See these Ivy frat boys? Elvis uses his fists to wipe the smug looks off their faces. After seeming to romanticize fraternity life in a recent post, let’s balance the scales by romanticizing fraternity jerks who get punched out by a greaser from the wrong side of the tracks.
Such a greaser is played by Elvis Presley in the 1964 movie “Roustabout.” The opening number from the film, “Poison Ivy League,” doesn’t go over too well with the college boys pictured above. — CC
Well, given a choice between bohemian and ivy league, I’ll take boho, a la Auntie Mame, almost any given day of the week: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezpirYFXZBk&feature=related
The “lemonade” line and the “panty raids” line are not semantically connected: two different aspects of frat rat life.
Well, as a former “frat boy”, at least I’m still alive at 64, rather than dying a bloated has-been while sitting on the toilet. This is not to diminish the greatness of the early Elvis, before the jump suits, nor to condemn the “high Bohemian” style of Patrick Deniss’s “Auntie Mame”.
hahaha…
I wonder which is worse: dying on the toilet being Elvis – or living to a hundred and NOT being Elvis.
Yeah, I’d rather be Elvis.
wellesy: Unfortunately, you have not accomplished either goal yet-but I do hope you live to be 100. 🙂
As a former punk and still-record collector and music obsessive who finds himself finishing law school and heading to a white shoe lifestyle, I’m torn.
I despise, as I always have, people whose lives have been privileged and have had the way paved for them by rich parents. Jocks and frat boys are the enemy.
That said, well-dressed is well-dressed. I can still sport my chuck taylors, jeans, and t shirts for punk shows. Nothing beats the classic American look for a workday style that is relaxed enough to not be out of place in the casual present yet still respects sartorial appropriateness.
Elvis Presley was made an honorary fraternity
brother at the University of Arkansas around 1960.
Those Ivy frat boys pictured above look like they’re wearing the latest Polo collection. Especially the one with the crest on his blazer.
They also look at least 10 or 12 years too old to be playing frat boys.
Best Regards,
Heinz-Ulrich
These guys look too old to be playing prep-school students:
http://www.ivy-style.com/ivy-trendwatch-wwd-on-upcoming-preppy-book.html
This reminded me once again of how I adopted Ivy style in spite of those frat-rats, not thanks to them.
And let’s not forget that there are many different flavors of fraternities– see the classic Omega Theta Pi’s (Chip and Neidermeyer) vs. the Delta Tau Chi’s (more my speed– I swear I went to college with the real life versions of Belushi’s Bluto, Otter, and Boon.) I suspect Old Elvis would have had a good old time with the Delta’s. And of course the whole movie itself was based loosely on fraternity life at Dartmouth…
@Parker Bradford
Hear! Hear!
Frat boys or frat middle-aged men? And is that Steve Austin’s boss in the middle? The Six Million Dollar Man, not the wrestler….
@Old School Tie,
If you mean Richard Anderson, who played Oscar Goldman in “The Six Million Dollar Man”, I do not see him in the cast list for “Roundabout”.
Make that “Roustabout”.
Ah! Identity politics! This post is great, but the way that people latch onto stereotypes or clique culture to identify themselves at their most basic level, or to frame their whole life within the context of jealousy that others have had it better than them, or as rebels against some vague or distinct other – not as a self defined persona, but as a reactionary self against some external force continues to perplex and sadden me.
Shouldn’t life be about more than rebellion or opposition? If you have no foundation within yourself other than opposition to some “other”, then you exist only as an adjunct to that “other” thing which you hate; that is something that I would find thoroughly disturbing and disgusting, it becomes a philosophically and intellectually parasitic relationship and if taken too far, can even become an existential issue of life purpose.
I may detest Marxism in all of its variegated incarnations, but I detest it because its primary objective is to deprive society at large, and me individually of the things which I support and feel make life better and freer, whether primarily, secondarily, or tertiarily. If Marxism did not exist, I would still love and support the things that I love and support, but without that particular threat to their continuation.
Elvis movies are a hoot. For my money seeing ivys juxtapositioned to greasers is Eddie and the Cruisers (1983) when the band plays at Tom Berenger’s Alma mater.
Elvis knew everyone else’s lines in all his movies. He had “Singer’s Memory.” I think that is what they called it.