Elvis Presley

Baz Luhrmann's latest spectacle tackles the life of Elvis Presley, as filtered through his shady longtime manager.

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Austin Butler plays the singer, with Tom Hanks as his devilish manager, in Baz Luhrmann's operatic, chaotic anti-biopic.

In the end, this isn’t a biopic or a horror movie or a cautionary parable: It’s a musical, and the music is great. But Luhrmann’s sense of history is too muddled and sentimental to give the gestures that kind of weight. An early montage — repeated so often that it becomes a motif — finds the boy Elvis (Chaydon Jay) simultaneously peeking into a juke joint where Arthur Crudup (Gary Clark Jr.) plays “That’s All Right Mama” and catching the spirit at a tent revival. Gladys is terrified, and the scene carries a heavy charge of sexualized danger. Luhrmann’s last feature was an exuberant, candy-colored — and, I thought, generally underrated — adaptation of “The Great Gatsby,” and the Colonel is in some ways a Gatsbyesque character. He’s a self-invented man, an arriviste on the American scene, a “mister nobody from nowhere” trading in the unstable currencies of wishing and seeming. Butler is fine in the few moments of offstage drama that the script allows, but most of the emotional action is telegraphed in Luhrmann’s usual emphatic, breathless style. The boy grows up poor in Tupelo, Miss., and Memphis, finds his way into the Sun Records recording studio at the age of 19, and proceeds to set the world on fire. As a movie, though, “Elvis” lurches and wobbles, caught in a trap only partly of its own devising. Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis” — a biopic in the sense that “Heartbreak Hotel” is a Yelp review — works mightily to dispel this funerary gloom. (The composer and executive music producer is Elliott Wheeler.) The sonic message — and the film’s strongest argument for its subject’s relevance — is that Presley’s blend of blues, gospel, pop and country continues to mutate and pollinate in the musical present. The ghoulish, garish production design, by Catherine Martin (Luhrmann’s wife and longtime creative partner) and Karen Murphy, is full of carnival sleaze and Vegas vulgarity.

In Baz Luhrmann's “Elvis,” there's a scene based on actual conversations that took place between Elvis Presley and Steve Binder, the director of a 1968 NBC ...

I read comic books, and I was the hero of the comic book. Luhrmann’s movie promises to reveal a great deal about one of the most captivating and enigmatic figures of our time. That was the extent of his professional obligations. I saw movies, and I was the hero in the movie. As Elvis crafted his identity and pursued his craft, he did the same. Elvis alluded to this in 1971 when he provided a rare glimpse into his psyche upon receiving a Jaycees Award as one of the nation’s Ten Outstanding Young Men: Perhaps the most contentious aspect of his identity was the singer’s relationship to race. However, by 2021, in the midst of a changing racial climate, Jones was dismissing Presley as an unabashed racist. He tuned into the radio station WDIA, where he soaked up gospel and rhythm and blues tunes, along with the vernacular of black disk jockeys. His music could have been a window into his inner life, but since he wasn’t a songwriter, his material depended on the words of others. Over the years, he had submitted to numerous interviews and press conferences, but the quality of these exchanges was erratic, frequently characterized by superficial answers to even shallower questions. Binder, an iconoclast unimpressed by Presley’s recent work, had pushed Elvis to reach back into his past to revitalize a career stalled by years of mediocre movies and soundtrack albums.

Others — including Bruce Campbell, Harvey Keitel and Robert Patrick — have played people who might be Elvis. If he hadn't died in 1977 at the age of 42, that is ...

Those missteps, courtesy of director Baz Luhrmann and an ill-used Tom Hanks, squander Austin Butler's brilliant moments in the title role, which deserve a much ...

Much of it is devoted to meticulously replicating Presley's performances, including a detailed presentation of his acclaimed 1968 NBC special, which gives Butler's unerring mimicry an opportunity to shine. Here, Luhrmann (who shares script credit with three others, nearly a decade after his last film "The Great Gatsby") makes the near-fatal error of primarily telling the story from Parker's point of view. A colorful and shadowy figure, Parker's control prompted allegations of serious financial shenanigans that were only exposed after Presley's death in 1977.

Elvis Presley and his mother Gladys temporarily moved into this house while his father Vernon was in jail. The final location is at the Lyric Theatre on North ...

Richard Martin reviews the film that's got him all shook up.

