A Star Is Born.

Clint Eastwood.

I had a few emails after the last post about the heroes and my criticism of Clint Eastwood making the empty chair speech; and as you may have seen there was a published comment about it being a let down for my pal Jim too.

Jim put his comment straight onto the site but others wrote to me personally too which I would never take it upon myself to publish.

One email said – but he is in his 80s;  that doesn't matter; he is fairly lucid but he was taken advantage of by The Republican Party. 

He has two films going at the moment one of them is A Star is Born; I wonder if he wants me for Norman Maine? No chance; it is rumoured that Tom Cruise is going to play it.

The closest I would ever get to Clint would be by association on the dreaded IMDb; they have a little thing on there which links you with the people you have worked with and here's what it says about me and Clint:

Clint Eastwood worked with...

• Paul D. Johnson on Firefox (1982).
• Paul D. Johnson worked with you on Lifeforce (1985).
• Paul Theren on Space Cowboys (2000).
• Paul Theren worked with you on Timeline (2003).
• Kurt Smith on Gran Torino (2008).
• Kurt Smith worked with you on Kangaroo Jack (2003).
• Basil Somner on Kelly's Heroes (1970).
• Basil Somner worked with you on Lifeforce (1985).
  

Of course I don't know those people as they work in special effects, but it's kind of like the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon which was quite popular some years ago.

James Mason and Judy Garland.

the famous 'slap' in A Star is Born (1954)

But Tom Cruise playing that part seems a bit of a stretch to me; I still think of James Mason playing it in the fifties and Frederick March in the thirties.

But there's an interesting story about the version with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson; they changed the name from Norman Maine, for some reason to John Norman Howard.

The role was originally offered to Elvis Presley who would have been superb. This would be in 1976 a year before he died. He had been disappointed with his film career after such a good start with some really good films in which he was excellent. 

I remember King Creole which was based on the Harold Robbins novel A Stone for Danny Fisher. He played Danny Fisher, of course; in the book he was a boxer and in the movie he was a singer; it had a great cast headed by Walter Matthau, Carolyn Jones, Dean Jagger, Vic Morrow and Dolores Hart who later became a nun; it had to be good it was directed by one of the great directors Michael Curtiz. I loved all those early films.

In the 1976 version of A Star is Born it was Barbra Streisand who wanted Elvis to play the role; he was approached and loved the idea. He even learned the lines thinking he would play it, but when they put the idea to his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, he rejected it. He said the role of a 'has-been rock star who falls in love with a young up-and coming songstress wasn't for his boy' and that it was Streisand's film not Elvis's. So it wasn't to be; Elvis wouldn't go against the Colonel as he was the boss outside the recording studio (where Elvis was the supremo).

It sounds implausible but Elvis couldn't afford to leave the Colonel; his money was tied up and he couldn't buy himself out of the contract.

Elvis and the Colonel.

Was he good for Elvis's career? I don't think so; Elvis earned a lot of money but in the end he had to do a load of crap for it. The Colonel wasn't a colonel at all; he was never in the military.

In Britain we often wondered why Elvis never came to Britain to work – he stopped by when he was in the army – and the reason he didn't come was because Parker was an illegal immigrant named Andreas Cornelius Van Kuijk from the Netherlands; he was scared he wouldn't be let back in to the USA.
He bought Elvis's contract and took 25% of Presley's earnings right up to 1967 and from then on he took 50% - can you believe that; he made more money out of Elvis than Elvis himself and probably gambled it all away. Managers in the USA usually take 15%. 
When Elvis was playing Las Vegas, Parker would be out front selling souvenirs – what a piece of work!
One time when Elvis tried to fire him he sent someone to give him the news and Parker said he would go if Elvis told him face to face. He knew Elvis didn't like confrontation so the so called colonel stayed.
It's a pity as the role in A Star Is Born might have saved Elvis's acting career and life.