(10.000 points | 2 votes)
Director: Henry Scholfield
Release: 2017
Biggest Fan: jamieW (#13)
Elvis Presley - Jailhouse Rock
From Peter Guralnick's Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley
[Choreographer Alex Romero] showed Elvis some of the steps that he had devised for it along the lines of a typical Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire number ... [George Klein of the Memphis Mafia:] "And Elvis got up to copy his steps, and, just from the first instant, you could tell it wasn't going to work" ... And Alex said, 'Would you just show me what you do onstage?' ... The next day we came back to that same little rehearsal hall, and Alex Romero's choreographed the scene so it looks like you're watching Elvis."
Elvis flung himself into the number with utter abandon ("He couldn't wait to do it," said George Klein), so much abandon, in fact, that on Tuesday he swallowed one of the temporary caps for his teeth as he was sliding down a pole ... It turned out that he had aspirated the cap, which had lodged in his lung, so the next day a surgeon went in and got it out. [Assistant Director Bob Relyea:] "'We got it,' [the doctor] said, 'we just had to, we had to part the vocal cords and put the tool through and get in the lung' ... "When he got to the part about separating the vocal cords to put the instrument through, it got Colonel Parker's attention!"