The over two-and-a-half-hour film in parts feels like it's entirely montage, within the opening moments you're taken on a ride and firmly strapped in. Love or hate him, he's a perfect fit for the story of Elvis Presley. Relative newcomer Austin Butler plays Elvis in what is sure to be a star-making turn for the young actor.

Taking a look at the real life story of Elvis Presley's doctor, George Nichopoulos, known as 'Dr. Nick.'

Nichopoulos was accused of “unlawfully, willfully and feloniously” prescribing the medications in the period leading up to Presley's death, though Nichopoulos would later say in a 1981 interview with American Medical News that he had only been responsible for prescribing two of the drugs found in Presley's system. A memorable character on The Simpsons first appeared in season two of the show in 1991, in which a quack doctor excessively treats Bart's minor injuries after a car accident and at one point ends up before a malpractice committee. (Shockingly, it was discovered that between 1975 and 1977, he had prescribed 19,000 doses of drugs, 10,000 of which were in 1977 alone.) Nichopoulos was ultimately acquitted, but that same year, the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners found him guilty of overprescribing and suspended his medical license for three months. Through it all, and up until his death in 2016 at age 88, Nichopoulos maintained that he'd done the best he could to treat Presley's ailments and keep him out of harm's way. They were necessities," Nichopoulos said to The Daily Beast. (In his 2010 memoir, he noted that he even gave placebos to Presley in an effort to curb his drug habit.) “Later, everyone attacked me, saying all I was interested in was making money from Elvis. That’s just not true. Doctors at the time deemed the cause of his death to be natural, a heart attack likely brought on by the copious amount of drugs. Addiction took a grueling toll on Presley as it would have anyone else, blinding him to the realities of what was happening to himself physically and emotionally. On Aug. 16, 1977, the toxic tale came to something of an end when Presley was found dead at his Graceland home. Yet, Nichopoulos could hardly be considered the sole cause of Presley's demise. "Whatever role I needed to play at the time, I did.” This did, in fact, mean prescribing large quantities of medications ranging from sleeping pills to painkillers and a lot in between. The real life relationship he had with Presley was more nuanced than that.

Austin Butler is the latest actor to portray the 'King of Rock and Roll' on the big screen. Here's the full list of movie stars that have transformed into ...

The project came out just two years after Elvis died at 42 years old of a heart attack. The film is set in 1972. The first was Heart of Dixie, which follows three sorority girls at an Alabama college. It’s been almost 45 years since Elvis died and his fascinating life and career is still being honored in the entertainment industry. Michael St. Gerard played Elvis in two movies that came out in 1989. Elvis Presley is an icon, so it’s no surprise that his story has been told many times on the big screen.

The King of Rock & Roll, Elvis Presley, has long been royalty on the Billboard Hot 100, with his chart success predating the survey's start.

Presley has also scored 10 No. 1s on the all-genre Billboard 200 albums chart, from Elvis Presley in May 1956 through Elv1s: 30 #1 Hits in October 2002. Presley notched 10 No. 1 singles on Best Sellers in Stores, beginning with “Heartbreak Hotel” in April 1956. “Good Luck Charm,” two, April 21, 1962 “Hard Headed Woman,” two, July 21, 1958 “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You,” one, July 28, 1956 “Don’t,” five, Feb. 10, 1958

Kevin Parker updates Presley's Almost in Love song for the soundtrack to Baz Luhrmann's new biopic.

Elvis hits theaters today (June 24), and the soundtrack is also out now. Since then, they’ve shared the new song “ The Boat I Row,” collaborated with Diana Ross on “ Turn Up the Sunshine,” and covered the Strokes at Primavera Sound. Later this fall, Tame Impala will celebrate the 10th anniversary of 2012’s Lonerism at Desert Daze by performing the album in full. Tame Impala released their most recent studio album, The Slow Rush, in 2020 and followed it up with a deluxe edition the next year.

His music could have been a window into his inner life, but since he wasn't a songwriter, his material depended on the words of others. · Elvis embodied ...

