A lot of performers have made the jump from music to film, and done it well. Check out Beyonce in Cadillac Records or Queen Latifah in Hairspray and The Secret Life of Bees. Certainly, being in the entertainment industry prepares you for more than one genre, and Hollywood has a long history of capturing charismatic talents and presenting them on the big screen. But we wonder if Hollywood still thinks of these performers as exploitable celebrity – hey, this guy’s popular; let’s put him in a movie and rake in the dough from his fans – rather than exploitable talent.
Take Elvis Presley. From 1956 to 1969, Elvis made 31 movies, and it may have been "Saturday Night Live" that used to have a joke about them. In a skit, Elvis is portrayed as showing up a little dazed to a film shoot. A director runs in and tells him he’s going to be playing Sam or Dave or Jim, or some other innocuous name, and that he’s going to be in a particular situation. Like:
“Elvis, in this movie you’re Sam and you’re in the biggest car race of your life.” And the Elvis character would sing “Gonna win that race!”
Or, “Elvis, in this scene you’re Dave, and you’re a sea captain trying to save your ship from sinking,” and “Elvis” would sing “Gonna save that ship!”
Or, “Elvis, in this scene you’re Jim, and you’re making out with the Larimer County beauty queen at the State Fair,” and “Elvis” would sing “Gonna kiss that girl.” Etc.
The point was that from a popular perspective, Elvis’s movies were cookie-cutter formula flicks with generic scripts designed to place a visually (if increasingly pudgy) Elvis on screen for his legions of fans and collect their ticket money without much regard to the quality of the films. Just stick him in front of the camera, get him to sing, and people will pay. And that’s certainly true of forgettable movies like Clambake, Spinout, and Harum Scarum.
The irony to all of this is that, in the beginning, Elvis really wanted to be a great actor. His early roles, in films like King Creole and Loving You and Jailhouse Rock, are dark and James Dean-esque, and, dare we say it, require actual acting. As early as 1961 Elvis was explaining to anyone who would listen that he wanted his acting to be taken seriously. Unfortunately, the movie studio failed to hear those pleas because it was easier, and cheaper, to throw together lame scripts, go through the motions, and still make money. They considered him more of a B-movie actor and by the mid-1960s he was saddled with regrettable claptrap like Tickle Me.
Here, in Jailhouse Rock, though, we have the early Elvis, a good script, some good actors, and some very memorable songs. It’s no surprise that people still remember this movie after they see it. The images from it have been reused and imitated for decades (see the final scene of the original Blues Brothers), and one can only think wistfully at what might have been if Elvis’s film producer, Hal Wallis, and his manager, “Colonel” Tom Parker, had respected Elvis’s wish to become a serious actor. Perhaps Elvis wouldn’t be consigned now to be remembered as an actor by comedy sketches and a critic’s statement that “No major star suffered though more bad movies than Elvis Presley” (Wikipedia).
Fortunately Jailhouse Rock isn’t one of them.
R. Findlay
SPA Film Club Adviser
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