Anne Helm and Elvis Presley in a publicity photograph for the movie "Follow that Dream".
In Elvis’ ninth feature film, “Follow That Dream” (1962), the King of Rock and Roll plays Toby Kwimper of Cranberry County, a Jethro-like innocent “with the IQ of a grasshopper” but “exquisite proportions” (according to one female observer).
His co-star is Anne Helm as live-in teen orphan Holly Jones, who has grown under Elvis’ watchful eye from “a skinny, scrawny little thing” to “practically a woman.”
Actress Anne helm
Anne Helm and Elvis Presley in a publicity photograph for the movie "Follow that Dream".
“You know anything about sex, Holly?” Elvis asks the girl at one point. But he doesn’t want her to get any funny notions, so he serenades her with these lyrics: “Don’t kiss me/ Don’t claw me/ Don’t pet me/ Don’t paw me/ I won’t leave my freedom behind.../ Oh, I’m not the marrying kind...”
In fact, Helm didn’t need a script to know Presley wasn’t the marrying kind, at least when it came to his co-stars: The two had a relationship off screen as well as on during the shooting of “Follow That Dream,” according to Helm, who is in town for the Memphis Film Festival, a convention for fans of classic and vintage movies and TV programs that continues today and Saturday at the Whispering Woods Hotel & Conference Center, 11200 E. Goodman Road in Olive Branch.
Helm is adding some necessary woman power to this year’s festival, which is billed as “A Gathering of Guns” because most of the celebrity guests in attendance are known for their appearances in Westerns. The lineup includes Robert Fuller (“Wagon Train”), Ty Hardin (“Bronco”), Henry Darrow (“The High Chaparral”) and close to a dozen others.
If most of the festival guests are identified with shoot-’em-ups, a few also have an Elvis connection. Will (“Sugarfoot”) Hutchins appeared in “Spinout” (1966) and “Clambake” (1967), while James (“The Virginian”) Drury played Presley’s brother in Elvis’ movie debut, “Love Me Tender” (1956). However, it’s safe to say neither of these actors got quite as close to the production’s leading man as Helm.
“I really fell for Elvis — I mean, who wouldn’t?” said Helm, 70, who retired from acting 13 years ago and is now a South Pasadena, Calif., artist who specializes in “assemblage” and mixed-media pieces inspired by “the Madonna image.”
“We did have a romance, it was quite wonderful,” said Helm. “We were on location in Crystal River (Florida), Elvis was away from the madding crowd, it was like a shipboard romance with Elvis.
“I continued seeing him when I came back (to Hollywood), but it was very difficult; he had many lives, he had many women around him. It wasn’t like Crystal Spring where I had him all to myself every night.”
Helm said she didn’t quite understand the level of Elvis’ fame until their first “public date” together at a Florida “mermaid show,” when what seemed like “thousands of people” showed up to see Elvis, “and they were behind a wire fence to keep them away from Elvis, because they were crazed... I was really overwhelmed by it, because I’d never seen such madness for someone... .
“He was so sweet, he sent me back to the motel and he stayed there and signed autographs for about three or four hours for those people, and I was so touched by that. He really revered his fans. He was lovely with them. I was very impressed — one more thing to love Elvis for.”
A showgirl at the famed Copacabana nightclub in New York who made the transition into acting, the Toronto-born Helm was busy from the 1950s through the 1970s with guest appearances on such series as “Perry Mason,” “Rawhide,” “Route 66,” “Hawaii Five-O” and “Barnaby Jones.” Her final acting job was in “The Doll,” a 1986 episode of Steven Spielberg’s “Amazing Stories” written by Richard Matheson (author of the novel “I Am Legend”).
She also appeared in some films that have garnered appreciative cult audiences. She was a princess captured by an evil wizard (Basil Rathbone) in Bert I. Gordon’s “The Magic Sword” (1962); she was in the neglected serial-killer film “The Couch” (1962), written by Robert Bloch (“Psycho”); and she appeared in the only movie directed by James Caan, the thriller “Hide in Plain Sight” (1980).
In 1969, she was menaced by disfigured wax museum curator Cameron Mitchell in “Nightmare in Wax.”
Said Helm of her experiences on the no-budget horror movie, which went straight to drive-ins: “Oh my god, that was a nightmare.”
The Memphis Film Festival
The festival runs though Saturday at the Whispering Woods Hotel and Conference Center, 11200 E. Goodman Rd. in Olive Branch. Registration is $20 per day per person or $25 per couple. Visit memphisfilmfestival.org for a complete list of celebrity guests and more information.
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