Luhrmann's movie promises to reveal a great deal about one of the most captivating and enigmatic figures of our time. I read comic books, and I was the hero of the comic book. That was the extent of his professional obligations. I saw movies, and I was the hero in the movie. As Elvis crafted his identity and pursued his craft, he did the same. A few weeks before his demise, a Soviet publication described him as "wrecked" – a "pitilessly" dumped product victimised by the American consumerist system. Elvis alluded to this in 1971 when he provided a rare glimpse into his psyche upon receiving a Jaycees Award as one of the nation's Ten Outstanding Young Men: Perhaps the most contentious aspect of his identity was the singer's relationship to race. However, by 2021, in the midst of a changing racial climate, Jones was dismissing Presley as an unabashed racist. He tuned into the radio station WDIA, where he soaked up gospel and rhythm and blues tunes, along with the vernacular of black disk jockeys. Over the years, he had submitted to numerous interviews and press conferences, but the quality of these exchanges was erratic, frequently characterised by superficial answers to even shallower questions. Binder, an iconoclast unimpressed by Presley's recent work, had pushed Elvis to reach back into his past to revitalise a career stalled by years of mediocre movies and soundtrack albums.

Elvis Is an American Tragedy. Elvis Is Just Tragic. The Singer's Story Has a Lot to Say About This 'Pitiful Country'—But Baz Luhrmann's Biopic Ain't Nothin' But ...

None of this weighs heavily on Elvis. The only plot point around “Hound Dog” is when it is used to show how Presley himself was punished for reaching across the color line in his performances. For a hint of a different film that could have been made, one only needs to listen to the Doja Cat song “Vegas,” which was released with the movie’s soundtrack. But Presley never directly credited Thornton for her work, robbing her of name recognition and lucrative deals (she would later say in interviews that she made less than $500 off of “Hound Dog”). “I had to write a song for her that basically said, ‘Go f— yourself.’” Instead, Elvis’s creed seems to be borrowed from the personal philosophy of the star’s long-time manager, Colonel Tom Parker: “Don’t try to explain it; just sell it.” Parker, naturally, is the narrator of the film, where he’s presented as a carnival barker who’s found his meal ticket (the less said about Tom Hanks’ performance in the role, the better). It never engages on more than a surface level with the racism of the Mason–Dixon-lined country that catapulted Presley to fame.

Baz Luhrmann's splashy “Elvis” biopic attempts to make the King relevant to a new generation. But 50 years after Presley's last Top 10 hit, is it too late?

Back then, CKX — a company whose biggest asset was “American Idol” — offloaded the estate to a private equity firm, believing it to be in a state of decline. His last Top 10 hit, “Burning Love,” arrived half a century ago, and his peak — and that of his pioneering ’50s rock ’n’ roll peers — is even further in the past. Sean Ross, editor of the “Ross on Radio” newsletter and an observer of radio trends, notes: “Oldies radio stations pushed away from the 1950s close to 20 years ago. For decades after Presley’s ignominious 1977 death — fates couldn’t conspire to deliver a less glamorous passing than dying on the toilet from a heart attack due to his addiction to pain pills — his legacy was kept alive through a steady stream of posthumous compilations, several of which were certified platinum over the years. Rather, it presents an idea of Elvis Presley, emphasizing how he shook up society by ignoring racial boundaries and sexual conventions, accentuating this rebellion not by relying on rock ’n’ roll — the wild, unkempt music that Presley made — but hip-hop and pop. “Elvis” can be seen as the culmination of a process that the two companies set in place roughly a decade ago. At this point,” says Ross, “classic hits stations have been living without Elvis since at least the mid-’10s.” Michael Stipe’s Elvis impression on R.E.M.’s “ Man on the Moon,” a tribute to comedian Andy Kaufman’s Presley parody, may have been the last time Presley registered as cool. Blessed with preternatural good looks, Elvis exuded such a palpable carnal charisma that his 1956 appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” caused a sensation because of his sexy gyrations; famously, the CBS censors insisted that the singer be shot from the waist up. It’s been 20 years since the compilation “ELV1S: 30 #1 Hits” topped the Billboard charts, aided by the JXL remix of “ A Little Less Conversation.” It’s also been 20 years since Eminem cracked that kids were “embarrassed their parents still listen to Elvis,” which itself seemed a little outdated at the time. The image of the young, rebellious, lascivious rockabilly cat would eventually give way to its “after picture”: the bloated ’70s crooner. The second half of the 20th century, for those who came of age during it, was in essence one giant Elvis moment.

Belfast Elvis tribute performer Jim 'The King' Brown “got goosebumps” when he saw actor Austin Butler as Presley in the trailer for Elvis, the new biopic of ...

