When a man single-handedly changes the course of popular music with one of the most pure and passionate original sounds of the 20th century, it's tough to care about his sideline occupations. But Elvis Presley wanted to be an actor as much, if not more, as he wanted to be a singer. Many Elvis fans didn't like his movies, and neither did Elvis, very much. And yet, the vast majority of them were box office smashes, sure-fire money making hits. Someone was buying tickets. In the 1960s, it seemed everyone was buying tickets. This book considers Elvis Presley's films not as an unwelcome intrusion into the insular Presley universe, even though this is how Presley and his associates usually viewed them, but as a significant part of the late 1950s and primarily 1960s pop culture they represented. Elvis Presley, after all, loved film and TV. The Elvis Films puts these guilty pleasures into context with not only Presley's life and circumstances at the time, but looks at how they related-or in some cases did not relate to-the other popular culture of the period. Jon Abbott has been writing about popular culture for over thirty years in a variety of specialist and trade publications, and his kaleidoscopic knowledge of his subject leaves no stone unturned in this provocative and fact-filled analysis of the Elvis movies and the arts and media environment that surrounded them. He is the author of Irwin Allen Television Productions 1964-1970, and Stephen J. Cannell Productions: A History of All Series and Pilots.

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