Baby, Let's Play House: Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him

Author:Alanna Nash [Nash, Alanna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: C429, Extratorrents, Kat, Autobiography
ISBN: 9780061699856
Goodreads: 7935175
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2010-12-22T04:18:27+00:00

At the end of August 1962, Elvis began work on It Happened at the World’s Fair, his twelfth film, and his first in a four-picture deal with MGM. Norman Taurog would again direct. The light musical comedy costarred Joan O’Brien as Elvis’s love interest and was set in Seattle against the real-time backdrop of the 1962 exposition. Elvis plays a crop duster in money straits: his partner (Gary Lockwood) gambled away their money, and the sheriff has attached a lien to their plane.

It Happened at the World’s Fair is memorable for both the number eleven hit, “One Broken Heart for Sale,” and Elvis’s sartorial splendor. Hollywood tailor Sy Devore dressed him in conservative suits and ties to make him look “like a smart, well-dressed young businessman,” according to producer Ted Richmond. Thus Elvis’s metamorphosis from rebellious rock and roller to handsome leading man was complete. It Happened at the World’s Fair is also the only picture on which Elvis had the Memphis Mafia dress in actual uniforms—black short-sleeve tunics over white shirts with black pants. It gave them all a slight garage mechanic look, but for Elvis, it was just like being back in the army—each of his troops had his name festooned across his breast pocket, JOE, ALAN, BILLY. The only difference was that now Elvis was the general, in total power and in complete control of his black-suited brigade.

Research on twinless twins such as Elvis has shown an odd, yet consistent and inherent fascination with “uniformity.” They commonly talk of being powerfully drawn to groups of individuals dressed alike. The semblance of everyone appearing, if not being, the same—identical, twinned—is at the base of their motivation and intrigue. It gives them a sense of solace and reinforces the notion that they are not alone—a feeling Elvis wrestled with to the extreme once his mother passed away.

While seldom publicly reported, says psychologist Whitmer, “The need for uniformity underscores the difficulty any twinless twin has in communicating to others with a different personal history the strange world in which he finds himself trapped.”

The cast of It Happened at the World’s Fair included two young actors who would go on to distinguish themselves: Kurt Russell, playing a bit part as a bratty child who kicks Elvis in the shin (and would later portray Elvis in a television film), and TV’s future “Batgirl,” Yvonne Craig, who had a secondary role.

“It was not a good film. I had a small part, and it was a dance number, although I didn’t dance. My sister and I went to the drive-in movie to see it, and I didn’t want to stay for the rest of it. I just wanted to see how I looked with short hair. After [my scene] was over, I would like to have left, but I thought, ‘God, that’s really egocentric,’ so I sat there bored witless, and my sister did, too. Finally, she said, ‘Would you mind terribly if we went?’ I said, ‘No, no, I’d love it!’ I was sitting there dying.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.