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Netflix's Return of the King: The Fall and Rise of Elvis Presley revisits that period in Presleys career when he was at a crossroads. Converted seven years previously from singer to movie star at the behest of his influential manager, Colonel Tom Parker, Presley was dissatisfied and restless. Elvis Presley's movie roles had become plastic, fake, and unreal, and he yearned to get back to singing again. With Elvis having taken the musical world by storm in 1956, Parker had been quick to capitalize on his new cash cow's box-office looks and charisma and signed him up for his first movie, Love Me Tender.

The film was panned by critics, but adored by Presley's legion of devoted and mostly female fans. Three movies with Elvis Presley as an actor dropped over the next two years, culminating in King Creole in 1958, before Presley was drafted into the U.S. Army and shipped abroad.

The late pop star Elvis Presley continues to be one of the most iconic names in entertainment history. The singer was a memorable part of the late actress Teri Garr’s career, who appeared as a dancer in multiple films of the King of Rock and Roll.

Elvis Presley in Charro! | Credit: National General Pictures

Garr, who would later become known for her work in movies like Tootsie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Young Frankenstein, once reflected on working in Presley’s movies, candidly stating it’s no secret that his movies were bad.

Teri Garr’s Candid Reflection on Elvis Presley’s Movies

After starting her career as a dancer in the 1960s, Teri Garr started landing opportunities in Hollywood and was soon starring as a dancer in a string of Elvis Presley movies, including Fun in Acapulco, Kissin’ Cousins, Viva Las Vegas, Roustabout, and Clambake.

Viva Las Vegas...

Lisa Kudrow remembers her Friends TV mom, Teri Garr, following news of her death.

Garr died at the age of 79 due to multiple sclerosis, which was first diagnosed in 1999. Kudrow shared the small screen with Garr in multiple episodes of the NBC sitcom and paid tribute to her late co-star.

“Teri Garr was a comedic acting genius who was and is a huge influence on me and I know I’m not alone in that,” Kudrow said in a statement to People. “I feel so lucky and grateful I got to work with Teri Garr.”

Garr played the role of Phoebe Abbott on Friends, Kudrow’s Phoebe Buffay, and Ursula Buffay’s estranged mother. Her first appearance was in the 1997 Season 3 finale episode titled “The One at the Beach.” In the episode, Phoebe meets with a woman she believes is her parents’ friend. Phoebe later discovers that the woman is her biological mother.

We’re sad to report that Teri Garr, the gifted actress who starred in such classic films as Tootsie, Young Frankenstein, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, has passed away at 79. According to her publicist, Heidi Schaeffer, Garr died of multiple sclerosis after struggling with health issues in recent years. She passed away on Tuesday, leaving a legacy behind that shines like she did on the silver screen.

Garr began her Hollywood journey with minor roles in Elvis Presley movies during the 1960s. She appeared in films like Viva Las Vegas and Roustabout and also in Pajama Party, which starred Annette Funicello, Tommy Kirk, and Elsa Lanchester. Garr appears in various classic TV series, such as Star Trek, Batman, That Girl, Mayberry, It Takes a Thief, Room 222, and more. Regardless of her role, Garr stood out, destined to climb the Hollywood ladder with show-stopping performances in major motion pictures around the corner.

Teri Garr, who scored an Oscar nomination for Tootsie, starred opposite Gene Wilder in Mel Brooks’ classic horror spoof Young Frankenstein and played Richard Dreyfuss’ put-upon wife in Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, died Tuesday. She was 79.

Her publicist Heidi Schaeffer told The Associated Press that Garr died of multiple sclerosis after struggling with health issues in recent years.

Garr got her start with bit parts in a number of 1960s Elvis Presley movies, including Viva Las Vegas and Roustabout and appeared in the 1964 Annette Funicello romp Pajama Party. She continued to land small movie roles throughout the decade and also appeared in episodes of classic TV series Star Trek, That Girl, Mayberry R.F.D., It Takes a Thief and Room 222.

In the early ’70s, she recurred on The Sonny and Cher Hour and guested on M*A*S*H, The Odd Couple, The Bob Newhart Show,...

Bruce Kessler, who directed episodes of shows including The Monkees, It Takes a Thief, The Rockford Files, McCloud and The Commish when he wasn’t driving race cars, designing boats or circling the globe in a yacht, has died. He was 88.

Kessler died Thursday at his home in Marina del Rey after a brief illness, his brother, author and columnist Stephen Kessler, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Survivors also include his wife, actress Joan Freeman, perhaps best known as the love interest of Elvis Presley’s character in Roustabout (1964). She and Kessler were together for 54 years and married for 33.

