‘Reinventing Elvis’ on Paramount+
Talk about milking a legacy. Having made the miniseries “The Offer” about the movie “The Godfather,” Paramount+ now streams a TV special about a TV special, “Reinventing Elvis: The ‘68 Comeback.”
The film recalls how the special, broadcast in December of 1968, reintroduced audiences to the dynamic performer who had dazzled America and the world in the mid1950s, but who had been consigned by his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, to a steady diet of safe (“Double Trouble”) and even depressingly dumb (“Harum Scarum”) movie musicals over the course of the 1960s, a time when the creative landscape changed under his feet.
In 1967, the year that saw the Beatles’ “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and the introduction of such seminal acts as Cream, the Doors, Jefferson Airplane and the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Elvis appeared in the movie “Clambake.”
“Comeback” recalls the electricity around Presley’s first hits as well as his entombment under Parker’s control. The 1968 broadcast was originally supposed to be a Christmas special, the kind of lovably cheesy showcase for holiday songs long associated with Andy Williams, Bing Crosby and Robert Goulet. Presley hated Goulet so much that he once fired a bullet at a television set broadcasting a Goulet performance. But that’s another story.
Defying Parker’s wishes for mistletoe and holly, NBC producer Steve Binder saw a chance to retell Elvis’s story and revive his appeal.
It’s interesting to see the ‘68 special as not only a reset for Presley, but a beginning of a reevaluation of music itself. After the explosive experimentation of the 1960s, some artists longed to return to rock’s roots, a feeling that would fuel the “oldies” explosion of the early 1970s. In that light, one could argue that the most influential band to perform at Woodstock in 1969 was not Hendrix or the Who, but the rock revival act Sha Na Na.
The question remains: Did Elvis make a comeback?
Curiously, while the Beatles (as documented in Peter Jackson’s film “The Beatles: Get Back” (streaming on Disney+) spent January of 1969 trying to return to their roots, Presley spent the same month in his hometown of Memphis at the American Sound Studios. This innovative session was well chronicled in the HBO miniseries “Elvis Presley: The Searcher,” streaming on Max.
But Presley never followed up on that recording experience. Just as Elvis wasted the 1960s in mediocre movies, he spent much of the 1970s as a Vegas act. There, he attracted thousands of fans to his live shows, but he also reduced himself to a bit of a jumpsuited self-parody, growing heavier, unhealthier and more addicted to pills. Tomorrow, Aug. 16, marks the 46th anniversary of Presley’s sudden, shocking death. He was only 42.
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