Elvis Presley

Screen King…

“I know I can be a great actor,” Elvis Presley said. He tried to prove it in 1956’s Love Me Tender by taking third billing and dying on screen. Michael Curtiz ( Casablanca) directed him to better reviews in King Creole (1958), but flopped attempts at high emotion in Don Siegel’s Flaming Star (1960) and Philip Dunne’s Wild In The Country (1961) suggested audiences wanted another Presley. Although Elvis revered Brando and Dean, Paramount and his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, set out to ‘package’ Presley. Presley was no bad boy, but some of his ’50s films played to that contrived media image. In Loving You (1957), he swivels his midriff like a man trying to drill to the Earth’s core during an impromptu café run-through of ‘Mean Woman Blues’. When he gets into the inevitable fight, one screaming girl looks positively orgasmic as he pummels a dude into the jukebox. But it was 1957’s Jailhouse Rock that made his movie decade swing. Presley imbues violent ex-con Vince Everett with edgy energy and animal passion. Paramount struggled to place Presley in films until 1960’s GI Blues and 1961’s Blue Hawaii banked a formula: songs, sunny locales, saucy romps, bad reviews, ‘boffo’ box office. A decade of vicarious vacation movies followed. The plots thinned out as a disenchanted Presley gained weight. Easy Come, Easy Go’s yoga sketch (1967) chafed the barrel but studios milked their cash-King dry until his last film, 1969’s Mary Tyler Moore nun drama Change Of Habit. Presley’s death deprived us of a chance to see him as an OAP fighting soul-suckers in a rest home, but Bruce Campbell merrily obliged in Don Coscarelli’s delirious Bubba Ho-Tep (2002). Elvis’ cultural clout can be measured by his influence on everything from 2011’s Arthur Christmas (“Santa has left the building!”) to Jim Jarmusch’s Mystery Train (1989) and films about him. Kurt Russell curled a lip in John Carpenter’s Elvis: The Movie (1979); Michael Shannon dons the quiff in this May’s Elvis & Nixon. As his film career croaked, Elvis was reborn on stage. He dripped cool in NBC’s ’68 Comeback Special; then, multiple Elvis personas met for 1970’s Elvis: That’s The Way It Is, where he goof-balled and karate-kicked through a Vegas show. The Woodstock movie out-grossed it, so 1972’s follow-up pinched one of that film’s editors to energise its attack: Martin Scorsese. The trailer voiceover for Elvis On Tour (“Elvis – as you may never see him again.”) was sadly apt: he looked spent in his final concert film, 1977’s Elvis In Concert.