I can’t stand acts that turn Elvis into a joke.” It came to me, in a way.” The track list also features Doja Cat, Eminem, and Stevie Nicks. “My only hope is that there are no cringe moments in the film, but it looks like an amazing show and I hope it gets a new appreciation for the history of Elvis and what he achieved musically and in his acting career,” added Jim. “I actually saw Austin Butler in a film a few years ago, and I remember turning to my wife to say I noticed he had a young Elvis charisma about him, so I see no issue with Baz Luhrmann’s choice.” Jim said: “I had actually seen lots of negative comments on social media from all over the world and when I was performing in Germany recently I had been around lots of fans who didn’t seem to be giving him a chance.

Elvis Presley loved football his whole life, and counted Terry Bradshaw and Joe Namath among his admirers.

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Elvis first performed in El Paso on April 10, 1956. Tickets were $1.50 in advance, $1.75 at the Coliseum door.

He strolled down the walk and chatted with the pushing, whistling mob of fans who were separated from him by a high chain fence. The first sight she got of Presley was when he peered warily through Venetian blind slats over a window in his private car. But Miss Van Tassel managed to pull off the coup of the evening. She was able to approach him and tell him of the fancy black sombrero the club wished to present Presley as a gift. He was nearly hauled off the back of his private car by two women who appeared to be in their early 30s. Presley spent quite a lot of time introducing the chorus and the lead players, allowing the instrumentalists an opportunity for brief solo displays. Presley continued taking scarves off throughout the program and this undoubtedly proved distracting for most of the people on the floor. Police couldn't figure out how the pair climbed over a high rock wall and iron bar fence that held back other admirers. In baby-blue flared pants and vest with white full-sleeved shirt and, of course, wide rhinestone belt and sparkling insets on his pants, Presley played with the audience for a minute or two, sort of testing the temperature. The crowd went wild and ultimately gave him a standing ovation even before he sang his first song, “C.C. Rider.” Presley escaped into the night before his fans got out of the building. There was a frenzy of excitement about this show even before it began.

In Baz Luhrmann's 'Elvis,' his shoes aren't blue suede, but they are custom.

The pair have worked on previous films together, like Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge! "I am constantly inspired by cultural movements and music and with Elvis as the muse, these styles were a joy to create. It's an excellent portrayal, critics exclaim, both of Elvis and the era which he dominated — outfits included. The real-life Elvis, who died in 1977, was no stranger to the silver screen — but oddly, there have been few biopics about the artist, who's arguably one of the most influential figures of the 20th century.

Baz Luhrmann's film, starring Austin Butler and Tom Hanks, shows a revolutionary musician being absorbed into the mainstream, but does it critique that ...

Well, there are flickers of danger in Austin Butler’s Elvis, as he advances to the brink of the stage, at a Memphis ballpark, and stokes the hysteria of the throng. To ignore Elvis as a commercial machine, in his earning power as in his fabled spending, is to clean up the myth of the man, and to parse the box-office returns for 1961, noting that Elvis’s “Blue Hawaii” made more than “Judgment at Nuremberg” (and, indeed, more than “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”), is to inch your way into the America of the time. In short, on the spectrum of those who have sought to incarnate Elvis, Butler belongs at the tender end—far from Kurt Russell, with his tough hide, in John Carpenter’s “Elvis” (1979), or from Nicolas Cage, who teams up with a club of skydiving Elvis look-alikes in “Honeymoon in Vegas” (1992), and whose whole career has been like a set of variations on the theme of Elvis. (For good measure, Cage also married Lisa Marie, Elvis’s daughter, though not for long.) But let’s face it: the first and the best Elvis impersonator was Elvis himself, and everybody who has played him since, on film and elsewhere, has just added another layer to the palimpsest, and thus to the meaning of the man. Greil Marcus, in his majestic essay “Elvis: Presliad,” refers to “the all-but-complete assimilation of a revolutionary musical style into the mainstream of American culture, where no one is challenged and no one is threatened.” The question is whether Luhrmann’s “Elvis” feeds that continuing process of absorption or strives to hold out against it. I didn’t quite believe in the tears that he sheds after his mother dies; on the other hand, the ease with which he embarks on rehearsals at the International Hotel, making nice to his thirty-piece band and to his backing singers, the Sweet Inspirations, rings joyfully true. Grab a bathroom break in the middle of “Elvis” and you could easily miss the speediest part of the film. The result included such immortal works as “Girls! Girls! Girls!” (1962) and “Clambake” (1967), and “Elvis” duly supplies its hero with a leading man’s lament. He is flattened rather than deepened by the range of his paper-thin roles—cowboy, racecar driver, frogman, pilot, or, in “Tickle Me” (1965), a rodeo rider at an all-female ranch—and he appears to be physically airbrushed by the sheen of the screen. The proximity of the two locations is frankly ludicrous, but it allows Luhrmann to hammer home his point: the Presley sound was forged in a double ardor, sacred and profane. Young Elvis, for instance, peering through a crack in a shack, spies a couple of dancers, writhing and perspiring to the lusty wail of the blues; he then runs to a nearby tent, sneaks inside, and enters a Black revivalist meeting, which gives him the Pentecostal shakes. There is nothing subtle about the staging of such scenes, but then Luhrmann, as was evident in “Moulin Rouge!” (2001), makes a proud virtue of unsubtlety. For dedicated Hanksians like me, these are confusing times; compare the trailer for Disney’s upcoming “Pinocchio,” in which Hanks—Einstein wig, a hedge of mustache, and, I suspect, yet another nose—assumes the role of Geppetto. At present, for whatever reason, this most trusted of actors has chosen to seek cover in camouflage and to specialize in the pulling of strings, whether wicked or benign.

