''Speedway'' is a

1968 The year was highlighted by protests and other unrests that occurred worldwide. Events January–February * January 5 – "Prague Spring": Alexander Dubček is chosen as leader of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. * Januar ...

American musical action film starring

Elvis Presley Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), or simply Elvis, was an American singer and actor. Dubbed the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as Cultural impact of Elvis Presley, one ...

as a

racecar driver Auto racing (also known as car racing, motor racing, or automobile racing) is a motorsport involving the racing of automobiles for competition. Auto racing has existed since the invention of the automobile. Races of various sorts were organis ...

and

Nancy Sinatra Nancy Sandra Sinatra (born June 8, 1940) is an American singer and actress. She is the elder daughter of Frank Sinatra and Nancy Sinatra ( Barbato), and is best known for her 1966 signature hit "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'. Nancy Sinatra ...

(in her last film role) as his romantic interest.

Plot

Steve Grayson (Presley) is a generous

NASCAR The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, LLC (NASCAR) is an American auto racing sanctioning and operating company that is best known for stock car racing. The privately owned company was founded by Bill France Sr. in 1948, and hi ...

race car driver with a heart of gold who feels compelled to bail friends and acquaintances out of financial hardship. However, Steve's manager Kenny Donford, a

compulsive gambler Problem gambling or ludomania is repetitive gambling behavior despite harm and negative consequences. Problem gambling may be diagnosed as a mental disorder according to ''DSM-5'' if certain diagnostic criteria are met. Pathological gambling is ...

, had been mismanaging Steve's winnings to support his gambling habits, landing Steve in deep trouble with the

IRS The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the revenue service for the United States federal government, which is responsible for collecting U.S. federal taxes and administering the Internal Revenue Code, the main body of the federal statutory tax ...

for nonpayment of

back taxes Back taxes is a term for taxes that were not completely paid when due. Typically, these are taxes that are owed from a previous year. Causes for back taxes include failure to pay taxes by the deadline, failure to correctly report one's income, or n ...

and causing many of Steve's valuable possessions to be repossessed. This proves to be a problem for Steve in his efforts to continue racing competitively and support those who depend on his intense generosity. Enter Susan Jacks (Sinatra), an IRS agent assigned to keep tabs on Steve and apply his future prize money toward his $150,000 debt, but she ends up taking a romantic interest in him as well.

Cast

as Steve Grayson *

as Susan Jacks * Bill Bixby as Kenny Donford *

Gale Gordon Gale Gordon (born Charles Thomas Aldrich Jr., February 20, 1906 – June 30, 1995) was an American character actor perhaps best remembered as Lucille Ball's longtime television foil—and particularly as cantankerously combustible, tightfiste ...

as R. W. Hepworth *

William Schallert William Joseph Schallert (July 6, 1922 – May 8, 2016) was an American character actor who appeared in dozens of television shows and films over a career spanning more than 60 years. He is known for his roles on ''Richard Diamond, Private ...

as Abel Esterlake *

Victoria Paige Meyerink Victoria Paige Meyerink is a producer and former child actress. At the age of four, Meyerink became Danny Kaye's co-star on the CBS variety series ''The Danny Kaye Show'' and, in 2006, was honored by the Young Artist Foundation with its Former ...

as Ellie Esterlake *

Carl Ballantine Carl Ballantine (September 28, 1917 – November 4, 2009) was an American magician, comedian and actor. Billing himself as "The Great Ballantine", "The Amazing Ballantine" or "Ballantine: The World's Greatest Magician", his vaudeville-style come ...

as Birdie Kebner *

Ross Hagen Ross Hagen (born Leland Lando Lilly; May 21, 1938 – May 7, 2011) was an American voice actor, actor, director, screenwriter and producer whose television acting credits included ''Daktari''. His film credits included ''The Hellcats'' in 1967 a ...

as Paul Dado * Charlotte Considine as Lori *

Sandy Reed Sandy Reed ( – February 7, 2004) was a track announcer with Ascot Park in Gardena, California, and the Riverside International Raceway in Riverside, California. He was in several movies, including Richard Rush's 1967 film '' Thunder Alley'', th ...

as Speedway Announcer

Production

''Speedway'' was originally planned as a film to star

Sonny & Cher Sonny & Cher were an American pop and entertainment duo in the 1960s and 1970s, made up of husband and wife Sonny Bono and Cher. The couple started their career in the mid-1960s as R&B backing singers for record producer Phil Spector. The pair f ...

. However, after their first movie, ''

Good Times ''Good Times'' is an American television sitcom that aired for six seasons on CBS, from February 8, 1974, to August 1, 1979. Created by Eric Monte and Mike Evans and developed by executive producer Norman Lear, it was television's first African ...

'' flopped at the box office, Columbia sold the rights to MGM, which retooled it for Elvis. Elvis was paid $850,000 plus 50% of the profits.

