Movies - TV
Kurt Russell Kicked Elvis In The Shins For His First Movie Role
By WITNEY SEIBOLD
In Norman Taurog's 1963 film "It Happened at the World's Fair," Elvis Presley plays a crop-duster pilot named Mike whose plane was just repossessed by the local sheriff.
While hitchhiking home, Mike visits the Seattle World's Fair, where he becomes smitten with a nurse and concocts an excuse to see her by paying an 11-year-old boy to kick his shin.
Kurt Russell made his feature film debut by playing the kid. In a GQ interview, he recalled Presley as being kind and approachable, and that his scene required multiple takes.
Russell said, "He had to wear a pad. [...] One time I got close to the edge of it and he looked at me, because he really trusted me, and went 'Stay on the pad.'"
He was more into baseball than movies at the time, so Russell didn't know who Presley was, but he thought it was strange and threatening that Elvis fans would mob the set.