Elvis: The Man that Rocked the World TV - The Importance of Being Oscar TV - Elvis: The Man Who Shook Up the World TV - Elvis: Rebirth of the King TV - Elvis: The Searcher TV - Faking It TV - Framing Britney TV - Allen v Farrow TV - Grace Kelly: The Hollywood Years TV - Adam Curtis TV - The Death of Amy Whitehouse: 10 Years On TV - A Life in Ten Pictures: Amy Winehouse TV - Amy Winehouse in Her Own Words TV - Controlling Britney Spears TV - Chasing Ghislaine TV - National Treasure, National Disgrace TV - House of Maxwell TV - The Rise and Fall of John Leslie TV - Jimmy Savile: The People Who Knew TV - Depp vs Heard: The Winners & Losers TV - Wagspiracy: Vardi v Rooney TV - Paula TV - Love to Love You, Donna Summer 2023 - True Crime Recaps 2021 - The Reckoning TV -
‘Before Elvis there was nothing.’ Elvis: The Man that Rocked the World, Lennon, Channel 5 2020
He was the man who started it all and nearly 45 years after he left us he’s still the one true king of rock-n-roll. Much more than an uncontrollable pelvis and smouldering good looks he became an icon of the 20th century. And tonight we’re going to count down the Top 30 moments that made up his amazing life. ibid.
January 8th 1935: Elvis Aaron Presley entered the world. ibid.
Memphis was then home to one of the biggest jazz and blues music scenes in the US. ibid.
Elvis had the family he had always yearned for, but for Priscilla the dream was turning sour. ibid.
Ed Sullivan had earlier refused to have Elvis on his show but as he was now the biggest star in the country he had no choice. ibid.
All Shook Up was to be the first of his twenty-one top spots, even more than a young group from Liverpool. ibid.
After the huge success of the Comeback Special there was only one place for Elvis to go – Vegas. ibid.
I was a man who stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age. The Importance of Being Oscar, BBC 2020
I treated art as the supreme reality and life as a mere mode of fiction. ibid.
He was always aware he was an outsider as an Irishman so there was always an edge. ibid. Jerusha McCormack, author
Oscar’s first foray into playwriting is a play called Vera or the Nihilists, a play about Russian revolutionaries … It’s not terribly good. ibid. historian
The Picture of Dorian Gray: It caused a storm of protest in the press. People picked up on the homosexual subtext, the relationship between Basil the painter and Dorian. ibid.
Lady Windermere’s Fan is the first of the society comedies … A bad rumour has come to her ears that her husband is embarking an affair with a mysterious woman called Mrs Erlynne. ibid.
By the summer of 1955 Elvis’s extraordinary success in the American south was starting to attract national attention. One man in particular could see Elvis’s money-making potential. Elvis: The Man Who Shook Up the World, Channel 5 2020
‘Colonel Parker was this kind of blustery, cigar-chewing, massively overweight, sweaty, untidy, ill-mannered larger than life character.’ ibid. Bethan Roberts, author Graceland
The energetic way Elvis sings and dances in this appearance was shocking to a fifties’ audience. ibid.
The backlash during 1956 was said to be difficult for Elvis’s mother, Gladys, too. ibid.
The Americas of Elvis’s teenage years was also changing fast. The economy was growing, and for the first time young people had money in their pocket. They were going out watching films, and above all, listening to music. ibid.
Elvis’s version of That’s All Right helped to set him on course for global stardom. ibid.
As Elvis is increasingly pulled away from her [mother’s] world, Gladys’s life starts to unravel. ibid.
Elvis officially entered the army on March 24th 1958. Colonel Parker had arranged for news crews from around the world to be on hand to record this extraordinary event. ibid.
On 31st July 1969 a nervous Elvis Presley stepped out on to the stage at the International Hotel in Las Vegas after an eight-year absence from performance. The show was a triumph: the culmination of a long hard journey for Elvis to show the world who he really was as an artist. Elvis: Rebirth of the King, BBC 2020
But the triumph was brief and the end was not pretty. The grind of over 600 Vegas shows in 8 years eventually killed the king. For many this cartoon image of Elvis is the one that endures. ibid.
