In 1956, Elvis Presley was 21 years old and had just achieved national success with ‘Love me tender’, the first single in history to exceed one million units sold. That same year his first movie was going to be released as a supporting actor. His name, ‘The Reno brothers’, was changed at the last minute, and for all eternity it would be known as ‘Love me tender’. Laugh at the marketing of now. The thing is that the singer did not want to sing in any of his tapes because, as a movie buff that he was, he wanted to be recognized only for his acting talent. Spoiler: it goes wrong.
most of them very bad
Elvis’s films followed one after another at the box office: years were not uncommon when, Marvel-style, he premiered three films, with titles such as ‘The idol of Acapulco’, ‘Dear cousins’, ‘Girls! Girls! Girls!’ or ‘The neighborhood against me’. However, Elvis enjoyed other types of works. Some of his favorite films were ‘How beautiful it is to live’, ‘Wuthering Heights’, ‘Mr. Skeffington’ or ‘Letter from an unknown woman’. Nothing to do with his ‘Jail Rock’, for example.
Yes, he had managed to make movies, but at what price? The artist he didn’t even watch his own movies because, according to his father, he didn’t like most of them.
He was getting a million dollars a movie plus fifty percent of the box office, so he was well paid. But I never had the last word on the script or control over the songs or anything else.
Total, the King made 31 films, but he ended up abandoning the world of cinema almost completely, beyond a couple of films as a producer, in 1969, when he played doctor John Carpenter (nothing to do with our John Carpenter, of course) in ‘Change of Habit’. Nevertheless, this didn’t have to be the end.
A star is not born
From its beginning to its end, the Elvis cinema gradually fell into a spiral of decline, and at one point it was based on singing to girls in bikinis on a beach. It didn’t matter: they were still raising a lot of money, and their manager, Colonel Tom Parker, was more than satisfied with it. but to the singer they offered him other movies that for one reason or another could not (or wanted) to accept. And the list could have changed her entire career.
His role ultimately fell to Paul Newman, but he could have been in ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’. Even Robert Mitchum personally asked him to be his son in ‘Way of Hate’, but the Colonel refused, he could have appeared in ‘West side story’, ‘A Kiss for Birdie’… And even ‘Midnight Cowboy’! The Colonel did not accept that his star play morally confused roles and closed the doors of all of them.
However, the most surprising movie that could have turned Elvis Presley’s career around was ‘A star has been born’, in its 1976 version, alongside Barbra Streisand. Streisand herself wanted Elvis in this remake, yes or yes, which finally got four Oscar nominations and won one. She wanted so badly that she went all the way to Las Vegas to convince Elvis after a performance to play the part. He was half convinced but, once again, the Coronal prevented itangry that Streisand didn’t come talk to him first.
To prevent him from appearing on ‘A Star Is Born’, the manager simply demanded leonine conditions. He asked that Presley appear first on the bill over Streisand, and that he be paid an unmanageable sum of money. In the end, since he had been out of a shoot for seven years and no one knew how he would do at the box office, they decided to let him go and sign Kris Kristofferson insteadwhose attitude, by the way, almost costs the mental health of all those involved.
Elvis Presley still remembered today And not just for his music: even his movies have a strange cult following. Perhaps the greatest proof that his legacy is among us can be seen in ‘Elvis’, the play by Baz Luhrmann that has just been released at last. Long live the King of Rock!