The life and times of The King

Elvis Presley would have been the first to laugh at the mad, godlike status he attained after death, but he would have surely identified with the human, gospel-haunted need such adoration rises out of. He shared that need, and courted it. He could sing and move with a spellbinding violence and grace. Yet his nature was also marked by a startling passivity—an eerily contented lack of ambition at his essence that kept him from growing after his first fiery years of success. That early fire still burns, nevertheless, and his mythical figure remains an omnipresent fixture today.

The Movie Icon series: People talk about Hollywood glamour, about studios that had more stars than there are in heaven, about actors who weren"t actors but were icons. Other people talk about these things, TASCHEN shows you. Movie Icons is a series of photo books that feature the most famous personalities in the history of cinema. These 192-page books are visual biographies of the stars. For each title, series editor Paul Duncan has painstaking selected approximately 150 high quality enigmatic and sumptuous portraits, colorful posters and lobby cards, rare film stills, and previously unpublished candid photos showing the stars as they really are. These images are accompanied by concise introductory essays by leading film writers; each book also includes a chronology, a filmography, and a bibliography, and is peppered with apposite quotes from the movies and from life.

About the Series:
More bang for your buck! "... a fast-food, high-energy fix on the topic at hand." The New York Times Book Review

About the author:
F. X. Feeney is a screenwriter and critic based in Los Angeles. His film credits include The Big Brass Ring, based on a story by Orson Welles, and Frankenstein Unbound, directed by Roger Corman, while his reviews have appeared in L.A. Weekly and other publications. F. X. has also authored TASCHEN"s Michael Mann and Polanski.

About the editor:
Paul Duncan has edited 50 film books for TASCHEN, including the award-winning The Ingmar Bergman Archives, and authored Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick in the Film Series.