“A Stone for Danny Fisher” is an early masterpiece by Harold Robbins,
who went on to become one of the most popular and most financially
successful writers of all time.
The early part of the book seems to be almost autobiographical, as
Harold Robbins himself grew up as a poor Jewish boy who first went to
work at age 15 to support his family and then held numerous low level
jobs until he found his true calling as a millionaire writer and movie
producer.
A Stone for Danny Fischer is now most famous for being made into a
movie starring Elvis Presley. The movie is entitled “King Carole” and
all critics agree that this is by far the greatest acting performance
by Elvis. Elvis has to play a complex and conflicted character, quite
unlike the typical Elvis movies where Elvis sings songs while a bevy
of girls swoon over him.
I almost wrote “beautiful girls”, but caught myself. Actually, the
girls in most Elvis movies, while numerous, are not beautiful. One
theory is that Elvis did not want to have beautiful women as his co-
stars because that would distract attention away from Elvis himself.
Also, the fans of Elvis were vast numbers of teenaged and pre-teenaged
girls who had dreams and hopes of landing Elvis themselves. Naturally,
they did not want the competition to be too stiff. They wanted to see
somebody less beautiful than they were, so they could hope to get
Elvis for themselves. The leading lady in King Creole is typical of
this because the part is played by Carolyn Jones, who is not beautiful
at all
It is difficult at first to see the similarities between the book “A
Stone for Danny Fischer” and the movie “King Creole”. The settings are
vastly different. In the book, Danny is a poor Jewish boy in Brooklyn
who wants to make it big as a boxer. The title “A Stone for Danny
Fisher” is based on a search for the gravestone to commemorate the
tragic life of this poor Jewish boy who died while trying to make it
to the top.
The movie instead is about a poor boy in New Orleans living in a slum
in the Latin Quarter. There is no mention of his ethnic background,
although it is suggested that he is Creole. He is discovered as a
singer. However, unlike in the book, they do not kill Danny Fisher in
the movie. How could they kill a billion dollar draw? In every Elvis
movie, there is a fight scene and this one has several. Elvis always
wins every fight. I wonder how they managed to take the risks that
there might be a scratch on his billion dollar face.
Elvis is trying to graduate from high school while working at a bar
both mornings and nights to support his family that consists of his
father and mother and sister. His father cannot hold a job but
nevertheless is crusty and complaining. The setting of New Orleans is
the legendary town of great music, great musicians and loose women.
New Orleans was originally a French colony and the term “Creole”
signifies the mixture of French, Black African and Native Americans
who fornicated to produce this remarkable half-breed of humanity. The
Elvis character soon finds his calling as a singer and the King of the
Creoles, hence the title.
The movie begins in a remarkable and unusual way, with common street
venders hawking their wares by singing songs about them. One sings
“Turtles”, another sings “Berries” and a third sings about “Gumbo”.
These are definitely opera quality singers who never made it big and
thus are selling things on the street instead.
Finally, there is a female street seller who is selling “Crawfish”.
This brings in Elvis who sings a duet about crawfish with the crawfish
selling lady on the street.
All this is to provide the background to the musical milieu that
existed in New Orleans.
Elvis is working as a busboy in a bar. He is supposed to graduate from
High School today, but first he must go to an early morning job
working cleaning up the bar from the night before. When he enters the
bar, two drunk customers are still there harassing a waitress who
works in the bar. They grab the waitress who turns out to be the
leading lady in the movie played by Carolyn Jones, but they agree to
let her go if Elvis, who is only a busboy, sings a song. So, Elvis
sings his high school alma mater, thus introducing Elvis as a singer.
Then he and the waitress escape into a cab which takes Elvis to his
high school where he is supposed to graduate that day. The waitress
insists on kissing him while he is getting out of the cab. When his
high school classmates see this, they rile him about getting kissed by
a girl, so he punches one of them out. This causes a teacher who sees
Elvis punching his classmate to fail him, meaning that he cannot
graduate from high school again.
Back working at the bar, the bar owner is local crime boss Maxie
Fields played by Walter Matthau and the waitress is his floozy and a
semi-prostitute. He gets jealous when he sees the waitress speaking in
a friendly way to Elvis and demands to know how she knows him. She
replies that there is nothing between them and that he is just a
singer. Maxie Fields does not believe this. He is jealous and suspects
an affair between his moll and Elvis, so he demands that Elvis get on
stage to sing to prove that he can really sing
You can easily figure out what happens next: Although the crime boss
has put Elvis on stage to humiliate him, Elvis turns out to be a great
sensation and now two different bars are vying to get Elvis to sing
there. Elvis goes to work at a rival bar. Before long, that bar owner
is sleeping with Elvis'es sister. It seems likely, or at least I
thought, that soon Elvis would get in a fight with the bar owner, a
man aged 40, for sleeping with his sister, who is less than 20.
However, this does not happen. Neither Elvis nor his father seem
concerned with a 40 year old man having sex with the sister of Elvis.
Soon, the bar owner proposes marriage to the sister and everybody is
happy.
Working as a singer gives Elvis the pretext to sing a lot of great
sings, but Elvis still needs money. Finally, the chronically
unemployed father of Elvis gets a job working late nights at a
pharmacy. Elvis meanwhile has become involved with a criminal gang led
by a man named “Shark”, played by actor Vic Morrow, who was later
killed in a freak accident when a helicopter landed on him during a
filming. Elvis helps the gang steal by singing songs to distract
attention while the gang steals from patrons in a store. A counter-
girl working in the store named Nellie sees this. She realizes that
Elvis is part of the gang and is helping them to steal but, instead of
notifying the police, she falls in love with Elvis and therefore keeps
quiet.
This sets the theme of the book and the movie. Crimes keep occurring
but nobody goes to the police. Everybody is corrupt.
The gang led by Shark decides to rob the owner of the pharmacy while
he is taking the money to make a late night deposit in a bank.
However, the owner of the pharmacy gives the money to the father of
Elvis and tells the father to wear the owner's coat, as it is raining.
So, the father is dressed like the owner as he is taking the money to
the bank. The gang robs the father thinking he is the owner and hits
him over the head nearly killing him. Elvis later realizes that his
own father was nearly killed by the gang but does not go to the
police. When the father recoveries from his injuries and gets out of
the hospital, he recognizes Shark and when he finds out that Shark
works for Maxie Fields he tells Fields that he will not report Shark
to the police provided that Fields does not interfere with the plans
for his teenaged daughter to marry the 40-year-old owner of the rival
bar.
So, basically, nobody in this movie has any morality at all.
I am not sure if many movie viewers recognize the irony in all of
this. It comes out better in the book. The movie ends in a ridiculous
way with Maxie Fields chasing Elvis and Carolyn Jones down a boat dock
trying to shoot them at long range with a snub-nosed revolver. Any
crime boss worth his salt would not try to shoot somebody with a
ridiculous weapon, but would hire somebody to do it. Anyway, he shoots
and kills Carolyn Jones, leaving Elvis free to date the virtuous
Nellie, but then Maxie Fields is killed by the same man that Elvis
punched out at the beginning of the movie whom Elvis had befriended
later.
