June 12th in Elvis History

It’s June twelfth, and on this day in 1968… Elvis Presley’s twenty-seventh film, *Speedway*, premiered in Charlotte, North Carolina—appropriately set against the backdrop of the Charlotte 500 stock car race. Though reviews panned the movie for its thin plot, critics acknowledged that Elvis’s name alone guaranteed box office success. *Variety* summed it up by saying, “An Elvis Presley film is money in the bank, regardless of the story or who appears with him,” while *The Los Angeles Times* quipped that the script “ran out of gas before Elvis Presley was born.” Despite the critiques, *Speedway* continued the profitable formula that had come to define Elvis’s Hollywood career in the 1960s.