Albert
10-19-2004, 02:46 PM
Rockin' Roles
Elvis may have left the building, but when it comes to making movies, no other pop star will achieve what he did. For better or worse, he was a prolific actor. Joe Queenan gets all shook up
Elvis Presley's acting career breaks down into two distinct phases. In his early films - Love Me Tender, Jailhouse Rock, King Creole, Flaming Star - he honestly tried to make good movies. He worked hard, he learned his lines, he most certainly did not phone in. The public enjoyed the films, but not as much as Elvis would have liked. A desperately poor country boy, Elvis was always interested in making money, and after the massive success of the hokey, slapdash, just plain terrible Blue Hawaii in 1961, he decided to churn out an uninterrupted series of very bad, very corny motion pictures for the remainder of his career. For whatever the reason - most likely the sheer exhilaration of getting something for nothing - he threw in the towel.
http://www.elvisintresseforening.se/news/arkiv/bilder/joanelvis.jpgThe post-Blue Hawaii films were shot quickly and inexpensively, and had extravagantly absurd plots: Elvis as an actor trapped in a harem during a promotional tour for the State Department, Elvis as a beleaguered tuna boat captain, Elvis as a singing trapeze artist suffering from vertigo. In all of these films, he had to sing his way out of trouble, and almost without exception, the soundtracks were dreadful. Unlike King Creole and Jailhouse Rock, where he looked like a snarling thug, movies like Tickle Me, Girls, Girls, Girls, Fun In Acapulco and Harum Scarum displayed a domesticated, well-manicured Elvis. The films were mildly risqu? - lots of skin-tight shorts - shorts and halter tops (on the girls, that is) - but generally wholesome. The defanged King was no longer a threat to middle America; Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones were. The public had given its heart to Elvis, and Elvis gave the public Viva Las Vegas! in return. Thanks.
No pop star before or since ever achieved what Elvis did; the landscape is littered with the bones of his imitators. As I pointed out in a Movieline article 11 years ago, the one record in the motion picture industry that will never be broken is the King's string of 31 money-making films, almost all of them horrendous. None of us will ever witness a phenomenon like Elvis Presley's movie career; he could literally get away with murder. Madonna tried and failed. Mick Jagger tried and failed. Sting, Prince and Dylan tried and failed, as will Puff Daddy and Eminem. The closest things to Elvis's crossover success are the careers of Cher, Sting, Ice Cube, LL Cool J and Mark Wahlberg. Like I said: Elvis had no competition.
http://www.sixtiescity.com/Elvis/sajoe1.jpgUnlike Frank Sinatra, a shorter, tougher man with a colossal ego, Elvis was probably not temperamentally suited to be an actor. He seemed nervous and embarrassed in his screen debut Love Me Tender, and did not show much more range in films like King Creole and Flaming Star, by far his best "serious" pictures. His phrasing was mechanical; he tended to snarl and brood a lot. Of course, most people would snarl and brood a lot if they were trapped in a film where they had to play a hip-swivelling pharmacist's son who is being courted by a local gangster who wants him to come back and do his nightclub act in the lounge where he used to work as an underpaid busboy even though his father wants him to finish high school and enter a profession like, well, pharmacy. Elvis did his level best, working with the material given him, but the only time he seemed to relax was when he took centre stage to belt out one of his hits. Then, suddenly, magically, he stopped being a dour pharmacist's son and turned back into Elvis. The eyes lit up. The headbeam smile returned. The hips swivelled. The King was back.
Someone, perhaps the rock critic Greil Marcus, once said that Elvis would have fared better in a TV action series like The Six Million Dollar Man. I agree. Elvis was never in a class with crossover artists like Sinatra and Dean Martin; they knew how to lighten up and enjoy themselves on the big screen. Elvis always seemed wound-up. Moreover, in his early films, he was often overshadowed by talented actors like Walter Matthau, John McIntire and Richard Egan, who could readily conjure up more than three facial expressions. Even the paunchy, middle-aged burnout clowning around as the bloodthirsty Kiowa chieftain Buffalo Horn, in Flaming Star, could act better than Elvis.
