MovieChat Forums > Jailhouse Rock (1957) Discussion > Elvis is Quite Good in This

Elvis is Quite Good in This

posted 15 years ago by kapnkirk
2 replies | jump to latest

The only scene I didn't care for was when he sings for the 1st time out of prison and meets Judy Tyler in the bar. He wasn't good and should have done it again. Maybe it was the 1st scene shot for the film? Other than that I thought he handled himself quite well and he had some good lines. He looked especially good mainly due to the perm (?) they gave him that stopped his hair from flopping down (like in Loving You) and his wardrobe just smacked of the 1950s. From what I read Elvis apparently hated making this film but he was quite good. For all those who like to take potshots at his acting consider that he was never in a high school play and his dumbass manager and Hal Wallis never hired an acting teacher for him. That's the very least they could have done.

"No! That’s not true at all. Elvis takes fifty percent of everything I earn." Col. Parker

[–] MsELLERYqueen2 11 years ago

He was very good in this movie, much better than he was in some of the comedies he did.

~~
JimHutton (1934-79) & ElleryQueen

[–] nutzerwutzer 9 years ago

Come on, kapnkirk, admit it--you just fast-forwarded between each of the songs. In the first several songs he is not supposed to be good. Peggy even tells him she didn't think he was very good when she first heard him. It turns out his music was suffering because he tried Hunk's singing style, and as he says, "boy I laid a bomb". Remember his own self-critique in the studio: Man that's awful, do I sound like that? And that he owed the guy who wouldn't let Vince's song interrupt him in the club a drink. It wasn't till he made his music suit his own style that he became a star. How much more clear could they have made it?
Real recording studio outtakes captured Elvis saying something like, "how bad am I supposed to be?" So if he sounded bad, it wasn't because he was really bad, but because he was good.

Nobody knows what "literally" means anymore. Literally.