Petula Clark Petula Sally Olwen Clark, CBE (born 15 November 1932) is an English singer, actress, and composer. She has one of the longest serving careers of a British singer, spanning more than seven decades. Clark's professional career began during the ...

and

Annette Funicello Annette Joanne Funicello (October 22, 1942 – April 8, 2013) was an American actress and singer. Funicello began her professional career as a child performer at the age of twelve. She was one of the most popular Mouseketeers on the orig ...

were offered the lead female role, but both turned it down. Filming began on 26 June 1967. Scenes were shot at the

Charlotte Motor Speedway Charlotte Motor Speedway (previously known as Lowe's Motor Speedway from 1999 to 2009) is a motorsport complex located in Concord, North Carolina, outside Charlotte. The complex features a quad oval track that hosts NASCAR racing including th ...

Concord, North Carolina Concord is the county seat and largest city in Cabarrus County, in the U.S. state of North Carolina. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 105,186, with an estimated population in 2021 of 107,697. In terms of population, the cit ...

. The film features guest appearances by several of the top stock-car—better known now as

—drivers of the day including

Richard Petty Richard Lee Petty (born July 2, 1937), nicknamed "The King", is an American former stock car racing driver who raced from 1958 to 1992 in the former NASCAR Grand National and Winston Cup Series (now called the NASCAR Cup Series), most notabl ...

Buddy Baker Elzie Wylie "Buddy" Baker Jr. (January 25, 1941 – August 10, 2015) was an American professional stock car racing driver and commentator. Over the course of his 33-year racing career, he won 19 races in the NASCAR Cup Series, including the 198 ...

, Cale Yarborough,

Tiny Lund DeWayne Louis "Tiny" Lund (November 14, 1929 – August 17, 1975) was an American stock car racer. He was a journeyman racer-for-hire in the top level NASCAR Grand National Series, running partial seasons for a number of years, including a vict ...

and more. They were shown individually with their names in the film's opening credits. This would be the final "formula" musical film of Presley's career. His remaining films would be less musical and more adult in tone. Steve Grayson's generosity portrayed in the film was based loosely on Presley's real-life generosity, in which Presley would give cars, homes, and other expensive items to

Memphis Mafia The Memphis Mafia was the nickname given by the media to a group of Elvis Presley's friends, associates, employees and cousins whose main functions were to accompany, protect, and serve Presley from the beginning of his career in 1954 until his de ...

members (the media's nickname for his close group of friends and coworkers), family and friends, and even total strangers.

Release

Although the film was completed in the early summer of 1967, it was not released in theaters until June 1968. It was a box-office success placing at #40 for the year on the ''

Variety Variety may refer to: Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats * Variety (radio) * Variety show, in theater and television Films * ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont * ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...

'' weekly national box office list. The only guitar to be featured in the film is during one of the film's closing scenes, during the performance of " There Ain't Nothing Like A Song", where a sunburst

Fender Coronado The Fender Coronado is a double-cutaway thin-line hollow-body electric guitar, announced in 1965. It is manufactured by Fender Musical Instruments Corporation. The aesthetic design embodied in the Coronado represents a departure from previous F ...

is used.

Soundtrack

Reception

By 1968, Presley films had long become formulaic.

Renata Adler Renata Adler (born October 19, 1938) is an American author, journalist, and film critic. Adler was a staff writer-reporter for ''The New Yorker'', and in 1968–69, she served as chief film critic for ''The New York Times''. She is also a write ...

of ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' wrote that ''Speedway'' was "just another Presley movie — which makes no great use at all of one of the most talented, important and durable performers of our time. Music, youth and customs were much changed by Elvis Presley 12 years ago; from the 26 movies he has made since he sang "Heartbreak Hotel" you would never guess it." A review in ''

'' declared: "Under Norman Taurog's know-how comedy direction even some of the silliness in the Phillip Shuken script gets by as entertainment, but the story lacks the legitimacy of the better Presley starrers. However, with Presley in there swinging in his usual style and his own particular brand of lightness the feature stacks up as an okay entry."

Roger Ebert Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...

gave the film two stars out of four, writing: "'Speedway' is pleasant, kind, polite, sweet and noble, and if the late show viewers of 1988 will not discover from it what American society was like in the summer of 1968, at least they will discover what it was not like." Kevin Thomas of the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...

'' wrote that the film "has a script that ran out of gas before Elvis Presley was born. Presley pictures can be unpretentious fun, but this one is both uninspired and too much of an imitation of too many of his previous movies ... There aren't even very many songs to break up developments too predictable to outline here." He thought Nancy Sinatra's one song was "the high point of the picture."Thomas, Kevin (August 8, 1968). "Elvis Presley Featured in 'Speedway' Citywide". ''

''. Part V, p. 12.

Home media

''Speedway'' was released to DVD by Warner Home Video on August 7, 2007 as a Region 1 widescreen DVD.

References

External links

* *
Review of ''Speedway''
by Bill Treadway at

DVD Verdict DVD Verdict was a judicial-themed website for DVD reviews. The site was founded in 1999. The editor-in-chief was Michael Stailey, who owned the website between 2004 and 2016, and the site employed a large editorial staff of critics, whose reviews ...

, 3 August 2004.
Review of ''Speedway''
by Jeff Rosado at digitallyOBSESSED!, 1 August 2004. {{Norman Taurog 1968 films 1960s musical comedy-drama films American musical comedy-drama films American auto racing films Films directed by Norman Taurog Films shot in North Carolina Films shot in California Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films 1968 comedy films 1968 drama films 1960s English-language films 1960s American films