

“Interestingly, Elvis didn’t immediately jump on it,” Nash says. Show director/producer Steve Binder turned to songwriter Earl Brown to write an emotional ballad, "If I Can Dream," that reflected Elvis’ hopes that the nation could get through such a crisis and heal.

The tailspin created by RFK’s death led directly to the special’s powerful finale. “The assassination put Elvis into an emotional spiral.” “Elvis arrived for the start of two weeks of rehearsals on June 3, 1968, and Kennedy was shot on June 5, dying the next morning, June 6,” she says.

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The senator was shot elsewhere in Los Angeles, and not during the taping of that iconic Elvis TV special but during rehearsals, Nash says. Kennedy killed while Elvis was taping the ’68 Comeback Special? 'I couldn't be an imposter': How Austin Butler vanished into the role of Elvis Presley Was Robert F. Elvis was asked to perform, but his contract wouldn’t allow it, Nash says.īut toward the end of the evening, DJ Rufus Thomas brought Elvis out for a “leg gyration and the crowd went wild.” Backstage, King and Presley posed together for a picture. There was an encounter in December 1956, when King was the headliner on the all-black WDIA Goodwill Revue. "They probably first crossed paths at Sun Studio, but only briefly." were acquaintances, but not close friends," she says.
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King, who worked as a DJ in Memphis at the time, would certainly have been aware of Elvis, and vice versa, but they would not have been hanging out and catching acts such as Little Richard as the movie portrays, says Nash. King and Elvis Presley really hang out together on Beale Street? Lisa Marie Presley dies: The only child of Elvis dies at 54 after a brief hospitalization Did B.B. Just how true are they? For answers, we enlisted expert Alanna Nash, the author of several Elvis books (including “The Colonel: The Extraordinary Story of Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis Presley” and “Baby, Let’s Play House: Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him”). Also credit star Austin Butler's studious depiction of the King of Rock 'n' Roll.īut we identified six moments in “Elvis” that made us scratch our heads. Given the inevitable event compression required of any movie looking to cover decades in hours, one wonders just how much of “Elvis” really happened to Elvis Presley?įrom director Baz Luhrmann’s research in Memphis and Elvis’ birthplace of Tupelo, Mississippi, to scores of well-researched biographies, there is laudable accuracy to the film, which is streaming and on demand now ( HBO Max, Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Vudu, Google Play and other platforms). The epic biopic “Elvis” covers a lot of ground – 42 years, to be precise – from the iconic singer’s birth until his death in 1977. Stop reading if you haven't seen it yet and don't want to know. Spoiler alert! The following discusses plot points from the new "Elvis" movie and the real life of Elvis Presley.