Baz Luhrmann's Elvis Presley biopic shows the singer in harmony with artists such as B.B. King and Sister Rosetta Tharpe. But how true is that portrayal?

“It isn’t exclusive to the Black man or the white man or any other color.” In his 1996 autobiography, Blues All Around Me, King wrote, “Elvis didn’t steal any music from anyone. “Music is owned by the whole universe,” King said in a 2010 interview. “That he was this weird little white kid,” George told Mojo Media with a laugh. But is that the truth of the era? “He was doing our kind of music,” Charles said. That lacerating sound bite, which went viral in 2020 and twice again this year, sums up a long-held stance against Presley. To some, he was not an extraordinary musical force, but rather a lucky culture vulture who made his name by copying moves from Black artists and covering their songs.

Our definitive countdown of performances by Austin Butler, Kurt Russell, Bruce Campbell, and other actors who tried to capture The King.

Here, we’re rounding up and ranking the best performances of him. Which isn’t surprising, considering that the pitfalls of playing The King are perhaps more pronounced than for any other music icon. Because Elvis will never truly leave the building.

From Kurt Russel in John Carpenter's TV movie to Austin Butler in Baz Luhrmann's 'Elvis,' many actors have tried their hand at playing the King.

Russell was nominated for an Emmy for his performance, the first (and one of the only) times he received accolades from a major awards body. But the most convincing moment in the entire movie is when Butler is singing onstage in Vegas. Throughout the song, one of Butler’s legs bounces like it’s trying to get away from the rest of his body, a small detail that captures so much about the essence of Elvis Presley. Alongside Jack White (more on him in a moment), B-movie jobber Rick Peters’s performance as Elvis in the 1997 Showtime mockumentary Elvis Meets Nixon is the most overtly comedic on this list. But when he’s lip syncing and shaking his hips in thrall to the god of rock and roll, that hardly matters. (The exception is first-hand accounts from women with whom he was romantically involved, all of whom say he was inconsiderate at best.) But Rob Youngblood’s version of the singer in the 1993 TV movie Elvis and the Colonel: The Untold Story takes the averted eyes and mumbled “yes, sir”s to extremes. His version of Elvis has yet to embrace his rock-and-roll destiny: He’s insecure about his voice and metronomic below the waist. Dobson gets more screen time but is just as pliable in the 2007 biopic Protecting the King. Quickly banished to obscurity, Protecting the King was a vanity project written and directed by David Stanley, Elvis’s real-life stepbrother and a member of his entourage in his drug-addled final days. The Stockholm syndrome kicks in almost immediately as Elvis settles into a role as Johnny’s stepdad, courting the boy’s alcoholic mother (Tuesday Weld) and teaching him to conquer bullies through the power of rock-and-roll swagger. But the thing that makes Elvis and the Beauty Queen truly dreadful is Don Johnson’s dud of a performance. The basic plot is boomer wish fulfillment with a sprinkling of ’80s-movie amorality, as Ohio farm boy Johnny Wolfe (Charlie Schlatter) kidnaps Elvis after a show in Cleveland circa 1972. Keith is a stiff, passive action figure of an Elvis whose performance is more made for TV than most of the actors in actual made-for-TV movies about Presley’s life. Four actors play Elvis at various stages of his life and career in This Is Elvis, a hybrid documentary released four months before a Memphis judge ordered the Presley estate to sue Presley’s longtime manager, “Colonel” Tom Parker, in August 1981.

