| “ | Colonel, you put an end to your boy's animal behavior or we will. | „ |
| ~ Eastland threatening Parker to stop Elvis’s wiggling moves. |
James "Jim" Eastland is the overarching antagonist in the 2022 movie Elvis. He was based on the real life Senator Eastland, and was portrayed by the English actor Nicholas Bell.
Biography[]
A virulent racist, Eastland was stridently opposed to racial equality and integration of minorities. In the 1950s, he was a United States Senator from Mississippi. When young people (including his own children) had heard and saw a new young singer named Elvis Presley, Eastland also started opposing Elvis on the grounds that he was supposedly "corrupting" the youth of America with his physical performance artistry and his beliefs, when in actuality Elvis was starting a progressive change by incorporating elements of African-American music and culture into his material and was already becoming a sex symbol desired by many female fans (including Eastland's aforementioned daughters, and quite possibly his own son). He began leading efforts to have Elvis banned from both the airwaves and in person concerts, using various newspapers to write exaggerated or even falsified stories about Elvis to portray him as a delinquent. Finding out the truth about Elvis's manager Tom Parker, Eastland blackmailed Parker into forcing Elvis to act in a more "family friendly" manner and being a "New Elvis."
Elvis did appear on Steve Allen's show where he performed as Parker and Eastland wanted but felt miserable afterwards, feeling that he had given the worst performance of his life. Elvis began to push back against the strictures but Eastman threatened to have Elvis arrested. Talking to his friend B.B. King, Elvis realized that Eastland's threats were largely empty because he was a young, popular, and white singer.
At a charity concert, even though Eastland had vice cops watching and Parker was insistent that he not perform in his usual manner, Elvis defied both Parker and Eastland and gave the fans the show they had wanted to see - causing a riot when the cops moved in to stop Elvis from performing. Meanwhile, Eastland was just a few blocks away at an anti-integration rally spewing his white supremacist views.
In order to placate Eastland and his fellow racists, Parker arranged for Elvis to go into the US Army for a couple years, feeling that being away for a couple years would allow tempers to cool. Parker managed to keep Elvis's career going while he was stationed in Germany. After his return and the launch of his movie career, Elvis was far too popular for Eastland to do anything about him, and Eastland faded into the background as yet another racist politician.
Quotes[]
| “ | We warned you, Colonel. You have lost control of this act of yours, and he is dividing this nation. There are a lot of people who want to see him in jail! | „ |
| ~ Eastland confronting Parker about the aftermath of Elvis’s performance at Russwood Park, also threatening the latter with being put in jail. |
| “ | Before the army, we found no record of you at all. No passport, no residency. You were never a colonel, never a Tom. You weren’t even a Parker. Why did you flee Holland, Andreas van Kuijk? | „ |
| ~ Eastland to Parker after discovering the latter’s true identity and his most infamous quote, foreshadowing Elvis knowing about Parker’s illegal immigration. |
Trivia[]
- The real Eastland outlived Elvis by almost a decade. He was in office until 1978. Eastland did not run for re-election in 1978 when it became clear that he did not have the support of Mississppi Democrats to run for reelection given how the party's demographics and positions had significantly changed in the late 20th century. He resigned from the Senate on December 27, 1978 and Mississippi's governor appointed his replacement - incoming Senator Thad Cochran - to serve out the few last days of Eastland's term in order to give Cochran a slight seniority advantage over other incoming Senators.