Kessler served as second-unit director on Howard Hawks’ Red Line 7000 (1965), an action film about stock cars that starred James Caan, before embarking on a three-decade career as a director for television.

His credits included The Flying Nun, Adam-12, Marcus Welby, M.D., Get Christie Love!, Baretta, Switch, CHiPs, The A-Team, The Greatest American Hero,...

Kicking October to the curb and bringing in some November goodness is a fresh slate of new content headed to Paramount Global’s streamer Paramount+, including the sequel to the hit 1997 film “Good Burger.”

Paramount+ started off November by adding more than 30 titles to its library, some of which include “Above the Rim,” Season 15 of “Ink Master,” “Gladiator” and “The Color Purple.”

And if you’re looking for some holiday movies to watch with the family, you can deck the halls with “Happy Christmas,” “Mistletoe Ranch” or “Christmas Eve.” When the kids go to sleep, adult-friendly treats like “Bad Santa” and “Bad Santa 2” are also available.

The highly-anticipated “Good Burger 2,” which stars Kel Mitchell, Keenan Thompson, Shar Jackson, Carmen Electra, Josh Server, Alex R. Hibbert, Lori Beth Denberg and Lil Rel Howery, hits the platform on Nov. 22

Here’s everything coming to Paramount+ this November, from “The Truman Show” to “Paw Patrol.

Raquel Welch, the actor who became an icon and sex symbol thanks to films such as ‘One Million Years B.C.’ and ‘Three Musketeers’, died on Wednesday in Los Angeles after a brief illness, her manager confirmed to ‘Variety’. She was 82 and is survived by son Damon and daughter Tahnee.

She came onto the movie scene in 1966 with the sci-fi film ‘Fantastic Voyage’ and the prehistoric adventure ‘One Million Years B.C.’, the latter of which established Welch as a sex symbol.

The actor, notes ‘Variety’, went on to appear in the controversial adaptation of Gore Vidal’s ‘Myra Beckrinridge’, ‘Kansas City Bomber’ and Richard Lester’s delightful romps ‘The Three Musketeers’ (1973), for which she won a Golden Globe, and ‘The Four Musketeers: Milady’s Revenge’ (1974).

She was one of the first women to play the lead role – not the romantic interest – in a Western, 1971 revenge tale ‘Hannie Caulder’ – an inspiration for Quentin Tarantino...

There were screen bombshells, movie sex symbols, early film-nerd pin-ups — and then there was Raquel Welch. Born Jo Raquel Tejada, the Bolivian-American actor cut her teeth on a handful of early TV show appearances and a brief appearance in an Elvis Presley musical (Roustabout) before nabbing the role of Cora, the medical assistant who is shrunk down to miniature size in Fantastic Voyage (1966). That breakthrough role, along with her turn as a prehistoric heroine in One Million Years B.C. that same year, turned Welch into a favorite of science-fiction...

Raquel Welch, an iconic actress whose image adorned posters in bedrooms around the world partly because of her bikini-clad role in One Million Years BC, but enjoyed a career that was so much more than one acting job, has died. She was 82.

Jo Raquel Tejada was born in Chicago in 1940. The family moved to San Diego, where she took ballet and acting lessons, and as a teen she won beauty contests. Welch also did some professional modeling.

She made her screen debut as one of the call girls in Russel Rouse’s film A House Is Not a Home in 1964, and in the same year made an uncredited appearance in the Elvis Presley movie Roustabout.

One of her earliest and best known roles was in 1966 sci-fi adventure Fantastic Voyage, in which she played one of a team of scientists miniaturized and injected into another scientist's body to clear a blood clot.

We have some sad news to share today, as Hollywood has lost one of its most legendary icons: Raquel Welch has passed away at the age of 82. Deadline reports that Welch’s passing was confirmed by her reps at Media 4 Management, who simply said that she had died after a brief illness.

Welch was born Jo Raquel Tejada on September 5, 1940, in Chicago, Illinois, but her family moved to San Diego, California when little Raquel was just two years old. She knew as a youngster that she wanted to get into the entertainment industry, and studied ballet for several years while entertaining – and winning – beauty contests. She attended San Diego State College on a theater arts scholarship, but despite doing some stage acting and landing a job as a weather presenter on the local news, it took a while for her to break through into films. In fact, Welch had married...

Raquel Welch, the almond-eyed sex symbol who turned a doeskin bikini into one of the most iconic cinematic images of the 1960s, has died. She was 82.