This poor ending is a serious flaw in this movie. A better ending
would have made a much better movie
Sam Sloan
Shenzhen, China
December 2, 2011
> “A Stone for Danny Fisher” is an early masterpiece by Harold Robbins,
> who went on to become one of the most popular and most financially
> successful writers of all time.
> The early part of the book seems to be almost autobiographical, as
> Harold Robbins himself grew up as a poor Jewish boy who first went to
> work at age 15 to support his family and then held numerous low level
> jobs until he found his true calling as a millionaire writer and movie
> producer.
> A Stone for Danny Fischer is now most famous for being made into a
> movie starring Elvis Presley. The movie is entitled “King Carole” and
> all critics agree that this is by far the greatest acting performance
> by Elvis. Elvis has to play a complex and conflicted character, quite
> unlike the typical Elvis movies where Elvis sings songs while a bevy
> of girls swoon over him.
> I almost wrote “beautiful girls”, but caught myself. Actually, the
> girls in most Elvis movies, while numerous, are not beautiful. One
> theory is that Elvis did not want to have beautiful women as his co-
> stars because that would distract attention away from Elvis himself.
> Also, the fans of Elvis were vast numbers of teenaged and pre-teenaged
> girls who had dreams and hopes of landing Elvis themselves. Naturally,
> they did not want the competition to be too stiff. They wanted to see
> somebody less beautiful than they were, so they could hope to get
> Elvis for themselves. The leading lady in King Creole is typical of
> this because the part is played by Carolyn Jones, who is not beautiful
> at all
> It is difficult at first to see the similarities between the book “A
> Stone for Danny Fischer” and the movie “King Creole”. The settings are
> vastly different. In the book, Danny is a poor Jewish boy in Brooklyn
> who wants to make it big as a boxer. The title “A Stone for Danny
> Fisher” is based on a search for the gravestone to commemorate the
> tragic life of this poor Jewish boy who died while trying to make it
> to the top.
> The movie instead is about a poor boy in New Orleans living in a slum
> in the Latin Quarter. There is no mention of his ethnic background,
> although it is suggested that he is Creole. He is discovered as a
> singer. However, unlike in the book, they do not kill Danny Fisher in
> the movie. How could they kill a billion dollar draw? In every Elvis
> movie, there is a fight scene and this one has several. Elvis always
> wins every fight. I wonder how they managed to take the risks that
> there might be a scratch on his billion dollar face.
> Elvis is trying to graduate from high school while working at a bar
> both mornings and nights to support his family that consists of his
> father and mother and sister. His father cannot hold a job but
> nevertheless is crusty and complaining. The setting of New Orleans is
> the legendary town of great music, great musicians and loose women.
> New Orleans was originally a French colony and the term “Creole”
> signifies the mixture of French, Black African and Native Americans
> who fornicated to produce this remarkable half-breed of humanity. The
> Elvis character soon finds his calling as a singer and the King of the
> Creoles, hence the title.
> The movie begins in a remarkable and unusual way, with common street
> venders hawking their wares by singing songs about them. One sings
> “Turtles”, another sings “Berries” and a third sings about “Gumbo”.
> These are definitely opera quality singers who never made it big and
> thus are selling things on the street instead.
> Finally, there is a female street seller who is selling “Crawfish”.
> This brings in Elvis who sings a duet about crawfish with the crawfish
> selling lady on the street.
> All this is to provide the background to the musical milieu that
> existed in New Orleans.
> Elvis is working as a busboy in a bar. He is supposed to graduate from
> High School today, but first he must go to an early morning job
> working cleaning up the bar from the night before. When he enters the
> bar, two drunk customers are still there harassing a waitress who
> works in the bar. They grab the waitress who turns out to be the
> leading lady in the movie played by Carolyn Jones, but they agree to
> let her go if Elvis, who is only a busboy, sings a song. So, Elvis
> sings his high school alma mater, thus introducing Elvis as a singer.
> Then he and the waitress escape into a cab which takes Elvis to his
> high school where he is supposed to graduate that day. The waitress
> insists on kissing him while he is getting out of the cab. When his
> high school classmates see this, they rile him about getting kissed by
> a girl, so he punches one of them out. This causes a teacher who sees
> Elvis punching his classmate to fail him, meaning that he cannot
> graduate from high school again.
> Back working at the bar, the bar owner is local crime boss Maxie
> Fields played by Walter Matthau and the waitress is his floozy and a
> semi-prostitute. He gets jealous when he sees the waitress speaking in
> a friendly way to Elvis and demands to know how she knows him. She
> replies that there is nothing between them and that he is just a
> singer. Maxie Fields does not believe this. He is jealous and suspects
> an affair between his moll and Elvis, so he demands that Elvis get on
> stage to sing to prove that he can really sing
> You can easily figure out what happens next: Although the crime boss
> has put Elvis on stage to humiliate him, Elvis turns out to be a great
> sensation and now two different bars are vying to get Elvis to sing
> there. Elvis goes to work at a rival bar. Before long, that bar owner
> is sleeping with Elvis'es sister. It seems likely, or at least I
> thought, that soon Elvis would get in a fight with the bar owner, a
> man aged 40, for sleeping with his sister, who is less than 20.
> However, this does not happen. Neither Elvis nor his father seem
> concerned with a 40 year old man having sex with the sister of Elvis.
> Soon, the bar owner proposes marriage to the sister and everybody is
> happy.
> Working as a singer gives Elvis the pretext to sing a lot of great
> sings, but Elvis still needs money. Finally, the chronically
> unemployed father of Elvis gets a job working late nights at a
> pharmacy. Elvis meanwhile has become involved with a criminal gang led
> by a man named “Shark”, played by actor Vic Morrow, who was later
> killed in a freak accident when a helicopter landed on him during a
> filming. Elvis helps the gang steal by singing songs to distract
> attention while the gang steals from patrons in a store. A counter-
> girl working in the store named Nellie sees this. She realizes that
> Elvis is part of the gang and is helping them to steal but, instead of
> notifying the police, she falls in love with Elvis and therefore keeps
> quiet.
> This sets the theme of the book and the movie. Crimes keep occurring
> but nobody goes to the police. Everybody is corrupt.
> The gang led by Shark decides to rob the owner of the pharmacy while
> he is taking the money to make a late night deposit in a bank.
> However, the owner of the pharmacy gives the money to the father of
> Elvis and tells the father to wear the owner's coat, as it is raining.
> So, the father is dressed like the owner as he is taking the money to
> the bank. The gang robs the father thinking he is the owner and hits
> him over the head nearly killing him. Elvis later realizes that his
> own father was nearly killed by the gang but does not go to the
> police. When the father recoveries from his injuries and gets out of
> the hospital, he recognizes Shark and when he finds out that Shark
> works for Maxie Fields he tells Fields that he will not report Shark
> to the police provided that Fields does not interfere with the plans
> for his teenaged daughter to marry the 40-year-old owner of the rival
> bar.
> So, basically, nobody in this movie has any morality at all.
