Possible Inspiration
The song and the famous Elvis performance in the movie bear a remarkable resemblance to the theme and performance of a song called "Rock Around the Rockpile" from the movie The Girl Can't Help It, released one year earlier. In that performance, a villain played by Edmond O'Brien seeks to escape an assassination attempt by jumping on stage and singing the lyrics, "rock, rock, rock around the rockpile," while backed up by The Ray Anthony Band wearing striped inmate uniforms. O'Brien even includes some of the hip-swiveling and leg motions for which Elvis became famous. Reportedly, the producers had wanted Elvis for The Girl Can't Help It, but Elvis's manager Tom Parker had demanded too much money. Two uncredited composers on the film, Hugo Friedhofer and Lionel Newman, had also composed music for the Elvis classic movie, Love Me Tender, in the same year, 1956.
Read more about this topic: Jailhouse Rock (song)
Famous quotes containing the word inspiration:
“The ironies in the commonplace are my inspiration and delight.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Although this garrulity of advising is born with us, I confess that life is rather a subject of wonder, than of didactics. So much fate, so much irresistible dictation from temperament and unknown inspiration enter into it, that we doubt we can say anything out of our own experience whereby to help each other.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)