Tuesday, July 16, 2024

July 16, 2024: ElvisStudying: Elvis Films

[July 19th was a doubly significant day for Elvis Presley: on July 19, 1954, his debut single was released; and on July 19, 1977, what would be his final album dropped. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of layers to the Elvis mythos, leading up to a special post on cultural representations of Presley!]

On AmericanStudies takeaways from three stages in Presley’s iconic film career.

1)      Love Me Tender (1956): Just two years after his first single dropped, and a couple months before the famously scandalous Ed Sullivan Show performance, Presley made his film debut in this musical Western. Although the film was named after Presley’s ballad (which had been released in August 1956, and a performance of which was included in the film), he didn’t receive top billing, reflecting his far-from-established connection to the movie business in this very early moment. But by far the most prominent aspect of the film (SPOILERS) was that Presley’s character is killed in its climactic shootout, a storytelling choice that literally led to a fan protest at the film’s premiere and a subsequent re-release with an alternate ending. Even in his film debut, Elvis was causing a commotion.

2)      A Billion 1960s Films: Okay, not a billion, but: every year between 1962 and 1969 Presley starred in three films, for a total of 24 films released in that period (with another two each in 1960 and 1961, so 28 total in the decade). I know there were a lot more films being made and released in general in that era than in our 21st century moment (and that they took much shorter to make than do today’s), but it’s hard for me to believe any major performer appeared in more 1960s films than that. And as you might expect, quantity did not necessarily lead to quality, to the point that, according to his wife Priscilla’s 1985 memoir Elvis and Me, Elvis was quite miserable with his film career’s dimishing returns, believing for example that 1967’s Clambake represented a career low.

3)      Charro! and Change of Habit (both 1969): Fortunately, Elvis was a big enough star that we had able to help change that narrative, and he did so especially with two of his final three dramatic film performances (along with the still-more-perfunctory The Trouble with Girls from the same year). Charro! was another Western and not dramatically different from any of his others in that genre, but importantly was the only film in which Elvis did not sing on screen, reflecting his desire to develop his acting talents and career (as, perhaps, does his character’s beard, the only in his entire filmography). And he did so even more overtly and successfully in his final dramatic role in Change of Habit, in which Elvis plays inner-city doctor (!) John Carpenter alongside Mary Tyler Moore (!!) as a nun who becomes his love interest (!!!). As with so many things Elvis Presley, it would have been very interesting to see where film career might have gone from here if not for his tragic death a few years later.

Next ElvisStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other takes on Elvis?

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