Remembering Elvis Presley as one of the most enduring pop-culture icons of all time, it can be easy to think all of his songs and movies were hits with everyone, including himself. In reality, though, Presley would admit to feeling “extremely unhappy” with his film career.
Upon Presley’s return from his military service in Germany, he was drawn into a very busy film schedule that did help the momentum of his growing career and supplemented his presence in both the movie and music industry at once. Sometimes it was both film and song titles that made the head of Graceland so dissatisfied, even embarrassed, as his other ambitions were shelved.
Elvis Presley opened up about his dissatisfaction with his movies and the songs asked of him
Back in 1969, Presley was starting to return to the stage, his venue of choice to work. As his career turned in this direction, Presley participated in an interview reflecting on his movies and film career. “I wouldn’t be being honest with you if I said I wasn’t ashamed of some of the movies,” Presley confessed, “and the songs I’ve had to sing in them. I would like to say they were good, but I can’t.”
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“I’ve been extremely unhappy with that side of my career for some time,” the King of Rock and Roll further shared. “But how can you find 12 good songs for every film when you’re making three films a year? I knew a lot of them were bad songs and they used to bother the heck out of me. But I had to do them. They fitted the situation.”
Susan Doll, author of The Films of Elvis Presley, agrees with the notion that, generally speaking, the view of Elvis’ filmography is not a positive one. “There’s two reasons for this,” she says. “One is Elvis himself. When he gets back on the road again in ’69 and into the ’70s, he will make fun of himself and call his body of work ‘The Presley Travelogues’ as a way to disparage them. They had this formula of exotic locale and a handsome leading man with an unusual job and a real fantasy approach to romance. And then, the first people to seriously try to put his contributions in perspective in the ’80s were music writers and, of course, music historians or music critics are going to hate the movies, because he changed his recording style and he changed his image in order to fit into the mold of the Hollywood leading man. So they immediately think that that’s a step downhill, because he’s not playing rockabilly anymore. Between those two things, that accounts for why his movie career is made fun of so much.”
Compromise and avoidance
In 1978, the singer’s father, Vernon Presley, wrote an article for Good Housekeeping about his famous son. In it, he claimed, “Elvis hardly ever watched the movies he made because he didn’t like most of them. He’d been given $1 million a picture, plus 50 percent of the net, so he’d been well paid for his work. But he had never had script approval or control over the songs in his pictures, or over anything else.”
Some of that changed a bit in Presley’s favor. Presley whittled through movie obligations he had upon his return to the states and he had more choices in the matter of his work – to an extent. “We’ve now completed all the deals I made when I came out of the Army in 1960,” he explained. “And from now on, I’m going to play more serious parts and make fewer films.” His real passion was to get back onto the stage, though, and he emphasized, “I’ve always wanted to perform on the stage again for the last nine years. And it’s been building up inside of me since 1965 until the strain became intolerable. I don’t think I could have left it much longer.”
Did you like all of Elvis Presley’s movies? Which was your favorite?