In summer 1968, Elvis Presley taped a television special to be broadcast that Christmas. Fifteen years earlier, he had walked into Sun Studios in Memphis to make a record as a present for his mother, or so the story goes, and changed history.
In the years between those events, he had been adored, reviled, imitated, parodied, packaged and finally, if not forgotten exactly -- he was still a working movie star -- then no longer taken quite seriously in a world remade by Bob Dylan, the Beatles and the 20-minute guitar solo.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Thursday, March 13, 2008 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 33 words Type of Material: Correction
'Singer Presents Elvis': An article in Tuesday's Calendar section about the 1968 TV special "Singer Presents Elvis" said the song "Guitar Man" was written by Johnny Reed. It was written by Jerry Reed.
Elvis went to Hollywood early in his career, but his first films at least, arriving as they did in the era of "Rebel Without a Cause" and "Blackboard Jungle," exploited his actual rock energy and outsider roots; they played melodramatic variations on the story he was already living out.
The movies he made after getting out of the Army in 1960, however, were, with certain rule-proving exceptions, the merest fluff. They have their charms, but by and large they show an Elvis domesticated, marginalized and to all appearances barely interested in music. (Ladies and gentlemen, "Do the Clam.")
And then in one of those confluence of forces that in retrospect looks like fate but is just good timing and good luck, Presley contracted to do a television Christmas special, whose director -- Steve Binder of the pop series "Hullabaloo" and pop film "The T.A.M.I. Show" -- approached it with a sense of mission that happened to accord with the singer's own reported desire to distance himself from the mediocrity of his film career.
What resulted was so clearly a turning point that what was originally known as "Singer Presents Elvis" -- the sewing machine company sponsored it, strangely -- has since almost always been referred to as "The '68 Comeback Special." It is getting a 40th anniversary really-big-screen showing Friday to open the 25th annual William S. Paley Television Festival, which this year moves to the Cinerama Dome. (Also on the docket are tributes to Judd Apatow, "Gossip Girl," "Pushing Daisies" and a "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer" reunion.)
The special begins in darkness, to the sound of a whomping, Muddy Waters-ish blues riff, and then a famous face fades in, turning toward the camera, filling the screen, meaning business.
If you're looking for trouble
You came to the right place
If you're looking for trouble
Just look right in my face
I was born standing up
And talking back