In his later movies, this problem was corrected; now Elvis was generally cast opposite galoots and bimbos. And in his later movies, three facial expressions were two more than an actor needed. To be fair, Elvis was never a terrible actor in the sense that Madonna and Mick Jagger are, and because he possessed great looks, his mere magnetic presence partially compensated for his lack of ability. Madonna, despite all her earnest huffing and puffing, is rather ordinary-looking and her attempts to "emote" in films like Body Of Evidence, Shanghai Surprise and Dick Tracy actually have been known to make grown men weep. Me, for instance. No matter how hard she tries, she still looks like the fat girl playing Eliza Doolittle in the school play. As for Jagger, he is a charismatic rock star who has the misfortune to look like a chimp. A chimp, I might add, who is no threat to John Gielgud, nor, for that matter, John Belushi. And let's not even talk about the puny Roger Daltrey or the loveable but ineffective Ringo. Oddly, because of their sheer ludicrousness, films like Fun In Acapulco, where Elvis dresses as a matador and sings songs about Pedro the Bull, are still entertaining, if only because they provide a glimpse into a society that obviously had a few screws loose. Contrasted with pathetic films like The Next Best Thing, where the facile but gifted Rupert Everett literally blows the frumpy, washed-out Madonna off the screen, Elvis's films are oddly charming, hypnotically absurd. The lamest Elvis song - for example, the shrimping tune from Fun In Acapulco - never makes your skin crawl the way Madonna's graveside rendition of American Pie in The Next Best Thing does. Nor did Elvis ever undertake anything as hopeless as Jagger's forlorn impersonation of a legendary Aussie highwayman in Ned Kelly. To this day, I am still trying to figure out how a man as physically unimposing as Mick Jagger could have possibly dominated the Outback. And where that accent came from.
Elvis Presley's most amazing accomplishment is that he made dozens of unwatchable movies that are still fun to watch. Both of my children - 18 and 15 - are enthralled by these films, in large part because they cannot believe that anyone could get away with what Elvis did. When you see a film like Harum Scarum, where Elvis sets out to the Middle East on a State Department goodwill tour, crosses the Mountains of the Moon, is then abducted by bandits, gets gussied up in lime green pants and a golden cumberbund, dons a turban, and leads a peasant's revolution against the wicked oppressors, you can only shake your head in disbelief. Elvis Presley was a poor boy from Mississippi who grew up to be the biggest star in the world. He made 26 of the most mesmerisingly awful movies in the history of motion pictures. There's not a day that goes by that I don't miss him.
Elvis Day, TCM (source: Guardian.co.uk (http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,4120,772007,00.html))
Elvis may have left the building, but when it comes to making movies, no other pop star will achieve what he did. For better or worse, he was a prolific actor. Joe Queenan gets all shook up
Elvis Presley's acting career breaks down into two distinct phases. In his early films - Love Me Tender, Jailhouse Rock, King Creole, Flaming Star - he honestly tried to make good movies. He worked hard, he learned his lines, he most certainly did not phone in. The public enjoyed the films, but not as much as Elvis would have liked. A desperately poor country boy, Elvis was always interested in making money, and after the massive success of the hokey, slapdash, just plain terrible Blue Hawaii in 1961, he decided to churn out an uninterrupted series of very bad, very corny motion pictures for the remainder of his career. For whatever the reason - most likely the sheer exhilaration of getting something for nothing - he threw in the towel.
http://www.elvisintresseforening.se/news/arkiv/bilder/joanelvis.jpgThe post-Blue Hawaii films were shot quickly and inexpensively, and had extravagantly absurd plots: Elvis as an actor trapped in a harem during a promotional tour for the State Department, Elvis as a beleaguered tuna boat captain, Elvis as a singing trapeze artist suffering from vertigo. In all of these films, he had to sing his way out of trouble, and almost without exception, the soundtracks were dreadful. Unlike King Creole and Jailhouse Rock, where he looked like a snarling thug, movies like Tickle Me, Girls, Girls, Girls, Fun In Acapulco and Harum Scarum displayed a domesticated, well-manicured Elvis. The films were mildly risqu? - lots of skin-tight shorts - shorts and halter tops (on the girls, that is) - but generally wholesome. The defanged King was no longer a threat to middle America; Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones were. The public had given its heart to Elvis, and Elvis gave the public Viva Las Vegas! in return. Thanks.