Elvis Presley in Billboard: From writing about a "country cat” who was “powerfully inspired by authentic R&B" in 1956 to his death in 1977.

The Sept. 3, 1977, Billboard reported that “demand for Elvis product is running 30 times ahead of supply,” by which point “retailers waiting impatiently” had pushed RCA’s spokesperson to assure them that “the label was trying to fill every order.” Therefore, it has been necessary to come to terms with it.” Capitulating to the “Presley avalanche,” one Nebraska station said it “rations the ‘moonstruck’ adolescents only one Elvis Presley disk a day.” “The singer, who has amassed an unprecedented sale of well over 200 million records for RCA domestically, is now being primed by the company for its biggest promotional effort,” the Nov. 30, 1968, Billboard reported. “There has been a landslide on Presley product,” an executive from RCA told Billboard. “The stores are ordering his new single and album like early Monkees singles.” When it comes to music, though, Elvis never left the building: He remains one of the best-selling artists of all time, with 25 top 10 songs on the Billboard Hot 100, plus numerous hits that precede it. Presley’s resurgence was tested by a four-week, 57-show Las Vegas residency.

Baz Luhrmann's chaotic, maximalist approach works for one reason: The story of Elvis Presley should be a mess.

Elvis is completely baffled when the girls in the audience start screaming at what his bandmate dubs his “wiggle” (the way his hips shake when he sings), but he quickly leans into it, and Luhrmann presents the ensuing chain reaction of hysteria with all his fizzy, over-the-top panache. Even at 159 minutes, the film can’t possibly cram every detail in, so instead Luhrmann just mixes in his favorite ingredients from the Elvis cocktail. Presley was so energetic as a singer that his producer had to place mics around the entire studio to capture his recording of “Heartbreak Hotel,” because Presley was given to jumping around while he sang. Hanks’s performance as Parker reminded me most of the heavily made-up goons he played in Tom Tykwer and the Wachowskis’ gonzo epic, Cloud Atlas. He’s buried under pounds of latex, sports a swollen nose, and delivers his lines in a heavy Dutch accent, alluding to his hidden past as a carnival worker from the Netherlands. To Luhrmann, Parker is the twisted showman behind the Elvis myth, helping him vault to stardom through some clever promotion but then trapping him in a series of gilded cages to keep him under control. Luhrmann understands how to splash that melodrama across the big screen in the boldest colors. Presley was a beacon of ostentation the likes of which may never be eclipsed.

As Baz Luhrmann's biopic "Elvis" opens in theaters, here are the top 10 movies starring Elvis Presley, the King of Rock 'n' Roll.