> I am not sure if many movie viewers recognize the irony in all of
> this. It comes out better in the book. The movie ends in a ridiculous
> way with Maxie Fields chasing Elvis and Carolyn Jones down a boat dock
> trying to shoot them at long range with a snub-nosed revolver. Any
> crime boss worth his salt would not try to shoot somebody with a
> ridiculous weapon, but would hire somebody to do it. Anyway, he shoots
> and kills Carolyn Jones, leaving Elvis free to date the virtuous
> Nellie, but then Maxie Fields is killed by the same man that Elvis
> punched out at the beginning of the movie whom Elvis had befriended
> later.
> This poor ending is a serious flaw in this movie. A better ending
> would have made a much better movie
> Sam Sloan
> Shenzhen, China
> December 2, 2011
None a/k/a Stan Booz keeps censoring my posts, I do not know why.
The book "A Stone for Danny Fischer" is clearly about the games of
chess and go, because Fischer played chess and stones are used in go,
so what is the problem?
On Dec 2, 5:38 am, samsloan <samhsl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> “A Stone for Danny Fisher” is an early masterpiece by Harold Robbins,
> who went on to become one of the most popular and most financially
> successful writers of all time.
> The early part of the book seems to be almost autobiographical, as
> Harold Robbins himself grew up as a poor Jewish boy who first went to
> work at age 15 to support his family and then held numerous low level
> jobs until he found his true calling as a millionaire writer and movie
> producer.
> A Stone for Danny Fischer is now most famous for being made into a
> movie starring Elvis Presley. The movie is entitled “King Carole” and
> all critics agree that this is by far the greatest acting performance
> by Elvis. Elvis has to play a complex and conflicted character, quite
> unlike the typical Elvis movies where Elvis sings songs while a bevy
> of girls swoon over him.
> I almost wrote “beautiful girls”, but caught myself. Actually, the
> girls in most Elvis movies, while numerous, are not beautiful. One
> theory is that Elvis did not want to have beautiful women as his co-
> stars because that would distract attention away from Elvis himself.
> Also, the fans of Elvis were vast numbers of teenaged and pre-teenaged
> girls who had dreams and hopes of landing Elvis themselves. Naturally,
> they did not want the competition to be too stiff. They wanted to see
> somebody less beautiful than they were, so they could hope to get
> Elvis for themselves. The leading lady in King Creole is typical of
> this because the part is played by Carolyn Jones, who is not beautiful
> at all
> It is difficult at first to see the similarities between the book “A
> Stone for Danny Fischer” and the movie “King Creole”. The settings are
> vastly different. In the book, Danny is a poor Jewish boy in Brooklyn
> who wants to make it big as a boxer. The title “A Stone for Danny
> Fisher” is based on a search for the gravestone to commemorate the
> tragic life of this poor Jewish boy who died while trying to make it
> to the top.
> The movie instead is about a poor boy in New Orleans living in a slum
> in the Latin Quarter. There is no mention of his ethnic background,
> although it is suggested that he is Creole. He is discovered as a
> singer. However, unlike in the book, they do not kill Danny Fisher in
> the movie. How could they kill a billion dollar draw? In every Elvis
> movie, there is a fight scene and this one has several. Elvis always
> wins every fight. I wonder how they managed to take the risks that
> there might be a scratch on his billion dollar face.
> Elvis is trying to graduate from high school while working at a bar
> both mornings and nights to support his family that consists of his
> father and mother and sister. His father cannot hold a job but
> nevertheless is crusty and complaining. The setting of New Orleans is
> the legendary town of great music, great musicians and loose women.
> New Orleans was originally a French colony and the term “Creole”
> signifies the mixture of French, Black African and Native Americans
> who fornicated to produce this remarkable half-breed of humanity. The
> Elvis character soon finds his calling as a singer and the King of the
> Creoles, hence the title.
> The movie begins in a remarkable and unusual way, with common street
> venders hawking their wares by singing songs about them. One sings
> “Turtles”, another sings “Berries” and a third sings about “Gumbo”.
> These are definitely opera quality singers who never made it big and
> thus are selling things on the street instead.
> Finally, there is a female street seller who is selling “Crawfish”.
> This brings in Elvis who sings a duet about crawfish with the crawfish
> selling lady on the street.
> All this is to provide the background to the musical milieu that
> existed in New Orleans.
> Elvis is working as a busboy in a bar. He is supposed to graduate from
> High School today, but first he must go to an early morning job
> working cleaning up the bar from the night before. When he enters the
> bar, two drunk customers are still there harassing a waitress who
> works in the bar. They grab the waitress who turns out to be the
> leading lady in the movie played by Carolyn Jones, but they agree to
> let her go if Elvis, who is only a busboy, sings a song. So, Elvis
> sings his high school alma mater, thus introducing Elvis as a singer.
> Then he and the waitress escape into a cab which takes Elvis to his
> high school where he is supposed to graduate that day. The waitress
> insists on kissing him while he is getting out of the cab. When his
> high school classmates see this, they rile him about getting kissed by
> a girl, so he punches one of them out. This causes a teacher who sees
> Elvis punching his classmate to fail him, meaning that he cannot
> graduate from high school again.
> Back working at the bar, the bar owner is local crime boss Maxie
> Fields played by Walter Matthau and the waitress is his floozy and a
> semi-prostitute. He gets jealous when he sees the waitress speaking in
> a friendly way to Elvis and demands to know how she knows him. She
> replies that there is nothing between them and that he is just a
> singer. Maxie Fields does not believe this. He is jealous and suspects
> an affair between his moll and Elvis, so he demands that Elvis get on
> stage to sing to prove that he can really sing
> You can easily figure out what happens next: Although the crime boss
> has put Elvis on stage to humiliate him, Elvis turns out to be a great
> sensation and now two different bars are vying to get Elvis to sing
> there. Elvis goes to work at a rival bar. Before long, that bar owner
> is sleeping with Elvis'es sister. It seems likely, or at least I
> thought, that soon Elvis would get in a fight with the bar owner, a
> man aged 40, for sleeping with his sister, who is less than 20.
> However, this does not happen. Neither Elvis nor his father seem
> concerned with a 40 year old man having sex with the sister of Elvis.
> Soon, the bar owner proposes marriage to the sister and everybody is
> happy.
> Working as a singer gives Elvis the pretext to sing a lot of great
> sings, but Elvis still needs money. Finally, the chronically
> unemployed father of Elvis gets a job working late nights at a
> pharmacy. Elvis meanwhile has become involved with a criminal gang led
> by a man named “Shark”, played by actor Vic Morrow, who was later
> killed in a freak accident when a helicopter landed on him during a
> filming. Elvis helps the gang steal by singing songs to distract
> attention while the gang steals from patrons in a store. A counter-
> girl working in the store named Nellie sees this. She realizes that
> Elvis is part of the gang and is helping them to steal but, instead of
> notifying the police, she falls in love with Elvis and therefore keeps
> quiet.
> This sets the theme of the book and the movie. Crimes keep occurring
> but nobody goes to the police. Everybody is corrupt.
> The gang led by Shark decides to rob the owner of the pharmacy while
> he is taking the money to make a late night deposit in a bank.
