1/22/2024 0 Comments Elvis doing karate moves“A couple of hours later, he said he liked the idea and said, ‘Come to Vegas.’ So I went to Vegas and we talked about the film. Presley was leaving for Las Vegas that night and told the two he would have to think about it. “We went up to the house and we talked for a bit, and I presented the idea to him.” Presley agreed to meet with them that afternoon. look at this we’ll call him right now,” Waite recalls. Waite first came up with an idea for doing a documentary on tournament life in 1974 and shared it with Parker, the instructor. They are there not so much to talk as to show their support for “New Gladiators.” Also sitting in are writer Joe Hyams, one of Bruce Lee’s first students and author of “Zen in the Martial Arts,” and Majeet Raz, one of Urquidez’s students. On a recent morning, Florentine, Warrener and Waite gather in Rising Sun’s cramped Beverly Hills office with three of the men in the film: Urquidez, a world-champion kickboxer who operates the Jet Center in Burbank Farkas, who wrote the Encyclopedia of Martial Arts and is owner of the Beverly Hills Karate Academy and Dave Brock, a seven-time karate champion. Several well-known martial artists of the period appear, including John Corcoran, Ticky Donovan, Emil Farkas, Roy Kurban, Ron Marchini, John Natividad and Benny “the Jet” Urquidez. The film focuses on several karate fighters in training and captures tournament action - two European team matches and the Urquidez Brothers Invitational in Beverly Hills. “New Gladiators” documents what fans know as the golden age of the sport, when martial artists were interested in the art of karate and not the glory or the money. The two are now distributing the finished product, “New Gladiators,” on video and DVD, and are hoping to interest Hollywood in a theatrical release. (None of the footage of Presley is in the movie because the Elvis Presley estate wouldn’t allow it to be released according to Warrener, the estate was unhappy with the singer’s less than flattering appearance.) Florentine and Warrener’s company, Rising Sun Productions, which distributes karate movies and other martial arts-related items, edited the footage down to 93 minutes. Waite had 50 hours of footage - including 33 minutes of medium-girthed Presley showing off his black-belt moves and eight minutes of Bruce Lee demonstrating karate in 1967 in Long Beach - in the back of his 1963 GMC pickup truck in his garage.Īnd there the project stayed until recently, when he gave the footage to Isaac Florentine, an Israeli-born director of action films, and Florentine’s partner, Don Warrener, who ran a chain of karate schools in Canada. “I kept it going until Elvis died,” says Waite, who studied with Presley’s martial arts instructor, Ed Parker.īut that wasn’t the end of the story. Presley was scheduled to co-narrate and demonstrate karate moves. “New Gladiators” was supposed to be to karate what Bruce Brown’s classic “The Endless Summer” was to surfing - a definitive film about the sport. Presley’s death also put an end to a karate film called “New Gladiators” that the singer had financed and that Waite - a self-described “karate bum” - had produced in 1974. Until recently, Waite had never shown it to anyone because the memory of his loss was so painful. The belt belonged to the King way back when, and Waite has had it since Presley’s death in 1977. It’s just a frayed, weathered, black karate belt, but it means the world to George Waite, the former president of TCB - Elvis Presley’s film company.
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