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Presleys in the PressBook Reviews, 2004-2005 | Home | |
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Book Reviews
 By Ron Wynn (New York Review of Books, November 12, 2004) Distinguished author and critic Alanna Nash's book The Colonel: The Extraordinary Story of Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis Presley (now available again in a Chicago Review Press paperback edition) provided some valuable insight into Parker's background, concisely summarized his achievements and offered incisive analysis regarding Parker's legitimate importance in the growth of music marketing. Nash traced Parker's roots back to Holland, uncovered rare records spotlighting his time in the military and subsequent discharge, and also profiled his early involvement in the careers of Hank Snow and Eddy Arnold before he became Parker's manager. Nash also managed to separate fact from fiction, objectively evaluate Parker's triumphs without overlooking or minimizing his character flaws, and her book was a welcome addition to a legacy of Presley books that is frequently more concerned with gossip and scandal than history and cultural significance. Anyone who might have passed on the hardback version due to cost, or who simply didn't want to read a biography about a person frequently dismissed as nothing more than an manipulative puppet master should now grab it in paperback. This past week Nash was a most deserving winner of the 2004 Country Music Association Media Achievement Award. She continues to contribute reviews and articles on country and popular music to Entertainment Weekly, Readers Digest, The New York Times and USA Weekend, and remains one of America's finest music writers and country scholars. ... (New York Review of Books, Volume 51, Number 15 - October 7, 2004) Wondrous Strange: The Life and Art of Glenn Gould by Kevin Bazzana Oxford University Press, 528 pp., $35.00 1. Among classical performers of the last half-century, only perhaps Arturo Tos- canini, Vladimir Horowitz, and Maria Callas were the subjects of as much adulation, controversy, and speculation as Glenn Gould. Even so, Gould's popularity was different. He was part of a new era, and addressed a new audience. Coming along at a time when music conservatories and piano contests were producing increasing numbers of pianists of indistinguishable proficiency and uniform style, Gould seemed both to produce his own unique sound and also to appeal to a new audience of listeners. Claiming a taste for his playing, like the fashion for Marshall McLuhan or for semiotics, became a sign of sophistication during the 1960s and 1970s. His fame for a while was nearly comparable to Elvis's - a Gould recording of a Bach prelude and fugue was launched into space on Voyager in 1977 to instruct aliens about human culture, should they ever be able to decipher how to turn on the spacecraft's phonograph. Since Gould's death in 1982, caused by a stroke shortly after his fiftieth birthday, his prestige seems only to have grown. A 1990s reissue of his 1955 recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations sold nearly two million copies, a virtually unheard-of number for a serious classical album. That recording has since been repackaged once again and become another best seller. ... By Gregory McNamee (Yahoo! News / Reuters / Hollywood Reporter, July 7, 2004) Legendary film producer Hal B. Wallis had quite a run in Hollywood's salad days. The former publicist and onetime protege of Jack Warner worked with some of the biggest names in the business, and his name was associated with some first-class films, not the least of them "Casablanca." He talked Edward G. Robinson into leaving the stage for film, yielding the magnificent "Little Caesar." He discovered Burt Lancaster and Shirley MacLaine. He put Elvis in pictures. Yet, for all his accomplishments, Wallis was never quite able to secure the respect he doubtless felt he deserved. Professional honors eluded him for most of his career. He was an also-ran in other regards, forever associated with B films even as he aspired to make art that could double as commerce. The self-styled "starmaker" -- such was the title of his autobiography -- might have discovered a few artists, but most, for many reasons, left him as soon as they could. Indeed, if there is news in film scholar Bernard Dick's sometimes earnest, sometimes plodding, but always illuminating life of Wallis, it is that most of the starmaker's discoveries did only passing work for him, flourishing in the hands of other directors and producers once outside of Wallis' orbit. A constant refrain throughout "Hal Wallis: Producer to the Stars" is that such Wallis-nurtured actors as Charlton Heston, Lancaster and even Presley "went on to do their best work elsewhere," leaving it to Wallis to market their lesser efforts. Part of the problem, Dick suggests, is that Wallis too often hitched his wagon to fading stars -- Loretta Young, for instance, and Shirley Booth, both of whom would do good work on TV. A case in point was Wallis' pairing of John Wayne and Katharine Hepburn in "Rooster Cogburn," a sequel to the worthier Wallis-Wayne vehicle "True Grit." It would be Wallis' last film, and it would do no one associated with it especially proud. Wayne and Hepburn, of course, would resurface separately to do much better in other people's films, such as "The Shootist" and "On Golden Pond." Part of the problem, too, was that Wallis did much of his producing for Paramount, which was well known for tightness with a dollar and a certain tastelessness. The man who had worked with Michael Curtiz and Darryl Zanuck also spent many of his best years working on movies that, when they're shown at all, figure on the late, late show. Even so, those Jerry Lewis movies aside, under Paramount's aegis Wallis produced some memorable films, including the prestigious "Becket," pairing Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole. It took Wallis 25 years to extricate himself from Paramount, and when he decamped for Universal Pictures he didn't have many pictures left in him. Would it have made much difference if he had? Yes, Dick suggests: left to his own devices, the "gentleman producer" showed fine taste, made exceptionally smart casting decisions, fought battles that needed to be fought, spent money that needed to be spent. Even Charlton Heston, with whom he clashed, remembered him as a master of all aspects of film. "There aren't really a lot of guys who are good at all this," Heston remarked. "Hal was very good. Surely one of the two or three best of them all." "Hal Wallis: Producer to the Stars" offers plenty of reasons to take that assessment seriously, and it gives a great filmmaker his due. By MARK VOGER (Asbury Park Press, July 4, 2004) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ELVIS PRESLEY: THE MAN. THE LIFE. THE LEGEND By Pamela Clarke Keogh. Atria Books, $35 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ In other words, no photos of the fat Elvis. Though there is a recipe for Presley's beloved fried banana sandwiches. Elvis has re-entered the building, this time in a 265-page hardback as handsome and slick as its subject was in his prime. Keogh somehow finds a fresh voice as she guides the reader through by-now-familiar stages of The King's reign: childhood poverty; youthful yearnings; Presley's seminal recordings at Sun Records under producer Sam Phillips; Svengali-like manager Col. Tom Parker; the hits; "The Ed Sullivan Show"; the Army; the movies; the "Memphis Mafia"; Vegas and, in much less detail, Presley's decline and death on Aug. 16, 1977, at age 42. The best reading in "Elvis Presley" is the chapter in which Presley bullies his way into the Nixon White House, asking for -- and receiving, without so much as a flinch from the president -- a "highly restricted" badge from the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. (Irony itself, since Presley was a walking bureau of dangerous drugs at the time.) Irresistible Presley even wheedles presidential swag from Nixon for the wives of his cronies! Through it all, Keogh's tone is sensitive and fawning. Make no mistake: This is a valentine, not a tell-all. But the true star of "Elvis Presley" is its 100-plus photographs, most of which are fittingly in black and white: baby Elvis with Mom and Dad (they look like they're about to step onto the Joads' truck in "The Grapes of Wrath"); teen Elvis dressed as a cowboy; recording and performing with those boxy old microphones; swiveling his hips on "Sullivan"; getting his head shaved by an Army barber; dated Graceland opulence; and sliding into Sideburn City. Presley's story was more interesting than a hundred "Roustabouts" or "Harum Scarums," and it's nice to hear it one more time. Go to earlier articles |
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