> However, the owner of the pharmacy gives the money to the father of
> Elvis and tells the father to wear the owner's coat, as it is raining.
> So, the father is dressed like the owner as he is taking the money to
> the bank. The gang robs the father thinking he is the owner and hits
> him over the head nearly killing him. Elvis later realizes that his
> own father was nearly killed by the gang but does not go to the
> police. When the father recoveries from his injuries and gets out of
> the hospital, he recognizes Shark and when he finds out that Shark
> works for Maxie Fields he tells Fields that he will not report Shark
> to the police provided that Fields does not interfere with the plans
> for his teenaged daughter to marry the 40-year-old owner of the rival
> bar.
> So, basically, nobody in this movie has any morality at all.
> I am not sure if many movie viewers recognize the irony in all of
> this. It comes out better in the book. The movie ends in a ridiculous
> way with Maxie Fields chasing Elvis and Carolyn Jones down a boat dock
> trying to shoot them at long range with a snub-nosed revolver. Any
> crime boss worth his salt would not try to shoot somebody with a
> ridiculous weapon, but would hire somebody to do it. Anyway, he shoots
> and kills Carolyn Jones, leaving Elvis free to date the virtuous
> Nellie, but then Maxie Fields is killed by the same man that Elvis
> punched out at the beginning of the movie whom Elvis had befriended
> later.
> This poor ending is a serious flaw in this movie. A better ending
> would have made a much better movie
> Sam Sloan
> Shenzhen, China
> December 2, 2011
> > “A Stone for Danny Fisher” is an early masterpiece by Harold Robbins,
> > who went on to become one of the most popular and most financially
> > successful writers of all time.
> > The early part of the book seems to be almost autobiographical, as
> > Harold Robbins himself grew up as a poor Jewish boy who first went to
> > work at age 15 to support his family and then held numerous low level
> > jobs until he found his true calling as a millionaire writer and movie
> > producer.
> > A Stone for Danny Fischer is now most famous for being made into a
> > movie starring Elvis Presley. The movie is entitled “King Carole” and
> > all critics agree that this is by far the greatest acting performance
> > by Elvis. Elvis has to play a complex and conflicted character, quite
> > unlike the typical Elvis movies where Elvis sings songs while a bevy
> > of girls swoon over him.
> > I almost wrote “beautiful girls”, but caught myself. Actually, the
> > girls in most Elvis movies, while numerous, are not beautiful. One
> > theory is that Elvis did not want to have beautiful women as his co-
> > stars because that would distract attention away from Elvis himself.
> > Also, the fans of Elvis were vast numbers of teenaged and pre-teenaged
> > girls who had dreams and hopes of landing Elvis themselves. Naturally,
> > they did not want the competition to be too stiff. They wanted to see
> > somebody less beautiful than they were, so they could hope to get
> > Elvis for themselves. The leading lady in King Creole is typical of
> > this because the part is played by Carolyn Jones, who is not beautiful
> > at all
> > It is difficult at first to see the similarities between the book “A
> > Stone for Danny Fischer” and the movie “King Creole”. The settings are
> > vastly different. In the book, Danny is a poor Jewish boy in Brooklyn
> > who wants to make it big as a boxer. The title “A Stone for Danny
> > Fisher” is based on a search for the gravestone to commemorate the
> > tragic life of this poor Jewish boy who died while trying to make it
> > to the top.
> > The movie instead is about a poor boy in New Orleans living in a slum
> > in the Latin Quarter. There is no mention of his ethnic background,
> > although it is suggested that he is Creole. He is discovered as a
> > singer. However, unlike in the book, they do not kill Danny Fisher in
> > the movie. How could they kill a billion dollar draw? In every Elvis
> > movie, there is a fight scene and this one has several. Elvis always
> > wins every fight. I wonder how they managed to take the risks that
> > there might be a scratch on his billion dollar face.
> > Elvis is trying to graduate from high school while working at a bar
> > both mornings and nights to support his family that consists of his
> > father and mother and sister. His father cannot hold a job but
> > nevertheless is crusty and complaining. The setting of New Orleans is
> > the legendary town of great music, great musicians and loose women.
> > New Orleans was originally a French colony and the term “Creole”
> > signifies the mixture of French, Black African and Native Americans
> > who fornicated to produce this remarkable half-breed of humanity. The
> > Elvis character soon finds his calling as a singer and the King of the
> > Creoles, hence the title.
> > The movie begins in a remarkable and unusual way, with common street
> > venders hawking their wares by singing songs about them. One sings
> > “Turtles”, another sings “Berries” and a third sings about “Gumbo”.
> > These are definitely opera quality singers who never made it big and
> > thus are selling things on the street instead.
> > Finally, there is a female street seller who is selling “Crawfish”.
> > This brings in Elvis who sings a duet about crawfish with the crawfish
> > selling lady on the street.
> > All this is to provide the background to the musical milieu that
> > existed in New Orleans.
> > Elvis is working as a busboy in a bar. He is supposed to graduate from
> > High School today, but first he must go to an early morning job
> > working cleaning up the bar from the night before. When he enters the
> > bar, two drunk customers are still there harassing a waitress who
> > works in the bar. They grab the waitress who turns out to be the
> > leading lady in the movie played by Carolyn Jones, but they agree to
> > let her go if Elvis, who is only a busboy, sings a song. So, Elvis
> > sings his high school alma mater, thus introducing Elvis as a singer.
> > Then he and the waitress escape into a cab which takes Elvis to his
> > high school where he is supposed to graduate that day. The waitress
> > insists on kissing him while he is getting out of the cab. When his
> > high school classmates see this, they rile him about getting kissed by
> > a girl, so he punches one of them out. This causes a teacher who sees
> > Elvis punching his classmate to fail him, meaning that he cannot
> > graduate from high school again.
> > Back working at the bar, the bar owner is local crime boss Maxie
> > Fields played by Walter Matthau and the waitress is his floozy and a
> > semi-prostitute. He gets jealous when he sees the waitress speaking in
> > a friendly way to Elvis and demands to know how she knows him. She
> > replies that there is nothing between them and that he is just a
> > singer. Maxie Fields does not believe this. He is jealous and suspects
> > an affair between his moll and Elvis, so he demands that Elvis get on
> > stage to sing to prove that he can really sing
> > You can easily figure out what happens next: Although the crime boss
> > has put Elvis on stage to humiliate him, Elvis turns out to be a great
> > sensation and now two different bars are vying to get Elvis to sing
> > there. Elvis goes to work at a rival bar. Before long, that bar owner
> > is sleeping with Elvis'es sister. It seems likely, or at least I
> > thought, that soon Elvis would get in a fight with the bar owner, a
> > man aged 40, for sleeping with his sister, who is less than 20.
> > However, this does not happen. Neither Elvis nor his father seem
> > concerned with a 40 year old man having sex with the sister of Elvis.
> > Soon, the bar owner proposes marriage to the sister and everybody is
> > happy.
