THE MAGIC DOWN THERE
Acapulco, look here comes the sun
Acapulco, it’s a day for fun
I can’t wait till I meet your sweet senoritas
Kiss everyone
This is not time for siesta, this is time for fun…
The lyrics to the title song of Fun in Acapulco — the 1963 fiesta starring Elvis Presley and Ursula Andress — helped cement the vision of this palm-fringed, mountain-rimmed, semi-circular bay in the state of Guerrero, on Mexico’s Pacific Coast, as a kind of sun-sparkled, azure-splashed Shangri-La. It was already well on its way to becoming Mexico’s largest beach and balneario resort city, but, at the time, still retained vestiges of its original twilight-paseo, bayside-village charm.
The Duke of Windsor made a visit in 1920 and gave the place his proto-influencer approbation.
Elvis never made it to Acapulco — he’d been declared persona non grata by the authorities in Mexico after riots in cinemas showing his previous movies — but it hardly mattered that he’d had to shoot his scenes in Los Angeles; the critics bypassed the stars and the somewhat rudimentary plot (a pair of rival lifeguards get into a dive-off to win Andress’s hand) and focused instead on the scenery. called it “an attractive travel poster for the famed Mexican resort”, and acclaimed “Acapulco’s Technicolorful glory”. They weren’t the first to have had their heads turned: word of Acapulco’s allure had been disseminated among the great and the good after the Duke of Windsor made a visit in 1920 and gave the place his proto-influencer approbation. By the 1930s, enterprising hoteliers like Carlos Bernard and Albert Pullen were breaking ground on pioneering resorts like El Mirador and Las Americas, and foreign investment was starting to build.