Welch’s management company told The Hollywood Reporter that she died Wednesday morning following a brief illness. Her son, Damon Welch, confirmed that she died Wednesday at her home in Los Angeles.

Her success in Hollywood was due partly to talent, partly to perseverance, but mostly to hitting the genetic jackpot. Although she turned in several respectable performances — as a scientist’s assistant in Fantastic Voyage (1966), as Lilian Lust in Bedazzled (1967), as a transgender revolutionary in Myra Breckinridge (1970) — it was her strikingly photogenic features and voluptuous figure that catapulted her to international stardom.

“The indelible image of a woman as queen of nature,” is how cultural critic Camille Paglia once described Welch’s onscreen appeal. The actress herself put it more succinctly. “I became,...

Raquel Welch made a name for herself as an international sex symbol, but also an accomplished thespian as her career progressed. But what are her greatest accomplishments? Scroll down to see Welch’s most notable movies ranked, plucked from a career spanning well over half a century.

After winning beauty pageant titles including Miss San Diego and Maid of California as a teen, she attended San Diego State College on a theater arts scholarship and performed in local theater productions. Then she was a weather forecaster at a local San Diego TV station. And in 1963 she started to pursue roles with movie studios. Welch had a small part in 1964’s “Roustabout” starring Elvis Presley, and she stood out in the beach movie romp “A Swingin’ Summer” in 1965 as a bookworm who eventually tosses her glasses, lets down her hair, heats up the screen and even sings a tune.

Welch’s...

Actress Joan Staley, who is perhaps best known for starring opposite Don Knotts in the 1966 movie The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, has died. According to her family, Staley passed away on Sunday due to heart failure at Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital in Valencia, California. She was 79 years old.

Born in 1940, Staley discovered a very early interest in performing, taking to the violin at the age of three. By the time she was six, she auditioned and won first chair/second violin for Peter Meremblum's Junior Symphony. This talent got Staley noticed and led to her first film appearance as a child violinist in the 1948 movie The Emperor Waltz, which starred Bing Crosby and Joan Fontaine.

After getting bit by the acting bug, Staley stuck with it and was acting on the stage and in television as a young woman. Some of her earliest TV appearances included roles on shows...

Joan Staley, the film, TV and stage actress whose memorable film roles included opposite Don Knotts in The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, alongside Elvis Presley in Roustabout, and on TV in series including Perry Mason and 77 Sunset Strip, died November 24. She was 79.

Her first husband, onetime TV director Chuck Staley, announced the news on social media earlier this week. She had been married to Hollywood talent manager Dale Sheets since 1967.

Staley, born in Minneapolis to missionary parents, grew up in Los Angeles and was an accomplished violinist as a child, which led to her first film credit, the 1948 Bing Crosby-Joan Fontaine pic The Emperor Waltz. That led to roles at The Little Theater in Hollywood and small parts on live series like Playhouse 90. In 1958, she made the first of four appearances on Perry Mason, and that same year was Miss November in Playboy.

Her early TV credits also included The Untouchables,...

Joan Staley, who starred opposite Don Knotts in The Ghost and Mr. Chicken and appeared on such TV series as 77 Sunset Strip, The Dick Van Dyke Show and a McHale's Navy spinoff, has died. She was 79.

Staley died Sunday of heart failure at Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital in Valencia, California, her family announced.

In Roustabout (1964), Staley played Marge, the jilted girlfriend of carnival singer Charlie Rogers (Elvis Presley), and she gets to slap him across the face in the film.

"I asked him if he wanted me to pull up," she recalled in Tom Lisanti's 2001 book, Fantasy ...

Joan Staley, who starred opposite Don Knotts in The Ghost and Mr. Chicken and appeared on such TV series as 77 Sunset Strip, The Dick Van Dyke Show and a McHale's Navy spinoff, has died. She was 79.

Staley died Sunday of heart failure at Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital in Valencia, California, her family announced.

In Roustabout (1964), Staley played Marge, the jilted girlfriend of carnival singer Charlie Rogers (Elvis Presley), and she gets to slap him across the face in the film.

"I asked him if he wanted me to pull up," she recalled in Tom Lisanti's 2001 book, Fantasy ...

Have you ever had the feeling you’ve seen something before, but couldn’t quite place when or where? A sense of…deja-view? (Hold your applause and/or groans. It was a premium cable channel way before this stupid pun.) I’m sure it’s happened to all of us at some point, and because I’m an old it took me halfway through watching A Taste of Evil (1971), an ABC Movie of the Week, to realize I had seen the almost exact same plot rolled out in a movie earlier in the same week. Horror is incestuous, and it had to happen eventually, especially when the same writer pens both.

