Last night night I dreamed about Elvis Presley. I don’t remember the dream except that it’s logic went something like this:
I’m a kid in Brooklyn, cutting Yeshiva, going to the movies in Manhattan—which looks suspiciously like Beverly Hills—and I’m sitting in a theater watching an Elvis movie that does not exist. It’s a montage of various performances and I’m trying to rewrite the sequences into a coherent narrative. Naturally, I try and get Brigitte Bardot into the storyline, but she and Elvis don’t hit it off and, well, I end up on the subway back to Brooklyn wondering if I’ll ever have a career in Hollywood.
Sigh. Hunched over, head in hands. The anxiety never ends.
Brigitte Bardot and Elvis Presley were cultural phenomenons at the same time. Bardot ushered in a new female sexuality and Elvis did the same for the male of the species. They never appeared in a movie together, never even met. It’s tragic because a cinematic pairing could have been epic like Gilbert and Garbo, Gaynor and Farrell, Gable and Crawford, Tracy and Hepburn, Powell and Loy.
Ariel Chaim Avrech, ZT'L, May His Righteous Memory be a Blessing.
21 Comments
I was ashamed to admit to my movie geek friends that I preferred “Jailhouse Rock” to “The Seventh Seal.”
Posted by: Robert J. Avrech at June 17, 2011 09:09 AM
Dear Robert: That just means you have good taste-and you know what the word “pretentious” means.
I really enjoyed Elvis’s rendition of “I Can’t Help Falling in Love With You.” Thanks for posting it.
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Did you know that Elvis had a Jewish grandmother? He would also go around and turn on the lights for his Orthodox neighbors, when he was a child.
Posted by: Heather at June 16, 2011 01:15 PM
James Cagney was also a shabbos goy.
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Robert:
moopoo; noun, gardener’s jargon for fertiliser manufactured from cow excrement.
ute; noun, abbreviation of ‘utility’, a light truck based on a car body.
From my forthcoming ‘An American’s guide to conversing in Australia’.
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Earl:
You write: Then I accidentally kicked a 50lb bag of moopoo off a 20ft cliff in your backyard. Sorry, I’ll be around in the ute with a new bag as soon as I can.
No idea what moopoo and ute are but they sound gross:-)
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Jackie W:
I wonder if the McGraw and Presley clans crossed to America singing in harmony?
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Heather:
I actually did know that Elvis was a Shabbos goy. Young Elvis Presley used to help Rabbi Alfred Fruchter’s family on Shabbat when they lived down the hall in the same Memphis apartment building.
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Alter:
Hey, I have a hard time dealing with screaming fans. Especially at a Matisyahu concert!
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Franny:
I have a relative who collects Elvis memorabilia—but only from the Vegas period. I always thought that Vegas Elvis was sort of sad compared to early Elvis, but my relative insists that Vegas Elvis was a more mature and sensitive singer.
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Claudia:
I was too young to see “Jailhouse Rock.” I was just 7 years old when it was released. But when I finally did see it in college I was totally knocked out. I was ashamed to admit to my movie geek friends that I preferred “Jailhouse Rock” to “The Seventh Seal.”
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Pearl:
My dreams often take the form of movies.
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Bill:
The time Elvis spent in the army has always struck me as being great material for a comedy.
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Exdem:
I often say that I used to be a yeshiva kid trying to break into Hollywood but now I’ve become a Hollywood guy trying to get back into Beis Midrash.
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Where would we be without Elvis Presley? I could write 4000 words about that before breakfast.
Funny thing, Robert, you featured in a dream of mine last night. We were talking about the resourcefulness and bravery of folks who ran resistance radio stations. Then I accidentally kicked a 50lb bag of moopoo off a 20ft cliff in your backyard. Sorry, I’ll be around in the ute with a new bag as soon as I can.
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Tim McGraw’s relatives & relatives of Elvis came over on the same boat.
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Did you know that Elvis had a Jewish grandmother? He would also go around and turn on the lights for his Orthodox neighbors, when he was a child.
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I dunno. Wouldn’t the guys who went to see Garbo have a hard time dealing with all the screaming teenage girls?
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I saw Elvis live in concert Atlanta two years before he died. It was very sad, he was a parody of himself by then, and one could see that he was “out of it”. Tragic.
I have a friend who met him in person when he was in his heyday. She actually went to his house and spoke to him. She was a teenager, living in LA, and her classmate’s mother worked in the entertainment industry, so that’s was her connection.
When she told me about this I said, “Wow! Can I touch you?”
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I still remember sneaking with my cousin into a theater to see “Jail House Rock” against my parents wishes. At 13 no amount of punishment would have dimmed the thrill of seeing Elvis. Thank you,
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When you dream, you dream big, Robert. Hollywood-style…
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Elvis is an interesting person. When he was drafted he went into the Army without a complaint and from all accounts was just “one of the guys” – as much as he could be anyway.
Sounds like some of your dreams are like mine.
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“I don’t remember the dream except that it’s logic went something like this:
I’m a kid in Brooklyn, cutting Yeshiva, going to the movies in Manhattan”
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