Allan Weiss, Writer on 6 Elvis Presley Movies, Dies at 90

Screenwriter Allan Weiss, who was on hand to witness Elvis Presley's first Hollywood screen test and worked on six of Elvis' movies in the 1960s, has died. He was 90. Weiss died Thursday at a nursing facility in Mission Viejo, Calif., his nephew, Ken Maas, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Weiss provided the story for Presley's Blue Hawaii (1961) and wrote or co-wrote the screenplays for the films Girls! Girls! Girls! (1962), Fun in Acapulco (1963), Roustabout (1964), Paradise, Hawaiian Style (1966) and Easy Come, Easy Go (1967).

Weiss was an associate of renowned producer Hal B. Wallis, whose credits included The Maltese Falcon (1941), Casablanca (1942) and several films starring Martin and Jerry Lewis. The writer was present when Wallis, then based at Paramount Pictures, made Elvis' screen test in March 1956.

'No one had any expectations; (Elvis Presley) was such a strange, quiet fellow -- so completely foreign', Weiss said in the 2004 book Elvis Presley: The Man. The Life. The Legend. 'But he sang and read a scene from (the N. Richard Nash play) The Rainmaker and answered questions asked from off-screen -- and it was phenomenal. It was an amazing experience to be there, one of those life-changing experiences'.

Weiss once noted that to write a screenplay for an Elvis movie, 'You had to make room for 12 songs, and they had to be integrated'. He and Anthony Lawrence's script for Roustabout was nominated for a WGA award for best movie musical that year, losing out to Mary Poppins.

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