Originally airing on Tuesday, October 12th, A Taste of Evil won out over CBS’ Hawaii Five-o/Cannon block and poor NBC’s Sarge/The Funny Side (from the peacock graveyard – if you know what they are, let me know...

He sings, he fixes cars, and he takes punches better than De Niro’s Raging Bull. Elvis Presley excels in one of his few ’60s pictures that shows an interest in being a ‘real movie,’ a remake of a boxing saga with entertaining characters and fine direction from noir specialist Phil Karlson. Plus Charles Bronson, Lola Albright and Joan Blackman in standout roles.

Kid Galahad

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1962 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 95 min. / Street Date August 14, 2017 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store 29.95

Starring: Elvis Presley, Gig Young, Lola Albright, Joan Blackman, Charles Bronson, Robert Emhardt, Liam Redmond, Judson Pratt, Ned Glass, George Mitchell, Roy Roberts, Michael Dante, Richard Devon, Jeff Morris, Edward Asner, Frank Gerstle, Seamon Glass, Bert Remsen.

Cinematography: Burnett Guffey

Film Editor: Stuart Gilmore

Original Music: Jeff Alexander

Written by William Fay, Francis Wallace

Produced by David Weisbart

Directed by Phil Karlson

What, a good Elvis Presley picture?...

Screenwriter Allan Weiss, who was on hand to witness Elvis Presley's first Hollywood screen test and worked on six of the singer's movies in the 1960s, has died. He was 90.

Weiss died Thursday at a nursing facility in Mission Viejo, Calif., his nephew, Ken Maas, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Weiss provided the story for Presley's Blue Hawaii (1961) and wrote or co-wrote the screenplays for the films Girls! Girls! Girls! (1962), Fun in Acapulco (1963), Roustabout (1964), Paradise, Hawaiian Style (1966) and Easy Come, Easy Go (1967).

Weiss once noted that to write a screenplay for an Elvis movie,...

Hey, we're having a Nuclear family crisis, so load up your shotgun, grab the grenades and head for the hills, stealing what you need as you go. Ray Milland's tense tale of doomsday survival shook up a lot of folks with its endorsement of ruthless violence. Fortunately the worst never happened, allowing us to ask, "Where were you in '62?" Panic in Year Zero! Blu-ray Kl Studio Classics 1962 / B&W / 2:35 widescreen / 92 min. / Street Date April 19, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring Ray Milland, Jean Hagen, Frankie Avalon, Mary Mitchel, Joan Freeman, Richard Bakalyan, Cinematography Gilbert Warrenton Production Designer Daniel Haller Film Editor William Austin Original Music Les Baxter Written by John Morton, Jay Simms Produced by Samuel Z. Arkoff, Arnold Houghland, James H. Nicholson, Lou Rusoff Directed by Ray Milland

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

There's nothing like good old atom-scare hysteria, which Hollywood dished out as early as 1952's Invasion,...

There have been many TV bios of Elvis Presley but Elvis, The Movie, the once-elusive 1979 feature starring Kurt Russell, was the first and is still the best. An 18-minute condensed version of Elvis The Movie on Super-8 sound film will be screened at Super-8 Marlon Brando Movie Madness on November 4th at The Way Out Club – (yes, we’re aware that Elvis, The Movie has nothing to do with Marlon Brando, but it’s the variety that makes it the madness!)

When Elvis died August 16 1978 at age 42, it sent shock waves around the world, comparable to the deaths of Princess Diana or Michael Jackson in later decades. A carnival atmosphere developed in Memphis as thousands of mourners gathered around the gates of Graceland and sales of Elvis’ music skyrocketed. The 3-hour epic Elvis The Movie, produced by Dick Clark for the ABC network premiered 18 months later on February 11 1979 and, despite...

Steve Davis is the artist behind Memories of Elvis., a show he’s been performing in the St. Louis area for decades. Steve has dedicated over 20 years to perfecting the Elvis experience by paying incredible attention to detail and now he’ll be bringing that experience to Super-8 Elvis Movie Madness Tomorrow Night! This is a last-minute addition to the program which consists of condensed (average length: 15 minutes) versions of several of Elvis.s greatest films on Super-8 sound film projected on a big screen. Here.s the Elvis line-up: Blue Hawaii, Tickle Me, Roustabout, Girls Girls Girls, an Elvis Blooper Reel, and episode of The Steve Allen Show featuring guests Elvis Presley and Andy Griffith (who perform together!), and the 1978 biopic Elvis The Movie directed by John Carpenter and starring Kurt Russell as Elvis. . Steve Davis will take the stage during the break and perform some acoustic Elvis tunes.

