It's a story too big to be told to American audiences, apparently.
The gargantuan appetite of Elvis Presley in his waning days was the subject of a BBC documentary which aired recently in the U.K. But legal threats
from the Presley estate prompted the BBC to cancel a deal with the Cinemax cable channel to air "The Burger and the King" in the U.S., according to the London Sunday Times.
It is not news that the King virtually ate himself to death, weighing 350 pounds when he died, aged 42, in 1977. But the documentary, based on interviews with Presley's cooks and doctors, provides the grisly details of Presley's daily (or, more accurately, nocturnal) diet. It included giant baguettes stuffed with fried bacon, peanut butter and strawberry jelly; burgers on deep-fried white bread; a 5 p.m. "breakfast" consisting of six fried eggs, 1 pound of bacon, 1/2 pound of sausages and 12 buttermilk biscuits; and peanut butter-and-banana fried bread sandwiches.
Total daily calorie count: 100,000. That's more, the Sunday Times noted, than is consumed by an Asian elephant, and enough to feed an average man for a month. "Impossibly appalling," commented the British National Foundation. Officially, the King, whose 60th birthday was last Monday, died of a heart attack -- described in the BBC documentary as "a terminal event in the commode."
Remake heaven
Hollywood, ever inventive and original, is mining the dusty vaults of 1960s television for an array of
mega-million-dollar big screen versions of shows that we remember as fondly as our Mr. Slinkys.
Set for release in early May is "Mission Impossible," starring Tom Cruise. Not far behind are "Flipper," with Paul Hogan and "Sgt. Bilko" with Steve Martin in the role made famous by the decidedly Phil Silvers.
Studio executives, pointing to the huge grosses of "The Fugitive" and the "Batman" movies, are already counting their money, so confident are they that this mining of the idiot box's past will strike gold. However, the last time Hollywood made a movie featuring a lovable TV animal -- last year's "Lassie" -- it turned out to be a bowser at the turnstiles. And for every money-maker like "The Addams Family," "The Brady Bunch Movie," and "The Flintstones," there are losers like "Car 54 Where Are You."
Undaunted, production companies are reviving other oldies, including "Gilligan's Island", "The Adventures of Jonny Quest," "Gomer Pyle, USMC," "The Man From U.N.C.L.E.," "The Love Boat," "The Honeymooners" and "McHale's Navy."
Money train
Presidential candidates have already raised $92 million in the first nine months of 1995 -- a staggering 30 times more than the amount raised in the same period in 1991.
And -- surprise! -- all that money is buying more than good will. Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit watchdog group, chronicles the flows of electoral cash in his new "The Buying of the President" (Avon Books). Lewis says, "The presidential campaign is not so much a beauty contest or a horse race but instead a giant auction, in which multimillion dollar interests compete to influence and gain access to the candidates."
Lewis and a corps of researchers spent a year digging through the campaign records and Federal Election Commission reports of President Clinton and the top Republican contenders for the White House. Among their findings:
- Bill Clinton may have promised to "change business as usual" in Washington, but during his tenure in the White House, several top Democratic donors received first dibs on lucrative foreign contracts.
- Republican presidential candidate Lamar Alexander paints himself as a Washington outsider, yet the former governor of Tennessee and Bush administration education secretary has made a fortune from business deals with contacts he made as an elected official.
- Sen. Bob Dole's wife and brother-in-law purchased a Florida condominium at a cut rate price from the CEO of agribusiness conglomerate Archer Daniels Midland, one of Dole's biggest career patrons.
- President Clinton's number-one fan, the New York investment firm Goldman Sachs, has donated $107,850 to his campaigns during the years. In 1992, then-chairman of Goldman Sachs Robert Rubin separately gave $300,000 to the Democratic party and convention. He is now Treasury secretary.
- The National Rifle Association has donated more to Sen. Phil Gramm's campaigns than any single organization: $442,525 since 1979. Beginning in 1984, Gramm, R-Tex., has sponsored or voted with the NRA position on 18 separate pieces of key gun legislation. In addition, the presidential hopeful has solicited contributions for the group on official NRA stationery.
- GOP presidential dark horse Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., has received $82,693 from the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly Co., the largest of his career patrons. In 1991, Lugar asked the president of Brazil to meet with the president of Eli Lilly to discuss patent legislation that could harm the drug company.
- Wine magnates Ernest and Julio Gallo are the largest contributors to Bob Dole's career, writing checks worth $381,000 for the presidential contender. Dole, for his part, has helped the Gallo family save $104 million by tailoring a 1986 tax bill to their benefit.
--Halle Shilling
Let it snow, let it snow
Online services and electronic editions of daily newspapers enjoyed a huge upsurge during the
record-setting East Coast blizzard, according to a survey by Cowles-Simba Media Daily. AOL sign-ons increased 60 percent, which a spokesman attributed to the bad weather. Philadelphia Online , the joint Web edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, reported its January 8 hit count topped 93,000, almost double that of an average Monday usage.
"We got a really big bump," said Christine Yee of the Boston Globe , which logged about 260,000 hits. Nando Net , the electronic outlet produced by the Raleigh News & Observer, reported twice its normal usage --1.2 million hits since Sunday.
One reason: print editions of newspapers in many areas simply did not get out to their readers-- a first in many newspapers' history. In Pennsylvania, road travel was banned for all but "essential" workers -- which included television and radio reporters but excluded, much to their chagrin, ink-stained wretches and newspaper truck drivers. "Broadcast journalists were clearly part of the emergency response system," said John Comey of the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency. "That's different from getting a newspaper the next day."
Last call
Founded by actor Tony Randall, the five-year-old NAC is the latest in a long string of attempts to establish a viable repertory company in New York. Housed at the Lyceum Theater, the NAC staged what it hoped would be sure-fire winners this season, traditional crowd-pleasers such as "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" and "The School for Scandal." Both closed early due to poor ticket sales.
New York theater observers believe "Inherit the Wind," the Jerome Lawrence-Robert E. Lee drama about the Scopes Monkey Trial first staged on Broadway in the 1955-56 season, is the NAC's last shot. The original production ran more than 800 performances and later became a hit movie, starring Spencer Tracy and Fredric March.
Randall, perhaps best known as half of TV's "Odd Couple" and a regular on late-night talk shows, is putting all his chips on the NAC's final play of the season, staging it at the much larger Royal Theater. The play opens February 17.