But Elvis was never better as an actor than he was in “King Creole.” And he never made a better movie. Here, Elvis plays Chad Gates, an ex-G.I. who, upon returning home to Hawaii, rejects a job with his father’s fruit company in order to hang with his beach buddies, surf and swim, and work as a tour guide in partnership with his curvy sweetie (Joan Blackman). It’s one of Elvis’ most ingratiating performances, in one of his most undemandingly pleasant movies — with (except for the title song and “Can’t Help Falling in Love”) some of his most forgettable songs. (Elvis’ first song actually is an ode to crawfish.) The superior supporting cast includes Dean Jagger, Vic Morrow, Carolyn Jones (in one of her all-time best performances), Paul Stewart and Dolores Hart, and the songs include “Trouble,” “Hard Headed Woman” and the rockin’ good title tune. If you looked up the term “guilty pleasure” in the “Illustrated Dictionary of Cinema,” you’d likely see a photo of Elvis and Ann-Margret shaking their groove things and generating high-potency chemistry in director George Sidney’s well-nigh irresistible extravaganza. After beating a man to death with his bare hands in a barroom brawl (which, to be fair, he didn’t start), construction worker Vincent Everett (Presley) spends a year behind bars as the cellmate of a washed-up country singer (Mickey Shaughnessy) who teaches him how to play a guitar and carry a tune. But take a second look: In sharp contrast to the formulaic fluff frequently concocted for The King throughout the ‘60s, “Jailhouse Rock” actually attempts to package Presley as a semi-sensitive anti-hero with pronounced tendencies toward badassery. The King already had seven features to his credit by the time he made “Blue Hawaii,” but this frothy musical comedy more or less set the mold for what most folks now think of as “an Elvis movie” – lightweight fun and frolic, often in an exotic locale, involving a lovable hunk who sings and sways his way through minimally daunting challenges while encountering only temporary impediments to happily-ever-aftering with a young lovely. “However, I think one of the reasons the picture did not get the recognition I feel it deserves, especially in terms of its presentation of a racial conflict, is that the public was unable to get beyond the fact that Elvis Presley was in it.” He’s torn between a good girl (Millie Perkins) and a not-so-good one (Tuesday Weld), but winds up falling hard for the (slightly) older psychologist (Hope Lange) who wants him to be all he can be. Elvis is a co-star, not the lead, in his first big-screen outing, a creaky but compelling post-Civil War drama about a Confederate soldier (Richard Egan) who returns home to find his sweetheart (Debra Paget) married his younger brother (Elvis) after receiving greatly exaggerated reports of his death. While Young feasts on the scenery with relentless relish, Elvis goes the distance with easygoing aplomb — even during credibility-straining scenes where his character takes a licking but keeps on ticking in the ring — and Charles Bronson lends strong support as a seen-it-all trainer who suffers greatly for his loyalty to the young fighter. To cushion the blow for The King’s many fans — who, of course, helped turn the film into a box-office smash — the filmmakers superimposed an image of Elvis crooning the title song over the final graveside scene.

Beyond his concert specials—and Baz Luhrmann's Elvis—The King's narrative film career deserves a second look.

“Jailhouse Rock has that great production number,” Doll said, “but in King Creole, it’s just a man on a stage, and he has everybody in the palm of his hand.” As singing delinquent Danny Fisher, Elvis was in the best of hands with Michael Curtiz, who directed Bogie in Casablanca, Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy, and Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood. He was also ably backed up by his strongest supporting cast, including Walter Matthau as a ruthless mob boss who insists that Danny sing at his nightclub, Carolyn Jones as Matthau’s good bad girl, and Vic Morrow as a Matthau henchman who tries to lead Danny down a darker, more violent path. It’s a “demanding” role in a film with something for everybody, Variety said at the time: “Indians-on-the-warpath for the youngsters, Elvis Presley for the teenagers and socio-psychological ramifications for adults who prefer a mild dose of sage in their sagebrushers.” Plus, there are decent songs, including the ballad “ Puppet on a String” and the unlikely dance sensation “ Do the Clam,” which was invented by choreographer David Winters. (He also created the Slide for Viva Las Vegas.) The title tune is a keeper (Bruce Springsteen has performed it in concert), but the film’s few songs take a back seat to the story. By the late 1960s, as he got his singing and concert career back on track, The King was “chomping at the bit to get back on the stage,” Doll notes. Blue Hawaii had 14, the best of which is “ Can’t Help Falling in Love.” But in the films he made prior to Blue Hawaii, which set the template for the rest of his screen career, Elvis took his film career seriously. The title tune is great, and “ Big Boots” is a lovely lullaby. With only three songs, it’s not your typical Elvis fare, but with a script credited to Clifford Odets, this was probably the type of prestige film that Presley envisioned for himself when he pursued an acting career. It was also his last attempt at a straight dramatic role following the box office success of G.I. Blues. Here, Presley is not an aspiring singer, but a troubled kid whose social worker (Hope Lange) inspires him to develop his writing talent. His best films show his potential: the raw energy, the presence, the commitment to embody a character that was distinctly not himself.

Ever since his tragic demise in 1977, there have been countless sightings of the King, who would be 87-years old if he were still alive today. Here are the most ...

I know what it's like to be hungry, to be in need." Often I wouldn't know in the morning where I'd be laying my head in the night. "My Momma, Daddy and I moved many times when I was a child in Tupelo and Memphis. We were dirt poor, and we kept getting evicted because Daddy couldn't pay the rent. Gail Brewer-Giorgio, author of the 1988 book Is Elvis Alive, claims to have had a phone call with Elvis Presley in the summer of 1988. Towards the end of his life, Elvis apparently wanted to change the spelling of his middle name to the biblical Aaron. Here are the most bonkers and fascinating Elvis Presley theories and sightings in the years since his death:

Hit after hit in both music and cinema followed, cementing Elvis's status as the one and only King of Rock and Roll, one of the most compelling cultural icons ...