There have been many TV bios of Elvis Presley but Elvis, The Movie, the once-elusive 1979 feature starring Kurt Russell, was the first and is still the best. When Elvis died August 16 1978 at age 42, it sent shock waves around the world, comparable to the deaths of Princess Diana or Michael Jackson in later decades. A carnival atmosphere developed in Memphis as thousands of mourners gathered around the gates of Graceland and sales of Elvis. music skyrocketed. The 3-hour epic Elvis The Movie, produced by Dick Clark for the ABC network premiered 18 months later on February 11 1979 and, despite CBS airing Gone With The Wind the same night, was one of the highest rated made-for-television movies ever shown (it played theatrically on other parts of the world . in Japan it was called The Singer!). The script by Antony Lawrence, who had penned two Elvis movies earlier in his career (Paradise Hawaiin Style and...

"Dan Callahan's Barbara Stanwyck: The Miracle Woman is a serious book about a serious woman, less a biography of an actress than a biography of her career," writes Scott Eyman in the Wall Street Journal. "Mr Callahan follows her choices of roles and tries to capture what she was saying about herself through her acting. It was an astonishing career, whose impressive outlines only became clear in retrospect. Most actors want to be loved — it's the Achilles' heel of the profession — but Stanwyck seems to have been after something else: respect."

Introducing his interview with Dan Callahan at the L, Mark Asch notes that "Dan concludes that Stanwyck was the most open, raw, unshowy and affectless of the Golden Age movie queens, in both her performances and offscreen attitudes; he builds a compelling personal narrative out of her contradictions: her bootstrapping tough-broad self-sufficiency (this slum kid was a...

Emmy Award-winning director John Rich has died at the age of 86.

He passed away after a brief illness at his Los Angeles home on Sunday.

Born in Rockaway Beach, New York, Rich studied at the University of Michigan and served in the Army Air Forces during World War II.

He went on to direct a number of popular U.S. TV shows throughout his career, among them The Brady Bunch, Mister Ed, Gilligan's Island and The Jeffersons, and he won two Emmy Awards for episodes of All in the Family and The Dick Van Dyke Show.

Rich also directed Elvis Presley in hit movies Roustabout and Easy Come, Easy Go.

He later teamed up with Happy Days star Henry Winkler to produce the series MacGyver and eventually retired from the industry in 1999.

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Feb. 14, 2012

Price: DVD $24.95, Blu-ray $29.95

Studio: Olive Films

Christiane Schmidtmer has a layover with Jerry Lewis (l.) and Tony Curtis in Boeing Boeing.

The 1965 bedroom farce film Boeing Boeing, starring Jerry Lewis (The Nutty Professor) and Tony Curtis (Insignificance), is actually based on the 1960 French play of the same name by Marc Camoletti. (The play was revived in London’s West End and on Broadway a few years back to much success.)

The comedy movie follows the lives of two American journalists in Paris, Bernard Lawrence (Curtis) and his friend Robert Reed (Lewis). Bernard, the ultimate bachelor, is juggling romances with three stewardesses who just happen to have different schedules and nationalities. Robert, meanwhile, is scheming to take over for his buddy after Bernard’s job relocates him to another country. Lots of zany situations, close calls and bedroom door-slamming inevitably follows.

Directed by John Rich (Roustabout...

Happy Birthday, Elvis!

by Tom Lisanti / www.sixtiescinema.com

In honor of Elvis Presley's birthday, Turner Classic Movies is running an all-day marathon of his movies on Friday January 8. Below are comments from his former co-stars whom I interviewed for my various publications:

6:15am Harum Scarum

Elvis is a singer kidnapped on tour in the Middle East and goes from swingin' with dancing gypsies Brenda Benet, Gail Gerber and Wilda Taylor to falling in love with a princess, Mary Ann Mobley.

"Elvis was intelligent, quiet and very sweet. But at that time, he seemed like a young man in turmoil—sort of like a ‘Who do I have to fuck to get off this picture’ kind of thing. Elvis was a tortured guy who obviously hoped for, and deserved, something better than the movies he was getting offered to do like Harum Scarum." - Gail Gerber, Trippin' with...