The spontaneity on camera was matched off-screen, as when Harrison, then 21, went up to a 20-year-old bit-part actress called Pattie Boyd and said, “Will you marry me?” Two years later she became his first wife.
Director Richard Lester’s A Hard Day’s Night (1964), made at the peak of Beatlemania, captures the fun, excitement, and unforgettable music of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr as it portrays a frantic 36 hours in the lives of the rock group as they traveled to London from Liverpool. There was bound to be a reaction to the Cliff Richard “clean teens” films, and it came when The Beatles started making improvisational and imaginative rock’n’roll movies. In Britain, his films and the success of US jukebox musicals sparked movies featuring Tommy Steele, Cliff Richard, Adam Faith, and Billy Fury. Nevertheless, Presley was a powerful model for imitators. While filming his last movie, Elvis On Tour (1972), Presley told co-director Pierre Adidge that making those old rock’n’roll movies made him physically ill: “It was just that Hollywood’s image of me was wrong, and I knew it, and couldn’t say anything about it,” Adidge recalled Presley saying, in the filmmaker’s interview with Rolling Stone magazine. However, the pressure to do more movies was constant, because they made a staggering amount of money: the total box office receipts equate to more than two billion dollars for the US alone in today’s money.
Some scenes embarrassed him – serenading a freshly caught shrimp in Girls! Girls! Girls!, for example – and sometimes the unexpected strains of filming would ignite his temper, as when he threw a carton of milk at his own Rolls Royce after a long delay while he was waiting in an uncomfortable rubber wetsuit. Stan Brossette, publicist of 11 Presley movies, said, “I got a lot of pressure from producers to get him to parties, but he never went.” While on set, he was accompanied by numerous minders and rarely socialized with fellow actors, preferring to spend time alone practicing his karate. Some – such as Jailhouse Rock and King Creole – were good, but for Presley, his film career was the most frustrating part of his life. From 1956 to 1971, Presley made 33 films, and in all but one he took the starring role.
Musicians in rock of ages movie movie#
The King Of Rock’n’Roll, Elvis Presley, had his own prodigious movie career.
Actress Kay Wheeler, who played a dancer in Vincent’s 1958 film, Hot Rod Gang, recalled that the pop star was very polite and nice to her sister when he came to her house for a spaghetti dinner during the making of the film. Mostly, the musicians were filmed performing songs, and there was little riotous behavior off-screen. A spate of 50s rock’n’roll movies followed, many featuring the emerging giants of music, such as Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Gene Vincent, Little Richard, The Platters, and Eddie Cochran.
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