Behind O’Hara is a tall bearded man conspiracy theorists believe is Elvis based on his mannerisms, particularly in the way he tilts his head. “They are convinced, these people, that this is Elvis Presley,” Columbus said during the scene. One of the more persistent rumors about Elvis is that he faked his death to go into the FBI’s witness protection program. Out of the 760 documents in this file compiled from 1956 to 1980, there is no mention of Elvis ever helping the FBI with any investigation. Another popular conspiracy theory holds that Elvis appears as a background actor in Chris Columbus’s 1990 classic Home Alone, showing up in the scene where Catherine O’Hara is negotiating with a ticket agent in the Scranton airport. This particular rumor is so pervasive that as recently as 1997 a Gallup poll was conducted to survey how many Americans believed Elvis was still alive. Nichopoulos testified that he had tried to wean Elvis off these substances, giving him placebos at times, and insisting that if he hadn’t prescribed the drugs, Elvis would have found them “on the street.” One of the pieces of “evidence” used to bolster this theory is Elvis’s headstone, on which his middle name is spelled “Aaron” instead of “Aron,” which some fans believe is meant to indicate that Elvis faked his death. While the official cause of death was heart failure, medical experts have long considered that his fatal heart attack was brought on by a longstanding addiction to barbiturates and other prescription medication. The toxicology report, however, indicated high levels of multiple opiates, indicating that heart failure was a symptom and not the root cause of death. Despite numerous attempts to have them released, they have remained sealed, which has fueled speculation about the nature of Elvis’s death. According to numerous sources, on Aug. 16, 1977, Elvis’ girlfriend Ginger Alden found the singer lying face down and unconscious in the second-floor bathroom of his Graceland mansion.

Elvis Aron Presley died in his Graceland mansion in Memphis, Tennessee, on August 16, 1977. He was discovered by his then-fiancée, Ginger Alden, who found him ...

In the last eight months that Elvis was alive, Nichopoulos prescribed over 10,000 doses of amphetamines, barbiturates, narcotics, tranquilizers, sleeping pills, laxatives and hormones to the star. So, what was Elvis Presley’s cause of death? However, several weeks and a toxicology report later, Elvis Presley’s cause of death was confirmed—and the results weren’t quite as simple as Francisco let on. According to Presley’s toxicology report, which arrived several weeks following his death in August 1977, the rockstar had significantly high levels of Codeine, Dilaudid, Percodan and Demerol in detected in his blood, plus another 10 narcotics in his system. A little after 2 o’clock in the afternoon, she went in search of the singer, only to find that the door to their master bedroom was ajar. Elvis was officially pronounced dead at 3:30 PM, and the world’s media was informed within the hour. As it turns out, drugs did factor into Elvis Presley’s cause of death. “Elvis looked as if his entire body had completely frozen in a seated position while using the commode and then had fallen forward, in that fixed position, directly in front of it.” The “Jailhouse Rock” star notoriously suffered from long bouts of constipation due to a combination of his diet and use of prescription painkillers, and took a copy of Frank Adams’ The Scientific Search for the Face of Jesus with him to the bathroom to keep himself occupied. And even after the release of his 2022 biopic, many are still wondering: how did Elvis die? This was unlike her fiancé, who was due to leave for the U.S. leg of his latest tour later that evening. His music and his personality, fusing the styles of white country and black rhythm and blues, permanently changed the face of American popular culture.”

On August 16, 1977, the legendary singer died at his home in Memphis, which has always been surrounded by speculation and even doubts about its veracity.

However, the blood, urine and tissue samples taken from Elvis at the autopsy and sent for analysis also pointed to the presence of ten different substances in his system, among which several types of opiates. Ginger Alden, his girlfriend at the time, found him dead, face down, on the bathroom floor of the main bedroom and the extensive autopsy- carried out by ten doctors - concluded that the singer had died as a result of a heart attack. For this reason, what happened at Graceland, his iconic mansion, has caused rivers of ink to flow about how he died and the causes of his premature death at the age of 42.