often looking at each other as he is singing while driving down the road. At one point, she gives a quick, teasing move like she is about to grab the steering wheel, because he is not paying attention to the road. That little gesture, probably unscripted, seemed so spontaneous and genuine, almost poking fun at the entire scene, that it is just precious. It was clearly difficult for actresses to sit and "act" as Elvis sang an entire song to them on-screen. Jocelyn did it absolutely PERFECTLY in this scene. Nobody ever did it better.

If you only watch one Jocelyn Lane movie in your life, Tickle Me is the one to watch. She never looked better, never acted better, and showed how much potential she had when given the right opportunity.

Michael Hoey, who assisted Taurog with script changes on the film, had this to say about Jocelyn: "Jackie Lane was a little sexpot. She was fun...I thought she would be more successful in films, but she gave it all up to marry a wealthy Spanish prince. Jackie would have been perfect to play the role in Double Trouble. She had much more sex appeal [than Annette Day]."

Co-star Faulkner said: "Jocelyn Lane was low-key, not very sociable, didn't seem too relaxed to me. I think that was one of her first films. She may have been completely comfortable. She was pleasant, but not particularly out-going."

I have not been able to take a look at the studio's pressbook for the film, but it appears from the newspaper articles about the film that the studio was trying to tout her as the "British Bardot" and "England's new glamour export." That term, and comparisons with Bardot are noted in several of the newspaper articles. She was being touted as having a 36-20-36 figure and was referred to as being 24 years old (instead of her actual age, 27).

Probably in an effort to endear Jocelyn to American audiences, the studio also released a story saying that she didn't like English men, quoting her as saying: "I think it's because English men really don't like women much...They're polite and all that, and they can be very gallant at times, but I'm sure that in their secret opinion women rank somewhere after darts and bowling. I'll take American men any time."

Many of the newspaper/magazine stories indicate that Jocelyn and Elvis "dated" during filming. I don't know if that is true or not, though it's possible, since Jocelyn was not married at the time. Elvis didn't "date" married women. He was for sure still seeing Ann-Margret as of the time that filming started on Tickle Me (per Memphis Mafia member Jerry Schilling's book). Here are some examples of such articles:

In his book, Memphis Mafia member Sonny West stated: "Jocelyn was British, and her beauty, brains, and dynamite body were offset by her snooty attitude. The other actresses mocked her behind her back. She warmed up to Elvis, though, but I'm not sure if they had anything going. I heard a few years later that she became a princess when she married into British royalty." Since Sonny seems to be the only person that I've seen who had something "bad" to say about Jocelyn, let me put that into a bit of context. First of all, Sonny and the other Memphis Mafia guys were generally good-ole Southern boys (a classification in which I would also place myself) and were probably a little rough-around-the edges at times. Jocelyn, given her background and proclivity for dating royalty and rich international businessmen, may not have been very comfortable around those type of guys, which could have made her appear "snooty." Sonny and Jocelyn may have just been very "different" people, from different backgrounds, who didn't click, without either one being "nice" versus the other having a "bad attitude." As for the other actresses, I always take those kinds of comments with a grain of salt. I can only imagine the competitiveness among starlets on a movie set with Elvis Presley.

Enough! On to some promotional material. The film was released in the U.S. on June 30, 1965 and in the U.K. on July 5, 1965. Releases in a number of countries followed over the next couple of years.

Here is the U.S. trailer for the film: