An Elvis Presley movie is like an Elvis Presley album: it is reasonable to expect to get a lot of rock’n’roll music. However given the fact no one has ever compared the king of rock’n’roll with Sir Laurence Olivier one might wonder if there would be any good acting in an Elvis movie. I can’t speak for his entire filmography, but I found Jailhouse Rock (1957) to be a surprisingly good piece of acting from both the king and his supporting cast. The music is of course a rocking good time.
I found this black and white piece of cinema history on iTunes last week and prior to that the only Elvis Presley movie I had seen was Bubba Ho-Tep, a movie in which Bruce Campbell plays an aging Elvis battling a mummy at an East Texas retirement home. Make of that what you will. My expectations for Jailhouse Rock, directed by Richard Thorpe, were low despite the fact there are plenty of good singers who have had successful acting careers. In a way you could say there is not much acting required from Elvis Presley since he plays an aspiring singer who finds huge success in the music industry, moves to Hollywood, and then finds success in the movies. What really surprised me was that he agreed to play such a flawed version of himself.
The stand-in for Elvis’ character is Vince Everett, a character who starts off as a bit of a blank slate. All we see of him at first is that he is a construction worker who is very popular with the rest of his crew. At first it is a bit jarring to watch him since he has that same deep southern accent as Elvis, and that immediately recognizable hair. However Vince has a bit of temper, first seen when he defends a woman at a bar being attacked by her husband. Unfortunately Vince doesn’t hold back his punches and kills the man, landing him in jail for manslaughter. Then again with a title like Jailhouse Rock it was only a matter of time before the main character would end up in jail.
Vince’s cellmate in the big house proves to be a thoroughly memorable supporting character. Hunk Houghton (Mickey Shaughnessy) is one of those prison guys who runs the cigarette system like an economist, or a loan shark depending on your point of view. He is also quite cynical, which you can tell by his life motto, “Do unto others as they would do unto you, only do it first.” Fortunately Hunk’s talents also includes playing the guitar as he used to be a country music singer. Hunk gives Vince music lessons, a TV station stages a show with the prison band, and now Vince knows what he wants to do with his life once he gets out of jail.
You have to suspend your disbelief for a lot of things that come next. After signing a partnership contract with Hunk, Vince walks out of jail early for good behaviour and begins his journey to stardom. He starts off slow, playing in low-rent nightclubs, getting scammed by a greedy music producer, and living in a shabby apartment. However once things get rolling, they skyrocket. After partnering up with Peggy (Judy Tyler), a business-savvy music promoter, and a patient lawyer (Vaughn Taylor), Vince starts his own record company to sell his own records. The sales land him at the top of the charts, he begins to play bigger and bigger concerts, and then it’s off to Hollywood.
I am not an insider in the music business, but it couldn’t possibly have been that easy to start a record company in the 1950s, especially for a convicted felon? And no one in Hollywood batted an eye at hiring a performer who was found guilty a killing a man with his bare hands? Logic aside, you have to give props to Elvis for agreeing to play a version of himself that is a criminal. What’s more, Vince is often rude to the people around him, he throws sarcastic barbs like a champ, and is quite greedy. There is the chance of Peggy becoming not just his business partner but his romantic partner, yet she backs away when he makes it clear he wants to sell albums just to be rich. There is nothing wrong with wanting to have money, but if that is your sole goal in life you are not going to have a lot of friends.
Elvis Presley was a man who became rich and famous by selling albums and eventually acted in movies. It is not a big leap for him to play a musician who becomes rich and eventually acts in movies, but it is pretty brave of him to play one so flawed you find yourself cheering when he gets a beating. I imagine it would have been easy for him to have his character be a man with very few flaws, but that would have made for a rather boring character. Instead I found myself wanting to see more of Vince’s journey and his interaction with the people in his life, and was disappointed when the movie ended rather abruptly.
That might be because at that point fiction had caught up with reality and the writers didn’t know what would happen next in Elvis’ life. Maybe it’s better that way since the king of rock’n’roll did not have the most dignified of endings. Also little did the writers of Jailhouse Rock know that decades later that ending would be re-imagined in a movie based on a book by a martial arts instructor from Texas and have him played by the star of the Evil Dead franchise. Hail to the king indeed.
Comments
Post a Comment