Editing Elvis Presley (section)

==== Lost in Hollywood ====
Parker had by now pushed Presley into a heavy filmmaking schedule, focused on formulaic, modestly budgeted [[musical comedy|musical comedies]]. Presley initially insisted on pursuing higher roles, but when two films in a more dramatic vein—''[[Flaming Star]]'' (1960) and ''[[Wild in the Country]]'' (1961)—were less commercially successful, he reverted to the formula. Among the twenty-seven films he made during the 1960s, there were a few further exceptions.{{sfn|Ponce de Leon|2007|p=133}} His films were almost universally panned; critic Andrew Caine dismissed them as a "pantheon of bad taste".{{sfn|Caine|2005|p=21}} Nonetheless, they were virtually all profitable. [[Hal Wallis]], who produced nine, declared, "A Presley picture is the only sure thing in Hollywood."{{sfn|Fields|2007}}

Of Presley's films in the 1960s, 15 were accompanied by soundtrack albums and another five by soundtrack EPs. The films' rapid production and release schedules—Presley frequently starred in three a year—affected his music. According to Jerry Leiber, the soundtrack formula was already evident before Presley left for the Army: "three ballads, one medium-tempo [number], one up-tempo, and one break blues boogie".{{sfn|Guralnick|1994|p=449}} As the decade wore on, the quality of the soundtrack songs grew "progressively worse".{{sfn|Kirchberg|Hendrickx|1999|p=67}} [[Julie Parrish]], who appeared in ''[[Paradise, Hawaiian Style]]'' (1966), says that Presley disliked many of the songs.{{sfn|Lisanti|2000|pp=19, 136}} The Jordanaires' Gordon Stoker describes how he would retreat from the studio microphone: "The material was so bad that he felt like he couldn't sing it."{{sfn|Jorgensen|1998|p=201}} Most of the film albums featured a song or two from respected writers such as the team of [[Doc Pomus]] and [[Mort Shuman]]. But by and large, according to biographer [[Jerry Hopkins (author)|Jerry Hopkins]], the numbers seemed to be "written on order by men who never really understood Elvis or rock and roll".{{sfn|Hopkins|2002|p=32}}
[[File:Elvis Presley and Priscilla with Lisa Marie February 1968.jpg|thumb|Presley and his wife, [[Priscilla Presley]], holding their newborn daughter, [[Lisa Marie Presley]], in 1968]]
In the first half of the decade, three of Presley's soundtrack albums were ranked number one on the pop charts, and a few of his most popular songs came from his films, such as "[[Can't Help Falling in Love]]" (1961) and "[[Return to Sender (song)|Return to Sender]]" (1962). However, the commercial returns steadily diminished. From 1964 to 1968, Presley had only one top-ten hit: "[[Crying in the Chapel]]" (1965), a gospel number recorded in 1960. As for non-film albums, between the June 1962 release of ''[[Pot Luck (Elvis Presley album)|Pot Luck]]'' and the November 1968 release of the soundtrack to the television special that signaled his comeback, only one LP of new material by Presley was issued: the gospel album ''[[How Great Thou Art (Elvis Presley album)|How Great Thou Art]]'' (1967). It won him his first [[Grammy Award]], for Best Sacred Performance. As Marsh described, Presley was "arguably the greatest white gospel singer of his time [and] really the last rock & roll artist to make gospel as vital a component of his musical personality as his secular songs".{{sfn|Marsh|2004|p=650}}

Shortly before Christmas 1966, more than seven years since they first met, Presley proposed to Priscilla Beaulieu. They were married on May 1, 1967, in a brief ceremony in their suite at the [[Aladdin (hotel and casino)|Aladdin Hotel]] in Las Vegas.{{sfn|Guralnick|1999|pp=261–263}} The flow of formulaic films and assembly-line soundtracks continued. It was not until October 1967, when the [[Clambake (soundtrack)|''Clambake'' soundtrack LP]] registered record low sales for a new Presley album, that RCA Victor executives recognized a problem. "By then, of course, the damage had been done", as historians Connie Kirchberg and Marc Hendrickx put it. "Elvis was viewed as a joke by serious music lovers and a has-been to all but his most loyal fans."{{sfn|Kirchberg|Hendrickx|1999|p=73}}