Filmmaker William A. Graham dies

Hollywood filmmaker William A. Graham has died, aged 87. The director, who made Elvis Presley’s final movie Change Of Habit, passed away on 12 September (13) due to complications from pneumonia, his wife Janet tells the Los Angeles Times.
The New York native began his career in the mid-1950s directing TV segments, before overseeing multiple episodes of shows including The Fugitive, Twelve O’Clock High, Batman and Ironside.
He also racked up movie credits including Honky, Where the Lilies Bloom, and Return to the Blue Lagoon, before returning to the small screen in the 1990s to direct three episodes of hit sci-fi series The X-Files.
Graham is also noted for managing to persuade the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll to update his famous hairdo when they worked on 1969’s Change Of Habit, the star’s last non-concert movie.
In a 2005 interview, the director recalled, “He had a kind of a pompadour in front and his hair was full of grease. And because this was a movie about a doctor working in the ghetto, it just didn’t seem to be quite the right hairstyle. So I talked to him and I said, ‘Elvis, how would you feel about changing your hair a little bit?’ Well, he said he would be open to the idea…
“I said, ‘Well, do you like the way my hair is done?’ I had a Japanese lady in Beverly Hills who was cutting my hair at the time, and he said, ‘Yes.’ So we went to see Jan and she washed all the grease out of his hair and modified the styling and it was quite a landmark achievement. It was pretty unusual to get that done. And Elvis actually liked it very much.”