In 1956 Elvis Presley shook up the world. Tall, dark and preternaturally handsome, this dirt-poor southern boy scandalised segregated America when he performed Hound Dog on NBC’s Milton Berle Show. ibid.
In 1956 Love Me Tender was one of the highest grossing movies in the world. What could possibly go wrong? ibid.
Elvis determined that his future would be as a balladeer aimed at a mature audience, but it was a direction that set him on a collision course with the Colonel. ibid.
Elvis is a searcher. It’s a part of him that never left. Elvis: The Searcher I, Priscilla, HBO 2018
’68 he was a nervous wreck. Nervous because he didn’t know if his audience was going to accept him. People had not seen him perform in so long. ibid.
Elvis was born in a shotgun house. The poorest of the poor lived in those houses. His twin brother did not survive birth. ibid. Professor Bill Ferris
Elvis was like Huck Finn exploring. At night he would slip in to the black churches and listen to gospel music and to sermons. ibid.
Elvis, he longed to be a great gospel singer. ibid. Tom Petty
What happened in Memphis at that time was a convergence of forces: the convergence of radio, DJs and artists. ibid. Ferris
But the basic set up when it was just Elvis, Scotty, Bill and a beautiful echo tape delay, it was all you needed. With that voice you could do anything. ibid. Robbie Robertson, musician
And I knew I could help him exploit his talents all over the world. ibid. Colonel Tom Parker
Elvis was able to bring a value to the presentation of black music. ibid. David Porter, Stax Records
Elvis’s first television appearances were earth-shattering. He sang at a moment in the history of the south in the early 50s when his music was truly a revolutionary sound. ibid.
He was basically a good-natured southern kid but he was on a mission to deliver this music. ibid. Ferris
He goes into the army which is where he gets the pep pills for the first time, the Methedrine, to stay up on watch. ibid. Petty
So he was gonna follow what Tom Parker said. He’d been right so far. ibid. Prescilla
The 68 Special really showed Elvis’s career in its entirety. They took Elvis’s original songs and made them more modern. Elvis: The Searcher II, dude
The Sinatra Show – it was a very conservative move at the time. He was just trying to find his place after coming out of the army. He basically had to believe in himself and that’s what Elvis did. ibid. Springsteen
He had to make three movies a year. So these soundtrack albums became a big part of the contractual obligation to release music for RCA. ibid. Jackson
The movies were very harmful to his image. ibid. Petty
The Colonel was not taking him to the place he needed to be. ibid. Priscilla
Las Vegas: It worked great in the beginning – just got to be same old stuff. ibid. Ronnie Tutt, drummer
1971: 157 concerts; 1972: 165 concerts. ibid. captions
By this time he had started to turn to prescription drugs to keep himself going. He was on a relentless wheel of performance to travel, and you started to see the stress of that. ibid. Alan Light, writer
One of the biggest names in Britain showbizzness: knighted by the Queen and by the Pope. The marathon man who raised so much for charity that a hospital gave him his own set of keys. But it was all a smokescreen. Behind his playboy image fifty years of child abuse and hundreds of victims. Now for the first time we reveal clues that were there twenty-five years ago but were ignored. And the moment Savile’s mask slipped. Faking It s1e1: Jimmy Savile: A Faking It Special, DiscoveryPlus 2020
‘How were we not all terrified as children by this man who is creepy looking frankly?’ ibid. Kerry Daynes
‘The word prolific doesn’t do it justice. The earliest allegation: 1955; the most recent one was 2009 … a sexual predator who operated at will over decades.’ ibid. Gabrielle Shaw
‘I’m feared in every girl’s school in this country.’ ibid. Savile, Have I Got News for You
Throughout [the interview] it was a struggle between Andrew Neil determined to fine out more and Savile resisting exposure, but sometimes Savile couldn’t help himself. ibid.