US Navy Veterans Site

In late 1966 to early 1967, Elvis Presley made a movie which was shot in the Long Beach, CA shipyards. Our ship, the USS Platte AO 24 was anchored in the bay waiting to leave for the Philippines. One morning, one of the guys on watch came by and told me that Elvis was shooting a movie in the bay. I and several others (I can't remember who was with me at the time) went up on deck to see. Sure enough, there was Elvis, et all, out in the bay, in a boat, making a movie. I had forgotten all about this over the years.

 

Then last year, I was in Pittsburgh helping my mother and dad move out of their house (after 50 years) to an apartment. While I and my sisters were packing up stuff from the attic, I found a box with pictures and post cards that I had sent my mom while in the Navy. There was a post card from Long Beach that I had sent to my mom, telling her about the "Elvis Event".

 

After that I went on a research mission trying to track down which movie it was. Then late one night on cable TV, an Elvis movie had just started, and I recognized the location immediately. The movie was "Easy Come, Easy Go".

 

So, over the next year or so, I tried to get the movie and analyze the opening segment to find the Platte and the stupid guys waving from the forecastle! But, nobody had this old movie, not Blockbuster, or any other movie rental place.

 

Last August, 2001, one of the cable channels had scheduled the movie. I setup two VCR's and a computer to capture the movie (I wanted to make sure I got a good copy).

 

I then used video editing software to review the opening segment, frame by frame. I could not find the Platte anywhere. I blew up every frame to 20x-40x looking for it. There were several ships that looked like the Platte, but none of the frames exposed the hull number (AO 24) which of course would have been proof positive.

So, it turns out, after all that, that the Platte footage probably had hit the cutting room floor.  

UPDATE: 10/05/2009. After looking some more, I think I found the Platte!