Calendar items: Vanadium Woods residents channel Elvis, Sonny and Cher
Peter Halpin’s Elvis gets ready to leave the building, or at least the Vanadium Woods room where his photo shoot took place.
“I Got You, Babe”!
Prop cigarette and martini glass help Jim Quinn pull off Dean Martin’s vibe.
Joan LaRue does her best Patsy Cline.
Al Schneider sports pigtails only when portraying Willie Nelson.
Photographer Kevin Cooke instructs Grace and Lou Fischer about how to pose like a certain singing couple of the ’60s.
A smartphone captures Joan LaRue singing along to “Crazy.”
Peter Halpin rocks out to “Jailhouse Rock.”
Cher and Sonny: Grace and Lou Fischer
A smartphone captures Jim Quinn singing along to “Volare.”
Photographer Kevin Cooke, right, preps Jim Quinn for portraying Dean Martin.
Impersonating Elvis Presley is nothing new for Peter Halpin.
“I did a couple of Elvises when I was in Ireland,” he said about visits to family members on the Emerald Isle. “First I did the Beatles, and they said, ‘No, we want Elvis.’ So I had to practice his songs and his moves, because what’s Elvis without the moves?”
Halpin, a resident of Vanadium Woods Village in Scott Township, had the opportunity for another go as The King during a March 9 photo shoot for UPMC Senior Communities’ 2018 Benevolent Care Fund Calendar. The theme for next year is “Chart Toppers,” with residents at all 20 Senior Communities locations re-creating the covers of albums by famous entertainers.
“We try to stay generational, so that most of the singers are someone they would know, and they’re familiar with the music,” said Nanci Case, vice president of sales, marketing, development and fundraising for UPMC Senior Communities.
Other subjects include Ray Charles, Elton John, Dean Martin, Willie Nelson and Donna Summer, along with a couple of couples: Johnny and June Carter Cash, and Sonny and Cher.
“I didn’t know what I was getting into,” Charleroi native Joan LaRue said after dressing up as Patsy Cline. But she had a lot of fun having her photo taken and being captured on video as she sang along with the Nelson-penned 1961 hit “Crazy.”
Photographers Marc Soracco and Kevin Cooke also had fun as gave the subjects guidance on how to pose in similar manners to the applicable covers. That often included props: Jim Quinn, for example, held Dean Martin’s trademark cigarette and martini glass while crooning “Volare,” Billboard’s No. 1 single for 1958.
The photo subjects’ costumes and makeup were complemented by wigs, which really made the shoot. How else could Lou and Grace Fischer have pulled off the mid-’60s vibe of Mr. and Mrs. Bono, around the time they were singing “I Got You, Babe”?
Following photo sessions throughout the Senior Communities network, Case and other organizers will select the subjects who will be showcased each month on the calendar, and smaller images of everyone who poses also are included.
The Benevolent Care Fund, which benefits from the proceeds, helps residents in time of financial need.
This is the third year that residents have taken part in creating the calendar. The theme for 2017 was “History With a Twist,” featuring such scenarios as Betsy Ross using a sewing machine and George Washington cutting down a cherry tree with a chainsaw.
Speaking of twisting, Halpin remembers watching the 1956 episode of “The Ed Sullivan Show” that showed Presley only above the waist, so as to spare innocent Americans images of his gyrating hips.
“That’s what made him famous, was his fancy moves,” Halpin said after executing quite a few of those to the rhythm of “Jailhouse Rock.” “If you just sing his songs, it ain’t the same. The fans want the shakin’.”