dir: Richard Thorpe
JAILBREAK ROCK
Humbug #8, April 1958
w: Harvey Kurtzman
a: Bill Elder
Story of Vince Everett, (Elvis Presley), a thinly disguised version of Elvis, and his rise to the top. He starts as a man sent to prison for assault and meets a country singer inside named Hunk Houghton (Mickey Shaughnessy) who teaches him music, and they promise to become partners when they're out.
Once Vince is out, he goes into a studio to cut a record. Everyone's ambivalent to his act until he's encouraged to put his all into it, and he becomes a sensation. As a pop star, he shoots a movie and is set up with his co-star (Jennifer Holden) by their publicity to be seen together. She doesn't like him but is immediately charmed by him when he kisses her during the shoot.
The subplot with Judy Tyler, his an-and-off girlfriend he starts a record business with, is not used in this parody.
Hunk has been released from prison now, sees Vince has gone into business without him, and tells him success has gone to his head. They get into a fight, and it looks like Hunk might have crushed Vince's windpipe, making him unable to sing again. He didn't.
ELVIS PELVIS
MAD #30, December 1956
w: Al Feldstein
a: Jack Davis
While Harvey Kurtzman left MAD to start Trump and then Humbug, Al Feldstein took over as editor of MAD and wrote this piece at the same time. Though this kind of music had been on the pop charts in the black community for a few years, it caused quite a sensation when Elvis co-opted it for the white community and this was how MAD reported it.
Sid Caesar is still hanging around from yesterday - the guys on the left side of the splash panel are meant to be him, Carl Reiner and Howard Morris doing their recurring bit The Three Haircuts. (I wouldn't have known if it hadn't been for the annotations in the Humbug collection.)
ReplyDeleteOn page 2, panel 2, the engineer is Lawrence Welk. In panel 4, when he tells Elvis to forget singing and just dance, he's turned into Arthur Murray. (Also, I don't know who's in all those portraits on the studio wall in panel 1, but I think the big one is Thomas Edison.)
Page 3, panel 3 has a cameo from Marvin Miller as Michael Anthony from the show The Millionaire. Panel 6 has one from Jimmie Dodd, host of the Mickey Mouse Club, and some of the Mouseketeers.