Screening Elvis, Harnessing Elvisness

Chapter One examines the emergence of Elvis Presley as a star, and ‘Elvisness’ as a youth culture phenomenon. The chapter concentrates on Elvis’s screen stardom in television and film, and argues that, Elvis’s massive success notwithstanding, Elvisness was a difficult concept to commodify, leading to a series of misfires from Elvis’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker, and film producer, Hal Wallis. Building on the Introduction, the chapter places Elvis more precisely within youth culture developments of the 1950s, such as the moral panic about rock and roll, innovations in youth film marketing, and the clean teen phenomenon. It contends that Elvisness was, like rock and roll itself, disputed territory, and thus problematic to fully harness, until Elvis’s entrance into the Army allowed Wallis to renegotiate Elvisness and present the star in terms of respectable cultural legitimacy. The chapter further argues that King Creole’s soundtrack saw Elvis’s music compromised by Dixieland embellishments as Wallis influenced the film’s music in order to use it as New Orleans locator.