Kurt Russell Can't Sing, But It Wasn't His Voice That Had To Be Fixed For 1979's Elvis TV Movie

Director John Carpenter is perhaps best known for his sci-fi and horror movies, which have taken up the bulk of his directorial career. The man's fans know, however, that he is also an old-school rocker, fond of 1950s and '60s hard rock music. He played in a band called the Coupe de Villes, and now spends his time touring concert halls playing guitar and keyboards, churning out dreamy synth-pop. In that light, it comes as no surprise that Carpenter penned a frothy, light 1978 TV movie called "Zuma Beach," all about a fading rock star (Suzanne Sommers) and her involvement in the love lives of some local teens. 

It's also not so out-of-character for Carpenter to have directed "Elvis" in 1979, a TV-movie biopic of Elvis Presley starring Kurt Russell. Carpenter wasn't the world's biggest Elvis fan, but he was a music guy, and "Elvis" seemed like just the right project to push his career forward. He wanted to move away from his genre films like "Halloween" and make a real drama with, in his words, "real actors." 

It was right for Russell, too, as he aimed to move away from the squeaky-clean decade he had just had for Disney as a teenager and move into more adult roles. Playing Elvis was also fitting, as Russell had acted opposite the real Elvis Presley when he was only 12 in the movie "It Happened at the World's Fair." It didn't matter that Russell couldn't sing. In musicals, actors are dubbed all the time by more talented vocalists. It seems, though, that Russell still needed a notable piece of makeup to look more like the King. In particular, he needed to have his ears pinned back. Carpenter talked about Russell's painful makeup in a vintage video interview, handily transcribed by FandomWire. 

Carpenter noted that when he was casting "Elvis," he was torn between two actors. One, unnamed, was a dead ringer for Elvis Presley, but had the disadvantage of not being able to act. The other actor was, in Carpenter's words, "someone named Kurt Russell." I guess Carpenter didn't watch the Medfield College movies in the 1960s. Carpenter selecting Russell was a no-brainer, and the pair ended up collaborating several times thereafter; beginning in 1981, Russell and Carpenter made "Escape from New York," "The Thing," "Big Trouble in Little China," and "Escape from L.A." together. 

But there was an issue. Not with Russell's singing (which Carpenter said was quite bad), but with his ears. They needed a quick and uncomfortable-sounding solution, which they achieved thus: 

"The biggest problem with his physical appearance were his ears. [...] They're like cab doors sticking out. [...] So we had to tape [them] down against him. It was unbelievable. [...] It was an incredible effort on his part. He became Elvis up there. And he has a tin ear. He can't sing. He can't do anything. Lip syncing away, lip-syncing his heart out. And literally he was that performer. He became that guy."

Russell's ears hadn't been a problem before, but they were certainly different from Elvis Presley's ears, so they were taped to his head. 

Elvis' singing voice was provided by Ronnie McDowell, a country star in his own right and legit Elvis fan (he had a hit with "The King is Gone" in 1977). McDowell made a tidy living providing Elvis' vocals for various biopics over the years, including "Elvis" (1979), "Elvis and the Beauty Queen" (1981), "Elvis and Me" (1988), and "Elvis Meets Nixon" (1997).