> > Working as a singer gives Elvis the pretext to sing a lot of great
> > sings, but Elvis still needs money. Finally, the chronically
> > unemployed father of Elvis gets a job working late nights at a
> > pharmacy. Elvis meanwhile has become involved with a criminal gang led
> > by a man named “Shark”, played by actor Vic Morrow, who was later
> > killed in a freak accident when a helicopter landed on him during a
> > filming. Elvis helps the gang steal by singing songs to distract
> > attention while the gang steals from patrons in a store. A counter-
> > girl working in the store named Nellie sees this. She realizes that
> > Elvis is part of the gang and is helping them to steal but, instead of
> > notifying the police, she falls in love with Elvis and therefore keeps
> > quiet.
> > This sets the theme of the book and the movie. Crimes keep occurring
> > but nobody goes to the police. Everybody is corrupt.
> > The gang led by Shark decides to rob the owner of the pharmacy while
> > he is taking the money to make a late night deposit in a bank.
> > However, the owner of the pharmacy gives the money to the father of
> > Elvis and tells the father to wear the owner's coat, as it is raining.
> > So, the father is dressed like the owner as he is taking the money to
> > the bank. The gang robs the father thinking he is the owner and hits
> > him over the head nearly killing him. Elvis later realizes that his
> > own father was nearly killed by the gang but does not go to the
> > police. When the father recoveries from his injuries and gets out of
> > the hospital, he recognizes Shark and when he finds out that Shark
> > works for Maxie Fields he tells Fields that he will not report Shark
> > to the police provided that Fields does not interfere with the plans
> > for his teenaged daughter to marry the 40-year-old owner of the rival
> > bar.
> > So, basically, nobody in this movie has any morality at all.
> > I am not sure if many movie viewers recognize the irony in all of
> > this. It comes out better in the book. The movie ends in a ridiculous
> > way with Maxie Fields chasing Elvis and Carolyn Jones down a boat dock
> > trying to shoot them at long range with a snub-nosed revolver. Any
> > crime boss worth his salt would not try to shoot somebody with a
> > ridiculous weapon, but would hire somebody to do it. Anyway, he shoots
> > and kills Carolyn Jones, leaving Elvis free to date the virtuous
> > Nellie, but then Maxie Fields is killed by the same man that Elvis
> > punched out at the beginning of the movie whom Elvis had befriended
> > later.
> > This poor ending is a serious flaw in this movie. A better ending
> > would have made a much better movie
> > Sam Sloan
> > Shenzhen, China
> > December 2, 2011
> None a/k/a Stan Booz keeps censoring my posts, I do not know why.
> The book "A Stone for Danny Fischer" is clearly about the games of
> chess and go, because Fischer played chess and stones are used in go,
> so what is the problem?
> On Dec 2, 5:38 am, samsloan <samhsl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > “A Stone for Danny Fisher” is an early masterpiece by Harold Robbins,
> > who went on to become one of the most popular and most financially
> > successful writers of all time.
> > The early part of the book seems to be almost autobiographical, as
> > Harold Robbins himself grew up as a poor Jewish boy who first went to
> > work at age 15 to support his family and then held numerous low level
> > jobs until he found his true calling as a millionaire writer and movie
> > producer.
> > A Stone for Danny Fischer is now most famous for being made into a
> > movie starring Elvis Presley. The movie is entitled “King Carole” and
> > all critics agree that this is by far the greatest acting performance
> > by Elvis. Elvis has to play a complex and conflicted character, quite
> > unlike the typical Elvis movies where Elvis sings songs while a bevy
> > of girls swoon over him.
> > I almost wrote “beautiful girls”, but caught myself. Actually, the
> > girls in most Elvis movies, while numerous, are not beautiful. One
> > theory is that Elvis did not want to have beautiful women as his co-
> > stars because that would distract attention away from Elvis himself.
> > Also, the fans of Elvis were vast numbers of teenaged and pre-teenaged
> > girls who had dreams and hopes of landing Elvis themselves. Naturally,
> > they did not want the competition to be too stiff. They wanted to see
> > somebody less beautiful than they were, so they could hope to get
> > Elvis for themselves. The leading lady in King Creole is typical of
> > this because the part is played by Carolyn Jones, who is not beautiful
> > at all
> > It is difficult at first to see the similarities between the book “A
> > Stone for Danny Fischer” and the movie “King Creole”. The settings are
> > vastly different. In the book, Danny is a poor Jewish boy in Brooklyn
> > who wants to make it big as a boxer. The title “A Stone for Danny
> > Fisher” is based on a search for the gravestone to commemorate the
> > tragic life of this poor Jewish boy who died while trying to make it
> > to the top.
> > The movie instead is about a poor boy in New Orleans living in a slum
> > in the Latin Quarter. There is no mention of his ethnic background,
> > although it is suggested that he is Creole. He is discovered as a
> > singer. However, unlike in the book, they do not kill Danny Fisher in
> > the movie. How could they kill a billion dollar draw? In every Elvis
> > movie, there is a fight scene and this one has several. Elvis always
> > wins every fight. I wonder how they managed to take the risks that
> > there might be a scratch on his billion dollar face.
> > Elvis is trying to graduate from high school while working at a bar
> > both mornings and nights to support his family that consists of his
> > father and mother and sister. His father cannot hold a job but
> > nevertheless is crusty and complaining. The setting of New Orleans is
> > the legendary town of great music, great musicians and loose women.
> > New Orleans was originally a French colony and the term “Creole”
> > signifies the mixture of French, Black African and Native Americans
> > who fornicated to produce this remarkable half-breed of humanity. The
> > Elvis character soon finds his calling as a singer and the King of the
> > Creoles, hence the title.
> > The movie begins in a remarkable and unusual way, with common street
> > venders hawking their wares by singing songs about them. One sings
> > “Turtles”, another sings “Berries” and a third sings about “Gumbo”.
> > These are definitely opera quality singers who never made it big and
> > thus are selling things on the street instead.
> > Finally, there is a female street seller who is selling “Crawfish”.
> > This brings in Elvis who sings a duet about crawfish with the crawfish
> > selling lady on the street.
> > All this is to provide the background to the musical milieu that
> > existed in New Orleans.
> > Elvis is working as a busboy in a bar. He is supposed to graduate from
> > High School today, but first he must go to an early morning job
> > working cleaning up the bar from the night before. When he enters the
> > bar, two drunk customers are still there harassing a waitress who
> > works in the bar. They grab the waitress who turns out to be the
> > leading lady in the movie played by Carolyn Jones, but they agree to
> > let her go if Elvis, who is only a busboy, sings a song. So, Elvis
> > sings his high school alma mater, thus introducing Elvis as a singer.
> > Then he and the waitress escape into a cab which takes Elvis to his
> > high school where he is supposed to graduate that day. The waitress
> > insists on kissing him while he is getting out of the cab. When his
> > high school classmates see this, they rile him about getting kissed by
> > a girl, so he punches one of them out. This causes a teacher who sees
> > Elvis punching his classmate to fail him, meaning that he cannot
> > graduate from high school again.
