Serving Barnwell County and it's neighbors since 1852
The new movie “Elvis” is on our to-watch list, but before I fork out 21 bucks
for two tickets, I want a rating from a real person, not some reviewer’s paid-for hype. I called Joni Mabe in Cornelia, Georgia.
I knew she would’ve seen the movie already and would have an honest opinion about the story and acting. Anyone who would purchase Elvis Presley’swart from a doctor surely would know the skinny on the King of Rock ’n’ Roll.
The movie, Mabe said, was pretty good, but not perfect. Austin Butler did a good job portraying Elvis, “but sometimes when he curled up his lip, he looked more like John Travolta than Elvis. But Elvis would be hard to play.”
Elvis’s mama, Gladys, was not represented well in the movie. “She wasn’t in but two or three scenes, and she was drinking and cussing,” Mabe said. “She was a religious woman. I never knew her to cuss like that.”
If you want to know why Joni Mabe is qualified to critique a movie on Elvis, let me summarize for you. She has been a devoted Elvis fan since he died 45 years ago. She knows thefacts and figures, plus the songs.
She owns an Elvis museum in Cornelia (during summer months it’s open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday and Saturday).
Her museum not only displays Elvis’s wart, removed from his hand before he entered the army in 1958, she also has a clipping believed to have been snipped from the King’s very own toe. She found it, when no one was looking, crawling around on her hands and knees in the Jungle Room of Elvis’s Graceland in Memphis. There it was, nestled in that green shag carpet.
She can’t prove the toe clipping belonged to Elvis, but she is sure about the wart. She paid good money for that wart.
And now, believe it or not, she can display three or four fingernail clippings from singer-songwriter Ozzy Osbourne, who visited the museum one day. She asked if he’d clip his fingernails for her, and, to her surprise, he did. “They were already short, so he had to dig down into the pulp,” she said.
She recently purchased boxes of Elvis memorabilia from a woman moving to another state, and her husband apparently said, honey, let’s not take the Elvis stuff. So now Mabe owns Elvis’s bowling ball, among other items.
When Mabe is not running the museum and painting—she is an accomplished artist—she’s planning her Elvis Presley Festival, which this year will be held Aug. 5-7 at the Rabun County Civic Center in Clayton, Georgia. There’ll be Elvis impersonators, including the world champion David Lee, a ConwayTwitty, and on Sunday, the 7 th , gospel singing.
By the way, Mabe said, the event sold out the last three years. And she expects the same this year.
Elvis Presley may have left the building, but Joni Mabe and other devotees are still following him. They love the guy, wart and all.
