I was a little kid when Elvis was The King. It was my big sister who had “Elvis” and “Cliff” scratched into her school pencil case lid. They got equal top billing. Elvis had SO MUCH TALENT but it all got ignored and dissipated by such BAD management. Now we wonder why didn’t Elvis just stand up to his “manager” and demand his passport. But Elvis grew up in a world we’ve forgotten and only some older than me even glimpsed. A world where good manners and respect were drilled into you. Everyone of note who met Elvis in the 1960s,like say Joyce Grenfell,remarked how polite he was,in that charming American way. The thing is those rock and roll rebels weren’t really so outrageous as the media,at it back then too,hyped them up to be. Now it’s good that artists are more shrewd and have access to lawyers ( the words criminal and lawyer fit together so well).
Elvis had great acting ability and his career could have been developed that way but sadly he was kept making dross for the rest of his life,and he knew it,which is even sadder. Just my take on the tragedy of Elvis. Its like a Greek tragedy really. They say you should never get what you wish for.

Was Elvis the ultimate Elvis impersonator? His 1968 comeback refers, I think, to an individual song he sang that was a tribute, not a direct tribute though, to Martin Luther King: a song that he sang live on national television that was watched by tens of millions of people; an original, quite wonderful and moving song that was, I believe, written for him by a black artist; a song that may have only come around because Elvis had ventured to suggest how he might respond to the events he would have watched on television and in particular the assassination of MLK; a song that Elvis knew he could especially sing as some sort of healing moment. He surely struck timely a nerve: some kind of reset button that only a mere thing like a song in its own small way could. The evidence for that? I don’t know. I watched a documentary on Elvis, late at night, just last week and so much of what I watched is partially hazy. I only caught it from a third of the way in, from that 1968 event. But the evidence for that song he sang live on TV (the title of which I don’t recall; did I ever recall it? I made tea, swatted a fly, looked at my stupid phone while the doc was on: does Elvis not deserve anyone’s full attention today?), but the evidence for that song he sang striking some kind of chord in Americans nationwide was the recognition immediately after that he had made a riveting and unexpected comeback. Perhaps where there was instant love for him, there was also instant dislike for him, also. Did Elvis, from the South, ever detect resentment against him? At the end of the Sixties? Did he take a little risk by singing that song on television as he did in 1968? Did he ever wonder if some Americans might have, having watched him sing it, vehemently shouted at their TV sets: “Who does he think he is?” Was Elvis too sensitive a soul? As another commenter on this thread alludes to, the media of Elvis’s time may well have been very adept at glossing over the good manners, the charming politeness and respect that a lot of young men like Elvis would have been brought up with. If Elvis was more sensitive than most, then that make-up he carried with him through to 1968. Perhaps Elvis had the biggest trouble of all Elvis impersonators when he had to, when it later mattered, strive to impersonate himself: his true charismatic, talented, magnetic self. How the world today could do with such a great artist and entertainer today! Did Elvis’s comeback period only last from 1968 to 1970? In truth? Before the Las Vegas merry-go-round took its toll? I’ll watch the new movie with interest now. I hope it does not rush past the 1950s just to get to the cooler 60s and 70s. The 1950s is viewed today as a strait-laced decade. Which is why Elvis was so important if anything. But the man was very talented, musically, yes.
I enjoyed reading the above article.

“As I left the cinema, exhausted…”
Thats what put me off – 2 hours and 40 minutes (plus adverts and trailers) – too much!
“This is Spinal Tap” was a glorious 88 minutes.
Memo to modern directors: “Cut it down!”

In Tennessee we still have Elvis license plates. They’re a specialty plate. It’s like an extra 50 bucks to get one. They’re pretty rare. Dolly plates outsell Elvis 50 to 1.