Packaging Youth

Chapter Two explores the adaptation of Harold Robbins’s 1952 novel, A Stone for Danny Fisher into King Creole . The chapter argues that a fuller understanding of the production contexts of King Creole help to better position King Creole as not only an outlier in Elvis’s filmography but also an outlier in the teenpic film cycles of the time, particularly the juvenile delinquent movie. As A Stone for Danny Fisher , the project had been in pre-production for some time before Elvis came on board. This chapter not only contends that Elvis’s involvement led to a more focussed film but also that the extensive pre-production facilitated a more nuanced examination of youth alienation.