Elvis' Movies and impact on Filmography

Elvis had two monumental aspects to his life. He was part singer, part movie star and each played a serious role in his life and thus had and equally large effect upon the culture of the era as well as eras to come. 

While Elvis’ singing on stage is still seen as iconic, his movies largely relied on his fame to make money and follow a very formulaic pattern. One producer who stopped working on Elvis films for this very reason declared "It was just going to be like the last one, every movie the same” (Feeny,5). Though iconic moments from his immense repertoire of filmography such as Jailhouse Rock or Viva Las Vegas inspired a generation of film making, the majority of his films were stained by the formulaic casting and scripting that surrounded Elvis and his fame. Though revered in his time, Elvis “made lots of movies that made lots of money, but today they seem more silly on the screen than glamorous… (his) movies were more successful than those of many "real" movie stars; yet they have no true place in movie history” (Feeny,6)

Simply put, Elvis was no actor, far from in fact. His acting was beneath most of the popular actors of the period and his acting career survived solely because of his music fame, talent, and prowess. Despite all the short comings of Elvis’ acting career, his presence, as well as the presence of his movies, still impact modern filmography. Many years after his death, “Elvis's movie career continues on its dizzying posthumous arc” (Carlson,2). Truly, Elvis’ film career had an outstanding effect on his appearances in films after his death as an enormous volume of movies had a character in reference to Elvis, and more often than not, that character was supposed to be Elvis himself. From the scene where Forest teaches Elvis how to dance in “Forrest Gump” to the references to Elvis in “Pulp Fiction” or “The Big Lebowski” to the Iconic line in “Independence Day” where Will Smith’s character says “Elvis has left the building.”, Elvis’ movie career, through its good and bad, has had a lasting impact on pop culture and filmography in particular.   

Sources Used-

Feeny, M. (2001). Elvis movies. Informally published manuscript, , Available from Gale. Retrieved from  http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE|A70872534&v=2.1&u=tlc119194330&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w

Carlson, T. (1999). Bit parts: Dismembering elvis in recent hollywood films. In Film Criticism. 24.1 (Fall 1999): p73. From Literature Resource Center.. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA58049231&v=2.1&u=tlc119194330&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w

Here are snippets of a few movies that Elvis starred in.

This is a scene from the movie "Viva Las Vegas"

This is a scene from the film "Jailhouse Rock"

This last scene is the ending of  Elvis' first major film, "Love Me Tenderly"

This scene from Forrest Gump is an example of a portrayal of Elvis in films after his death.