> > Back working at the bar, the bar owner is local crime boss Maxie
> > Fields played by Walter Matthau and the waitress is his floozy and a
> > semi-prostitute. He gets jealous when he sees the waitress speaking in
> > a friendly way to Elvis and demands to know how she knows him. She
> > replies that there is nothing between them and that he is just a
> > singer. Maxie Fields does not believe this. He is jealous and suspects
> > an affair between his moll and Elvis, so he demands that Elvis get on
> > stage to sing to prove that he can really sing
> > You can easily figure out what happens next: Although the crime boss
> > has put Elvis on stage to humiliate him, Elvis turns out to be a great
> > sensation and now two different bars are vying to get Elvis to sing
> > there. Elvis goes to work at a rival bar. Before long, that bar owner
> > is sleeping with Elvis'es sister. It seems likely, or at least I
> > thought, that soon Elvis would get in a fight with the bar owner, a
> > man aged 40, for sleeping with his sister, who is less than 20.
> > However, this does not happen. Neither Elvis nor his father seem
> > concerned with a 40 year old man having sex with the sister of Elvis.
> > Soon, the bar owner proposes marriage to the sister and everybody is
> > happy.
> > Working as a singer gives Elvis the pretext to sing a lot of great
> > sings, but Elvis still needs money. Finally, the chronically
> > unemployed father of Elvis gets a job working late nights at a
> > pharmacy. Elvis meanwhile has become involved with a criminal gang led
> > by a man named “Shark”, played by actor Vic Morrow, who was later
> > killed in a freak accident when a helicopter landed on him during a
> > filming. Elvis helps the gang steal by singing songs to distract
> > attention while the gang steals from patrons in a store. A counter-
> > girl working in the store named Nellie sees this. She realizes that
> > Elvis is part of the gang and is helping them to steal but, instead of
> > notifying the police, she falls in love with Elvis and therefore keeps
> > quiet.
> > This sets the theme of the book and the movie. Crimes keep occurring
> > but nobody goes to the police. Everybody is corrupt.
> > The gang led by Shark decides to rob the owner of the pharmacy while
> > he is taking the money to make a late night deposit in a bank.
> > However, the owner of the pharmacy gives the money to the father of
> > Elvis and tells the father to wear the owner's coat, as it is raining.
> > So, the father is dressed like the owner as he is taking the money to
> > the bank. The gang robs the father thinking he is the owner and hits
> > him over the head nearly killing him. Elvis later realizes that his
> > own father was nearly killed by the gang but does not go to the
> > police. When the father recoveries from his injuries and gets out of
> > the hospital, he recognizes Shark and when he finds out that Shark
> > works for Maxie Fields he tells Fields that he will not report Shark
> > to the police provided that Fields does not interfere with the plans
> > for his teenaged daughter to marry the 40-year-old owner of the rival
> > bar.
> > So, basically, nobody in this movie has any morality at all.
> > I am not sure if many movie viewers recognize the irony in all of
> > this. It comes out better in the book. The movie ends in a ridiculous
> > way with Maxie Fields chasing Elvis and Carolyn Jones down a boat dock
> > trying to shoot them at long range with a snub-nosed revolver. Any
> > crime boss worth his salt would not try to shoot somebody with a
> > ridiculous weapon, but would hire somebody to do it. Anyway, he shoots
> > and kills Carolyn Jones, leaving Elvis free to date the virtuous
> > Nellie, but then Maxie Fields is killed by the same man that Elvis
> > punched out at the beginning of the movie whom Elvis had befriended
> > later.
> > This poor ending is a serious flaw in this movie. A better ending
> > would have made a much better movie
> > Sam Sloan
> >
> > > “A Stone for Danny Fisher” is an early masterpiece by Harold Robbins,
> > > who went on to become one of the most popular and most financially
> > > successful writers of all time.
> > > The early part of the book seems to be almost autobiographical, as
> > > Harold Robbins himself grew up as a poor Jewish boy who first went to
> > > work at age 15 to support his family and then held numerous low level
> > > jobs until he found his true calling as a millionaire writer and movie
> > > producer.
> > > A Stone for Danny Fischer is now most famous for being made into a
> > > movie starring Elvis Presley. The movie is entitled “King Carole” and
> > > all critics agree that this is by far the greatest acting performance
> > > by Elvis. Elvis has to play a complex and conflicted character, quite
> > > unlike the typical Elvis movies where Elvis sings songs while a bevy
> > > of girls swoon over him.
> > > I almost wrote “beautiful girls”, but caught myself. Actually, the
> > > girls in most Elvis movies, while numerous, are not beautiful. One
> > > theory is that Elvis did not want to have beautiful women as his co-
> > > stars because that would distract attention away from Elvis himself.
> > > Also, the fans of Elvis were vast numbers of teenaged and pre-teenaged
> > > girls who had dreams and hopes of landing Elvis themselves. Naturally,
> > > they did not want the competition to be too stiff. They wanted to see
> > > somebody less beautiful than they were, so they could hope to get
> > > Elvis for themselves. The leading lady in King Creole is typical of
> > > this because the part is played by Carolyn Jones, who is not beautiful
> > > at all
> > > It is difficult at first to see the similarities between the book “A
> > > Stone for Danny Fischer” and the movie “King Creole”. The settings are
> > > vastly different. In the book, Danny is a poor Jewish boy in Brooklyn
> > > who wants to make it big as a boxer. The title “A Stone for Danny
> > > Fisher” is based on a search for the gravestone to commemorate the
> > > tragic life of this poor Jewish boy who died while trying to make it
> > > to the top.
> > > The movie instead is about a poor boy in New Orleans living in a slum
> > > in the Latin Quarter. There is no mention of his ethnic background,
> > > although it is suggested that he is Creole. He is discovered as a
> > > singer. However, unlike in the book, they do not kill Danny Fisher in
> > > the movie. How could they kill a billion dollar draw? In every Elvis
> > > movie, there is a fight scene and this one has several. Elvis always
> > > wins every fight. I wonder how they managed to take the risks that
> > > there might be a scratch on his billion dollar face.
> > > Elvis is trying to graduate from high school while working at a bar
> > > both mornings and nights to support his family that consists of his
> > > father and mother and sister. His father cannot hold a job but
> > > nevertheless is crusty and complaining. The setting of New Orleans is
> > > the legendary town of great music, great musicians and loose women.
> > > New Orleans was originally a French colony and the term “Creole”
> > > signifies the mixture of French, Black African and Native Americans
> > > who fornicated to produce this remarkable half-breed of humanity. The
> > > Elvis character soon finds his calling as a singer and the King of the
> > > Creoles, hence the title.
> > > The movie begins in a remarkable and unusual way, with common street
> > > venders hawking their wares by singing songs about them. One sings
> > > “Turtles”, another sings “Berries” and a third sings about “Gumbo”.
> > > These are definitely opera quality singers who never made it big and
> > > thus are selling things on the street instead.
> > > Finally, there is a female street seller who is selling “Crawfish”.
> > > This brings in Elvis who sings a duet about crawfish with the crawfish
> > > selling lady on the street.
> > > All this is to provide the background to the musical milieu that
> > > existed in New Orleans.