No pop star before or since ever achieved what Elvis did; the landscape is littered with the bones of his imitators. As I pointed out in a Movieline article 11 years ago, the one record in the motion picture industry that will never be broken is the King's string of 31 money-making films, almost all of them horrendous. None of us will ever witness a phenomenon like Elvis Presley's movie career; he could literally get away with murder. Madonna tried and failed. Mick Jagger tried and failed. Sting, Prince and Dylan tried and failed, as will Puff Daddy and Eminem. The closest things to Elvis's crossover success are the careers of Cher, Sting, Ice Cube, LL Cool J and Mark Wahlberg. Like I said: Elvis had no competition.
http://www.sixtiescity.com/Elvis/sajoe1.jpgUnlike Frank Sinatra, a shorter, tougher man with a colossal ego, Elvis was probably not temperamentally suited to be an actor. He seemed nervous and embarrassed in his screen debut Love Me Tender, and did not show much more range in films like King Creole and Flaming Star, by far his best "serious" pictures. His phrasing was mechanical; he tended to snarl and brood a lot. Of course, most people would snarl and brood a lot if they were trapped in a film where they had to play a hip-swivelling pharmacist's son who is being courted by a local gangster who wants him to come back and do his nightclub act in the lounge where he used to work as an underpaid busboy even though his father wants him to finish high school and enter a profession like, well, pharmacy. Elvis did his level best, working with the material given him, but the only time he seemed to relax was when he took centre stage to belt out one of his hits. Then, suddenly, magically, he stopped being a dour pharmacist's son and turned back into Elvis. The eyes lit up. The headbeam smile returned. The hips swivelled. The King was back.
Someone, perhaps the rock critic Greil Marcus, once said that Elvis would have fared better in a TV action series like The Six Million Dollar Man. I agree. Elvis was never in a class with crossover artists like Sinatra and Dean Martin; they knew how to lighten up and enjoy themselves on the big screen. Elvis always seemed wound-up. Moreover, in his early films, he was often overshadowed by talented actors like Walter Matthau, John McIntire and Richard Egan, who could readily conjure up more than three facial expressions. Even the paunchy, middle-aged burnout clowning around as the bloodthirsty Kiowa chieftain Buffalo Horn, in Flaming Star, could act better than Elvis.
In his later movies, this problem was corrected; now Elvis was generally cast opposite galoots and bimbos. And in his later movies, three facial expressions were two more than an actor needed. To be fair, Elvis was never a terrible actor in the sense that Madonna and Mick Jagger are, and because he possessed great looks, his mere magnetic presence partially compensated for his lack of ability. Madonna, despite all her earnest huffing and puffing, is rather ordinary-looking and her attempts to "emote" in films like Body Of Evidence, Shanghai Surprise and Dick Tracy actually have been known to make grown men weep. Me, for instance. No matter how hard she tries, she still looks like the fat girl playing Eliza Doolittle in the school play. As for Jagger, he is a charismatic rock star who has the misfortune to look like a chimp. A chimp, I might add, who is no threat to John Gielgud, nor, for that matter, John Belushi. And let's not even talk about the puny Roger Daltrey or the loveable but ineffective Ringo. Oddly, because of their sheer ludicrousness, films like Fun In Acapulco, where Elvis dresses as a matador and sings songs about Pedro the Bull, are still entertaining, if only because they provide a glimpse into a society that obviously had a few screws loose. Contrasted with pathetic films like The Next Best Thing, where the facile but gifted Rupert Everett literally blows the frumpy, washed-out Madonna off the screen, Elvis's films are oddly charming, hypnotically absurd. The lamest Elvis song - for example, the shrimping tune from Fun In Acapulco - never makes your skin crawl the way Madonna's graveside rendition of American Pie in The Next Best Thing does. Nor did Elvis ever undertake anything as hopeless as Jagger's forlorn impersonation of a legendary Aussie highwayman in Ned Kelly. To this day, I am still trying to figure out how a man as physically unimposing as Mick Jagger could have possibly dominated the Outback. And where that accent came from.
Elvis Presley's most amazing accomplishment is that he made dozens of unwatchable movies that are still fun to watch. Both of my children - 18 and 15 - are enthralled by these films, in large part because they cannot believe that anyone could get away with what Elvis did. When you see a film like Harum Scarum, where Elvis sets out to the Middle East on a State Department goodwill tour, crosses the Mountains of the Moon, is then abducted by bandits, gets gussied up in lime green pants and a golden cumberbund, dons a turban, and leads a peasant's revolution against the wicked oppressors, you can only shake your head in disbelief. Elvis Presley was a poor boy from Mississippi who grew up to be the biggest star in the world. He made 26 of the most mesmerisingly awful movies in the history of motion pictures. There's not a day that goes by that I don't miss him.
Elvis Day, TCM (source: Guardian.co.uk (http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,4120,772007,00.html))