Sixty-five years ago this week, Elvis rolled into a little mountain town in California to make a movie about a boxer.
The town was Idyllwild. The movie was “Kid Galahad,” his 10th film, and cameras started rolling there in early November 1961 at a place called Hidden Lodge.
Elvis played Walter Gulick, a young man just out of the Army who turns into a prizefighter. Gig Young, Lola Albright and Charles Bronson co-starred. It was a remake of a 1937 boxing picture that had starred Edward G. Robinson, Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart, so Elvis had big gloves to fill.
Former world champion boxer Mushy Callahan trained him for the role, along with trainer Al Silvani.
The lodge where it all started is still standing, and you can take a tour of it in this video.
A tour of Hidden Lodge, where filming began
The locals got in on it too. About 50 Idyllwild schoolchildren worked as extras. One of them, Robin Oates, was 11 at the time. “They would pull three or four kids out of school and have us for the day,” Oates told Palm Springs Life. And then Elvis “appeared out of nowhere and gave us each an autograph.”
Now for the punch.
Actor Michael Dante played a fighter named Joie Shakes in the film. He’s 95 now, and he still remembers stepping into the ring with Elvis. In 2025 he sat down with the show “That’s Classic” and explained how those fight scenes worked.
Every move was choreographed “by numbers,” with Mushy Callahan on set as technical advisor. The camera was angled so the gloves only looked like they landed. Nobody was supposed to get hit.
Then, during one fight scene, the plan went sideways.
“Elvis forgot the routine and he threw an extra punch,” Dante said.
That extra punch connected. “Boom, Elvis threw another punch and he cut my mouth. It bled a little bit,” he remembered.
Just a small cut, nothing more. Then came the apology. Elvis “was so apologetic,” Parade reported.
Hear him tell the story in his own words in this interview, where he talks about boxing with Elvis along with other stories from his long career.
Michael Dante remembers boxing with Elvis
And the cut didn’t change how Dante sees Elvis one bit.
“He was such a gentleman. A nice man. A wonderful human being,” Dante said.
Want to see what those carefully planned fights looked like on the big screen? Here’s Elvis in the ring in one of the film’s fight scenes.
Elvis throws punches in “Kid Galahad”
“Kid Galahad” came out in August 1962 and opened at No. 9 at the American box office.
But Elvis didn’t forget the little town that had welcomed him. When filming wrapped, he thanked Idyllwild with a notice in its local paper, the Idyllwild Town Crier.
He could’ve just packed up and driven off the mountain. Instead he took the time to say thank you in print, which fits right in with everything Michael Dante says about him.