Orion-Reborn-album-cover
Elvis-Presley-lookalike-Orion
Orion-the-man-who-would-be-king
Orion-nashville-film-festival
Don't Miss Galleries:
BBC America Talks Orphan Black, Broadchurch and New Series
Bestselling Middle Grade and YA Authors Share Must-Read 2014 Picks!
Christmas Comes Early for Viewers to Hallmark
Who was that masked man? Before you answer the Lone Ranger, perhaps you should know about Orion: The Man Who Would Be King, the new award-winning documentary about a singer whose uncanny vocal resemblance to Elvis Presley was turned into a brief-but-intense marketing mania in the 1980s.
“Orion,” whose real name was Jimmy Ellis, was a struggling, virtually unknown Alabama entertainer throughout the ’70s with a voice that cast him as an Elvis sound-alike or—worse—an impersonator. But all that changed when Presley died in 1977, and a Nashville, Tennessee, record producer/promoter, Shelby Singleton, came across an obscure new book about a fictional singing superstar who faked his own death to escape the suffocating confines of his fame.
The singing superstar in the book was named Orion.
Singleton put Ellis in a mask that covered his eyes, rushed him into the recording studio and began churning out “Orion” records—that sounded just like Elvis was still making them. Orion album covers and marketing materials even coyly suggested he might even be Elvis. Even though Ellis, as Orion, was younger than Elvis when Elvis died, was taller than Elvis, and had several other distinctively different physical features, many Elvis fans went absolutely nuts.
In little time, Orion’s fan club had nearly half a million members. Fans followed his bus from town to town. He toured internationally and recorded nine albums in five years.
“Everyone wants a fantasy to come real,” says one of the interviewees in the movie. “And it did.”
Until Ellis decided one day he’d had enough, and Orion took off his mask. But his story doesn’t end there…and when Orion: The Man Who Would Be King is over, you may even find yourself wiping away a tear or two.
British director Jeanie Findley spins a fascinating, quirky, tragi-comic, even heartbreaking tale—all true—of hopes and dreams and how the spotlight of a particularly, uniquely odd kind of fame shone for just a short while on this man in a mask, using Ellis’s son, ex-wife, fans, band mates, hometown friends and music-biz associates as primary sources, plus film clips, photos and audio from decades past. The 89-min. film, an official selection at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, recently received a Grand Jury Prize for best music documentary at the Nashville Film Festival, and will play the Toronto Film Festival on April 28, 30 and May 3.
View the original at Parade or follow us on Twitter, Facebook or Google+