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    LIFE Rocky
    LIFE Rocky
    LIFE Rocky
    Ebook151 pages1 hour

    LIFE Rocky

    By Meredith Corporation

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    About this ebook

    Rocky Balboa, the underdog palooka who boxed his way to box office super-success, burst into popular culture in 1976. Now 45 years later, “Yo, Adrian” has joined the very short list of very short quotes that are instantly identifiable with a classic character from a classic film. Tourists still run the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Marching bands play “Gonna Fly Now” as halftime entertainment. High school football teams get crazy-eyed to “Eye of the Tiger.” LIFE Rocky looks back the story conceived by actor and writer Sylvester Stallone and the iconic 8-film franchise it has become, celebrating Rocky's friends, his foes, his fights and the songs and scenes that endure today.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMeredith Corporation
    Release dateNov 5, 2021
    ISBN9781547859719
    LIFE Rocky

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      Book preview

      LIFE Rocky - Meredith Corporation

      INTRODUCTION

      ROCK OF AGES

      Rocky Balboa, the underdog palooka who fought his way to box office super-success, burst into popular culture in 1976. Now, 45 years later, tourists still run the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Marching bands play Gonna Fly Now as halftime entertainment. High school football teams get wild-eyed to Eye of the Tiger. Rocky’s legacy endures.

      On the morning run, Rocky

      Sylvester Stallone was the first to admit there was nothing new about Rocky Balboa, whose most famous monosyllable—Yo!—is likely as old as Cro-Magnon man. The Roman numerals appended to four Rocky sequels date to Caesar’s time, while the main storyline of the film franchise—as a television announcer shrieks in Rocky IV, just before Balboa squares off with Ivan Drago—is a true case of David and Goliath!

      Whatever its origin, the Rocky franchise taps into something eternal, possibly even preverbal, though Stallone dates the protagonist that he created only to the dawn of cinema. I didn’t invent this formula of the little guy who beats the system, said the star, writer, and sometime director, himself a metaphorical little guy who beat the system. "Frank Capra did very well with it, and so did Charlie Chaplin. If Rocky proves anything, it’s that old formulas never die." By the time Stallone wrote Rocky, Hollywood had already made roughly 100 boxing movies.

      "Rocky revives something old that has always worked, is how Burgess Meredith put it on the eve of the 1977 Oscars, when he was up for Best Supporting Actor for the role of boxing trainer Mickey Goldmill. It allows the audience to participate. They feel that’s them up there on the screen. They have an emotional investment in the film."

      ROCKY ALLOWS THE AUDIENCE TO PARTICIPATE. THEY FEEL THAT’S THEM UP THERE ON THE SCREEN. THEY HAVE AN EMOTIONAL INVESTMENT.

      —BURGESS MEREDITH

      If old formulas never die, neither do old boxers. Rocky Balboa, who burst into the American consciousness 45 years ago, in 1976, has lived on through eight movies and counting. The character earned a Best Actor nomination for Stallone at the start of the Jimmy Carter administration (for Rocky) and a Best Supporting Actor nod at the end of the Barack Obama presidency (for Creed). That 39-year gap between nominations is the longest for any actor playing the same character.

      In those four decades, Yo, Adrian has joined the very short list of very short quotes that are instantly identifiable with a classic character from a classic film. Tourists to this day run up the 72 stone steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art—now called the Rocky Steps—as the title character did in Rocky, and venerate the statue of Rocky that Stallone commissioned, as a prop, for Rocky III. The statue has done almost as much running through Philadelphia as the character it represents. It once stood at the top of the museum steps, was moved to Philadelphia’s Spectrum arena—site of Balboa’s first fight with Apollo Creed—and now stands at the bottom of the museum’s steps, bronze arms forever raised in triumph, holding the pose for tourists with selfie sticks.

      When the robe that Rocky wore into the ring to fight Apollo Creed for the first time made its way into the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian, sharing a roof with Lincoln’s top hat and Edison’s light bulb, that museum’s then-director, Brent D. Glass, said: The story of Rocky Balboa, an underdog from the urban working class, is a quintessential depiction of the American dream. Can the same be said of Stallone, and the making of Rocky?

      As Rock would say: "Abzalootly."

      In one year, my life exploded for the better, Stallone said in the 2020 documentary 40 Years of Rocky: The Birth of a Classic. So I tell people, ‘you never know.’ You just never, never know if you’re gonna hit the lottery. You just gotta keep buying tickets.

      THE ROCKY franchise tapped into something universal, though the theme was nothing new. Stallone’s version of little guy beats the system resounded in part through Rocky’s epic bouts with Apollo Creed (shown here in Rocky in 1976).

      CHAPTER I

      A MILLION-TO-ONE UNDERDOG

      With $106 left in the bank, Sylvester Stallone took one last swing at movie stardom. It landed, and Rocky—the story he conceived—would become one of the greatest.

      Rocky and Adrian, at the beginning

      Sylvester Stallone was born in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan in 1946 to a dancer-slash-astrologer, Jackie, and her hairdresser husband, Francesco. Francesco was an Italian immigrant who opened a chain of beauty salons in the Washington, D.C., area, which is why Stallone lived in Silver Spring, Maryland, before attending high school—after his bickering parents finally divorced—in a city that would leave a lasting impression on him, and vice versa: Philadelphia.

      Rocky could only come from Philadelphia, Stallone once told Philadelphia magazine, adding: "Rocky moves at a certain pace. Not a New York pace. A Philadelphia pace. A more soulful pace. I thought of him as much more conservative in his life. And I thought that he would belong to a smaller kind

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