TV Reviews : ‘Crazy About Elvis’: Whimsical Overview of the King’s Popularity

The venerable Weekly World News reports this week that Elvis Presley was remarried yet again--”just days ago!” Meanwhile, Dan Rather and friends, unable to come up with any such journalistic scoop, present a slightly whimsical and basically facile overview of the King’s enduring popularity with “48 Hours: Crazy About Elvis” (tonight at 10 on CBS, Channels 2 and 8).

In paying homage to Presley in advance of the 15th anniversary of his death Aug. 16, the news team mostly celebrates the more trivial and kitschy aspects of the embalming of his legend. They visit the offices of the aforementioned supermarket tabloid (“Elvis has always been good to the Weekly World News,” chuckles the editor), as well as interviewing a woman who claims to have had a recent affair with him, meeting up in Las Vegas with “countless aspiring Elvises--or Elvii, if you will,” making trips with post-middle-age worshipers to Graceland, Elvis’s childhood home and Sun Studios, et al.

What comes clear is that the common folk generally don’t have a very good handle on why they love the man so much. “What’s the magic about Elvis?” asks an eager reporter to a couple visiting from Oxford. “There’ll never be another one,” responds the man. “He’s just got that style. It’s great.” This typical inarticulation is dutifully recorded as the wisdom of the people.

Flummoxed in the face of Elvis’ ongoing greatness, the journalists don’t do any better. Asks good-rockin’ Rather: “What is it about Elvis? His common touch? His overt sexuality at a time when America was ready to shake off the inhibitions of the ‘50s? Or is it simply his talent?” Unfortunately, these riddles are posed at the very end of the program, and rhetorically, as if not really deserving of any attempt at a thoughtful answer.

There are a few fun moments along the way, like R&B; singer Rufus Thomas’ understandable bristling at a reporter’s suggestion that Elvis might have “invented” rock ‘n’ roll, or producer Sam Phillips getting caught in a reporter’s trick question about his label’s racial polarity. But most of the hour is passively devoted to the (yawn) quasi-lunatic fringe, and frankly, for pure revelation, we’d much Rather just be listening to Presley’s new CD box set.