As part of my research for Cloning Elvis, I read a new biography by Ray Connelly titled Being Elvis: A Lonely Life. It’s an excellent book and a quick read (less than 400 pages in hardcover). As I came to the end of the bio I realized that Elvis died before seeing Star Wars.
Elvis was a huge movie fan. He’d worked at a cinema in Memphis before his singing career took off. He watched movies over and over again and could recite lines from his favorite films.
When he became famous and could no longer go to the movies with the public, Elvis would rent out the theater in the middle of the night to watch movies with his friends.
That’s what Elvis wanted to do when Star Wars was released in the summer of 1977.
At that time, Elvis and Priscilla were divorced and his daughter Lisa Marie lived with her mother.
At the beginning of August, 8 year old Lisa Marie came to spend some time with him at Graceland with her father. Apparently she’d seen Star Wars and like any kid back then wanted to see it again.
According to Connelly, Elvis “was disappointed when not even he could get a print of Star Wars for Lisa to see again. Like any dad he wanted to please his daughter.”
Instead, he wound up taking Lisa Marie and his girlfriend Ginger Alden to see newest James Bond movie, The Spy Who Loved Me on August 12. That turns out to be the last movie Elvis ever saw on the big screen.
On August 16, 1977 he died.
It’s weird to think that the biggest star ever didn’t get a chance to see the biggest movie ever.
Today, Hollywood will roll out it’s big releases on around 4,000 screens for their opening weekends. That wasn’t the way it was forty years ago.
In fact no one knew that Star Wars would be a hit of any degree. 20th Century Fox had so little faith in the picture that Star Wars only opened on 42 screen across the entire country.
When they discovered they had a phenomenal success on their hands, they finally rolled it out to 1,750 theaters. Star Wars would play continuously on most of them for an entire year.
Yet, sadly Elvis never got a chance to see Star Wars.
He will soon enough.
Or actually his clone will.
As a huge Star Wars and Elvis fan (I have both a white bell-bottomed jumpsuit and Jedi robes hanging in my closet) I had to write a part in Cloning Elvis to make this happen.
I really got a kick of Elvis being introduced to Netflix and Amazon Prime when he asks if he can watch “that Star Wars movie.”
Of course his question was answered with another question, “Which one?”
Yep. A lot has changed in forty years as the clone of Elvis is about to discover.
[mc4wp_form id=”515″]