> > > Elvis is working as a busboy in a bar. He is supposed to graduate from
> > > High School today, but first he must go to an early morning job
> > > working cleaning up the bar from the night before. When he enters the
> > > bar, two drunk customers are still there harassing a waitress who
> > > works in the bar. They grab the waitress who turns out to be the
> > > leading lady in the movie played by Carolyn Jones, but they agree to
> > > let her go if Elvis, who is only a busboy, sings a song. So, Elvis
> > > sings his high school alma mater, thus introducing Elvis as a singer.
> > > Then he and the waitress escape into a cab which takes Elvis to his
> > > high school where he is supposed to graduate that day. The waitress
> > > insists on kissing him while he is getting out of the cab. When his
> > > high school classmates see this, they rile him about getting kissed by
> > > a girl, so he punches one of them out. This causes a teacher who sees
> > > Elvis punching his classmate to fail him, meaning that he cannot
> > > graduate from high school again.
> > > Back working at the bar, the bar owner is local crime boss Maxie
> > > Fields played by Walter Matthau and the waitress is his floozy and a
> > > semi-prostitute. He gets jealous when he sees the waitress speaking in
> > > a friendly way to Elvis and demands to know how she knows him. She
> > > replies that there is nothing between them and that he is just a
> > > singer. Maxie Fields does not believe this. He is jealous and suspects
> > > an affair between his moll and Elvis, so he demands that Elvis get on
> > > stage to sing to prove that he can really sing
> > > You can easily figure out what happens next: Although the crime boss
> > > has put Elvis on stage to humiliate him, Elvis turns out to be a great
> > > sensation and now two different bars are vying to get Elvis to sing
> > > there. Elvis goes to work at a rival bar. Before long, that bar owner
> > > is sleeping with Elvis'es sister. It seems likely, or at least I
> > > thought, that soon Elvis would get in a fight with the bar owner, a
> > > man aged 40, for sleeping with his sister, who is less than 20.
> > > However, this does not happen. Neither Elvis nor his father seem
> > > concerned with a 40 year old man having sex with the sister of Elvis.
> > > Soon, the bar owner proposes marriage to the sister and everybody is
> > > happy.
> > > Working as a singer gives Elvis the pretext to sing a lot of great
> > > sings, but Elvis still needs money. Finally, the chronically
> > > unemployed father of Elvis gets a job working late nights at a
> > > pharmacy. Elvis meanwhile has become involved with a criminal gang led
> > > by a man named “Shark”, played by actor Vic Morrow, who was later
> > > killed in a freak accident when a helicopter landed on him during a
> > > filming. Elvis helps the gang steal by singing songs to distract
> > > attention while the gang steals from patrons in a store. A counter-
> > > girl working in the store named Nellie sees this. She realizes that
> > > Elvis is part of the gang and is helping them to steal but, instead of
> > > notifying the police, she falls in love with Elvis and therefore keeps
> > > quiet.
> > > This sets the theme of the book and the movie. Crimes keep occurring
> > > but nobody goes to the police. Everybody is corrupt.
> > > The gang led by Shark decides to rob the owner of the pharmacy while
> > > he is taking the money to make a late night deposit in a bank.
> > > However, the owner of the pharmacy gives the money to the father of
> > > Elvis and tells the father to wear the owner's coat, as it is raining.
> > > So, the father is dressed like the owner as he is taking the money to
> > > the bank. The gang robs the father thinking he is the owner and hits
> > > him over the head nearly killing him. Elvis later realizes that his
> > > own father was nearly killed by the gang but does not go to the
> > > police. When the father recoveries from his injuries and gets out of
> > > the hospital, he recognizes Shark and when he finds out that Shark
> > > works for Maxie Fields he tells Fields that he will not report Shark
> > > to the police provided that Fields does not interfere with the plans
> > > for his teenaged daughter to marry the 40-year-old owner of the rival
> > > bar.
> > > So, basically, nobody in this movie has any morality at all.
> > > I am not sure if many movie viewers recognize the irony in all of
> > > this. It comes out better in the book. The movie ends in a ridiculous
> > > way with Maxie Fields chasing Elvis and Carolyn Jones down a boat dock
> > > trying to shoot them at long range with a snub-nosed revolver. Any
> > > crime boss worth his salt would not try to shoot somebody with a
> > > ridiculous weapon, but would hire somebody to do it. Anyway, he shoots
> > > and kills Carolyn Jones, leaving Elvis free to date the virtuous
> > > Nellie, but then Maxie Fields is killed by the same man that Elvis
> > > punched out at the beginning of the movie whom Elvis had befriended
> > > later.
> > > This poor ending is a serious flaw in this movie. A better ending
> > > would have made a much better movie
> > > Sam Sloan
> > > Shenzhen, China
> > >
> “A Stone for Danny Fisher” is an early masterpiece by Harold Robbins,
> who went on to become one of the most popular and most financially
> successful writers of all time.
> The early part of the book seems to be almost autobiographical, as
> Harold Robbins himself grew up as a poor Jewish boy who first went to
> work at age 15 to support his family and then held numerous low level
> jobs until he found his true calling as a millionaire writer and movie
> producer.
> A Stone for Danny Fischer is now most famous for being made into a
> movie starring Elvis Presley. The movie is entitled “King Carole” and
> all critics agree that this is by far the greatest acting performance
> by Elvis. Elvis has to play a complex and conflicted character, quite
> unlike the typical Elvis movies where Elvis sings songs while a bevy
> of girls swoon over him.
> I almost wrote “beautiful girls”, but caught myself. Actually, the
> girls in most Elvis movies, while numerous, are not beautiful. One
> theory is that Elvis did not want to have beautiful women as his co-
> stars because that would distract attention away from Elvis himself.
> Also, the fans of Elvis were vast numbers of teenaged and pre-teenaged
> girls who had dreams and hopes of landing Elvis themselves. Naturally,
> they did not want the competition to be too stiff. They wanted to see
> somebody less beautiful than they were, so they could hope to get
> Elvis for themselves. The leading lady in King Creole is typical of
> this because the part is played by Carolyn Jones, who is not beautiful
> at all
> It is difficult at first to see the similarities between the book “A
> Stone for Danny Fischer” and the movie “King Creole”. The settings are
> vastly different. In the book, Danny is a poor Jewish boy in Brooklyn
> who wants to make it big as a boxer. The title “A Stone for Danny
> Fisher” is based on a search for the gravestone to commemorate the
> tragic life of this poor Jewish boy who died while trying to make it
> to the top.
> The movie instead is about a poor boy in New Orleans living in a slum
> in the Latin Quarter. There is no mention of his ethnic background,
> although it is suggested that he is Creole. He is discovered as a
> singer. However, unlike in the book, they do not kill Danny Fisher in
> the movie. How could they kill a billion dollar draw? In every Elvis
> movie, there is a fight scene and this one has several. Elvis always
> wins every fight. I wonder how they managed to take the risks that
> there might be a scratch on his billion dollar face.
> Elvis is trying to graduate from high school while working at a bar
> both mornings and nights to support his family that consists of his
> father and mother and sister. His father cannot hold a job but
> nevertheless is crusty and complaining. The setting of New Orleans is
> the legendary town of great music, great musicians and loose women.
