It’s this impossible mashup of Elvis Presley, Ellie-May Clampett from Beverly-Hillbillies (Donna Dixon), and Sherman Potter from MAS*H (Harry Morgan), all wrapped up in to the silliness.
It just sends me, every time I see it. 😄
Elvis is underrated on so many levels. He was served up the craziest scripts for 10 years, and yet he made them turn out to be secret bangers with the pure force of his charisma and character. I wish they’d gotten out of his way more when he was in his prime so we could have really seen him shine on his own terms. The 1968 television special gave us a glimpse of the performer Elvis was inside, and that dude would have been a legend for more decades if he’d been allowed to run the show more.
Well said. “Colonel” “Tom Parker” was a predatory fiend who sunk his talons in hard, influencing Elvis to make so many of these unnecessary movies. He even sabotaged at least one of the '68 specials from what I understand, which heavily skewed the audience. (fortunately it worked out, and accidentally wound up making Elvis new fans to fill the seats)
From what I’ve read, near the end of Elvis’ life, he was so sick (from drug-abuse and its long-term effects, sadly), that one night he was in danger of dying, and simply couldn’t go on stage to perform. Parker evidently became enraged and absolutely insisted on Elvis making a try, anyway. It would have been really bad if that actually happened, though. Parker was completely addicted to gambling at that point, who saw Elvis as his lifelong ‘cash cow’…
