A Stone for Danny Fisher

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Variety declared that the film "Shows the young star [Presley] as a better than fair actor". [21] Howard Thompson of The New York Times also gave a favorable review: If LOVING YOU (1957) seemed to me at times to play like a lighter version of A FACE IN THE CROWD (1957), this reminded me of another Elia Kazan masterpiece, ON THE WATERFRONT (1954) which is quite appropriate since this is one of Elvis Presley’s better and most popular vehicles and one of the few with genuinely talented Hollywood craftsmen behind them.

The first part is a typical coming of age story about a kid in a new neighborhood, about a first kiss, about finding a stray dog, about watching the neighbor girl through the window. The story doesn't really get moving until the family has to move to the lower east side tenements and Danny becomes a neighborhood tough. From there, the story just explodes. The boxing sequences are terrific. You feel as if you are right there ringside watching the action. Although liberally seasoned with explicit violence, A Stone for Danny Fisher stops the sex scenes just short of the graphic. In doing so in this book Robbins shows himself to be a remarkably astute judge of the threshold of reader arousal. This technique also suits the material well because Danny lives so naturally in a world of eroticism (and violence). The image of the girl next door purposely walking around naked in her bedroom to tease him is an emblem for the life he leads when he grows up — the pleasures of life are always just within sight — daring him to risk the disappointment of actually reaching for them. I would like to think at the end of the book when the author gets introspective and shares his own philosophies, that what he is really telling us is that he has nothing in common with the characters he created. The characters are well drawn and vivid. Danny spends his short adult life dreaming of returning to the little Brooklyn house where he knew happiness, and he does. Almost. That quest, and its consequences, brings the novel very close to the "tragedy of a common man" that Miller attempted in "Death of a Salesman." I think Robbins was more successful. Jagger, Dan (2002). Elvis Presley: Silver Screen Icon: A Collection of Movie Posters. The Overmountain Press. ISBN 978-1-57072-232-5.Landers, Steve (2000). The Life Of Elvis Aaron Presley Elvis Facts For Elvis Fans. Lulu Press. ISBN 978-1-4357-3905-5. King Creole is a 1958 American musical drama film directed by Michael Curtiz and based on the 1952 novel A Stone for Danny Fisher by Harold Robbins. Produced by Hal B. Wallis, the film stars Elvis Presley, Carolyn Jones, Walter Matthau, Dolores Hart, Dean Jagger, and Vic Morrow, and follows a nineteen-year-old (Presley) who gets mixed up with crooks and involved with two women.

PDF / EPUB File Name: A_Stone_for_Danny_Fisher_1952_-_Harold_Robbins.pdf, A_Stone_for_Danny_Fisher_1952_-_Harold_Robbins.epub It’s all about craft and engaging the reader–some writers can engage on more subliminal levels, others provide more obvious stimulations. God bless the writers who can do both. I cheated and read the ending first, and it is not as happy as in "King Creole", where Danny continues his success. Instead he gets a stone in a cemetery, so to speak. But a little before that, he also becomes a father, if I understand it correctly. Guess I have to start from the beginning. Jorgenson, Ernst (1998). Elvis Presley: A Life In Music. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-312-18572-5.

Jeansonne, Glenn; Luhrssen, David; Sokolovic, Dan (2011). Elvis Presley, Reluctant Rebel: His Life and Our Times. ABC-Clio. ISBN 978-0-313-35904-0. The book was written in 1951 and it must have sold steadily through the years, because my edition is the 42nd printing, dated July 1973. And apparently the book is still in print.

I confess that I had trouble relating to or caring about Danny much. Perhaps 20-something men would have an easier time of it. Kirchberg (January 1999), Elvis Presley, Richard Nixon, and the American dream, p.59, ISBN 9780786407163

Jeansonne, Glenn; Luhrssen, David; Sokolovic, Dan (2011), Elvis Presley, Reluctant Rebel, p.147, ISBN 9780313359040 This was Elvis' 4th movie, and made right before he was drafted into the Army at age 22. Although much of the movie has a "staged" feel to it, Elvis does a credible job, and his singing is featured when he gets a job in a New Orleans FrenchQuarter night spot. A somewhat young Walter Matthau, doing a decent Bogart impression, plays the heavy, Maxie Fields, who always bends the rules, often breaking them, to get his way. Carolyn Jones, who later was popular on the TV series "The Addams Family" is good as Ronnie, who belongs to Maxie but longs for Danny. Dolores Hart, who left the movies and became a nun just a few years later, was 19 here playing Nellie, the good girl that falls for Danny too.