> New Orleans was originally a French colony and the term “Creole”
> signifies the mixture of French, Black African and Native Americans
> who fornicated to produce this remarkable half-breed of humanity. The
> Elvis character soon finds his calling as a singer and the King of the
> Creoles, hence the title.
> The movie begins in a remarkable and unusual way, with common street
> venders hawking their wares by singing songs about them. One sings
> “Turtles”, another sings “Berries” and a third sings about “Gumbo”.
> These are definitely opera quality singers who never made it big and
> thus are selling things on the street instead.
> Finally, there is a female street seller who is selling “Crawfish”.
> This brings in Elvis who sings a duet about crawfish with the crawfish
> selling lady on the street.
> All this is to provide the background to the musical milieu that
> existed in New Orleans.
> Elvis is working as a busboy in a bar. He is supposed to graduate from
> High School today, but first he must go to an early morning job
> working cleaning up the bar from the night before. When he enters the
> bar, two drunk customers are still there harassing a waitress who
> works in the bar. They grab the waitress who turns out to be the
> leading lady in the movie played by Carolyn Jones, but they agree to
> let her go if Elvis, who is only a busboy, sings a song. So, Elvis
> sings his high school alma mater, thus introducing Elvis as a singer.
> Then he and the waitress escape into a cab which takes Elvis to his
> high school where he is supposed to graduate that day. The waitress
> insists on kissing him while he is getting out of the cab. When his
> high school classmates see this, they rile him about getting kissed by
> a girl, so he punches one of them out. This causes a teacher who sees
> Elvis punching his classmate to fail him, meaning that he cannot
> graduate from high school again.
> Back working at the bar, the bar owner is local crime boss Maxie
> Fields played by Walter Matthau and the waitress is his floozy and a
> semi-prostitute. He gets jealous when he sees the waitress speaking in
> a friendly way to Elvis and demands to know how she knows him. She
> replies that there is nothing between them and that he is just a
> singer. Maxie Fields does not believe this. He is jealous and suspects
> an affair between his moll and Elvis, so he demands that Elvis get on
> stage to sing to prove that he can really sing
> You can easily figure out what happens next: Although the crime boss
> has put Elvis on stage to humiliate him, Elvis turns out to be a great
> sensation and now two different bars are vying to get Elvis to sing
> there. Elvis goes to work at a rival bar. Before long, that bar owner
> is sleeping with Elvis'es sister. It seems likely, or at least I
> thought, that soon Elvis would get in a fight with the bar owner, a
> man aged 40, for sleeping with his sister, who is less than 20.
> However, this does not happen. Neither Elvis nor his father seem
> concerned with a 40 year old man having sex with the sister of Elvis.
> Soon, the bar owner proposes marriage to the sister and everybody is
> happy.
> Working as a singer gives Elvis the pretext to sing a lot of great
> sings, but Elvis still needs money. Finally, the chronically
> unemployed father of Elvis gets a job working late nights at a
> pharmacy. Elvis meanwhile has become involved with a criminal gang led
> by a man named “Shark”, played by actor Vic Morrow, who was later
> killed in a freak accident when a helicopter landed on him during a
> filming. Elvis helps the gang steal by singing songs to distract
> attention while the gang steals from patrons in a store. A counter-
> girl working in the store named Nellie sees this. She realizes that
> Elvis is part of the gang and is helping them to steal but, instead of
> notifying the police, she falls in love with Elvis and therefore keeps
> quiet.
> This sets the theme of the book and the movie. Crimes keep occurring
> but nobody goes to the police. Everybody is corrupt.
> The gang led by Shark decides to rob the owner of the pharmacy while
> he is taking the money to make a late night deposit in a bank.
> However, the owner of the pharmacy gives the money to the father of
> Elvis and tells the father to wear the owner's coat, as it is raining.
> So, the father is dressed like the owner as he is taking the money to
> the bank. The gang robs the father thinking he is the owner and hits
> him over the head nearly killing him. Elvis later realizes that his
> own father was nearly killed by the gang but does not go to the
> police. When the father recoveries from his injuries and gets out of
> the hospital, he recognizes Shark and when he finds out that Shark
> works for Maxie Fields he tells Fields that he will not report Shark
> to the police provided that Fields does not interfere with the plans
> for his teenaged daughter to marry the 40-year-old owner of the rival
> bar.
> So, basically, nobody in this movie has any morality at all.
> I am not sure if many movie viewers recognize the irony in all of
> this. It comes out better in the book. The movie ends in a ridiculous
> way with Maxie Fields chasing Elvis and Carolyn Jones down a boat dock
> trying to shoot them at long range with a snub-nosed revolver. Any
> crime boss worth his salt would not try to shoot somebody with a
> ridiculous weapon, but would hire somebody to do it. Anyway, he shoots
> and kills Carolyn Jones, leaving Elvis free to date the virtuous
> Nellie, but then Maxie Fields is killed by the same man that Elvis
> punched out at the beginning of the movie whom Elvis had befriended
> later.
> This poor ending is a serious flaw in this movie. A better ending
> would have made a much better movie
> Sam Sloan
> Shenzhen, China
> December 2, 2011
(I know it was just a typo but quiet a funny one IMO.)
"> I almost wrote “beautiful girls”, but caught myself. Actually, the
> girls in most Elvis movies, while numerous, are not beautiful. One
> theory is that Elvis did not want to have beautiful women as his co-
> stars because that would distract attention away from Elvis himself."
Ann-Margret almost did it in _Viva Las Vegas_. Reviewers remarked on
her sexy gyrations outdoing Elvis's.
On Dec 14, 8:33 am, Dave in Toronto <dmatthew...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> "The movie is entitled “King Carole”"
> (I know it was just a typo but quiet a funny one IMO.)
> "> I almost wrote “beautiful girls”, but caught myself. Actually, the
> > girls in most Elvis movies, while numerous, are not beautiful. One
> > theory is that Elvis did not want to have beautiful women as his co-
> > stars because that would distract attention away from Elvis himself."
> Ann-Margret almost did it in _Viva Las Vegas_. Reviewers remarked on
> her sexy gyrations outdoing Elvis's.
> Dave M
I do wonder why Stan Booz a/k/a None decides obsessively compulsively
to over-write every title thread.
> On Dec 14, 8:33 am, Dave in Toronto <dmatthew...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > "The movie is entitled “King Carole”"
> > (I know it was just a typo but quiet a funny one IMO.)
> > "> I almost wrote “beautiful girls”, but caught myself. Actually, the
> > > girls in most Elvis movies, while numerous, are not beautiful. One
> > > theory is that Elvis did not want to have beautiful women as his co-
> > > stars because that would distract attention away from Elvis himself."
> > Ann-Margret almost did it in _Viva Las Vegas_. Reviewers remarked on
> > her sexy gyrations outdoing Elvis's.
> > Dave M
> I do wonder why Stan Booz a/k/a None decides obsessively compulsively
> to over-write every title thread.
> Sam Sloan
You see. Booz has done it again.
I am in Wuhan, China and Booz follows me around the world doing this.
