group I had ever met who said to me: 'How come you're wearing
makeup? Why do you want to go to New York? Why do you want to be
on your own?'... It was like having the date that I never ever had in high
school. I thought it was really wild!
"I hadn't been around anyone who was [that] religious. He felt he had
been given this gift, this talent, by God. He didn't take it for granted. He
thought it was something that he had to protect. He had to be nice to people.
Otherwise, God would take it all back."
On September 9 he was scheduled to appear on the premier Ed Sullivan
Show of the season. Sullivan, however, was recuperating from an
August automobile accident and, as a result, was not going to be able to
host the program, which Elvis would perform from the CBS studio in Los
Angeles. Elvis sent Sullivan a get-well card and a picture autographed to
"Mr. Ed Sullivan" and was thrilled to learn that the show would be guesthosted
by Charles Laughton, star of Mutiny on the Bounty. Steve Allen,
who had presented him in his last television appearance, was not even
going to challenge Sullivan on the night in question: NBC was simply
going to show a movie.
He opened with "Don't Be Cruel," strolling out alone from the darkened
wings onto a stage spotlighted with silhouettes of guitars and a bass
fiddle. He was wearing a loud plaid jacket and an open-necked shirt, but
his performance was relatively subdued, as every shoulder shrug, every
clearing of his throat and probing of his mouth with his tongue, evoked
3 3 8 "'"' L O V E M E T E N D E R
screams and uncontrolled paroxysms of emotion. Then he announced he
was going to sing a brand-new song, "it's completely different from anything
we've ever done. This is the title of our brand-new Twentieth Century
Pox movie and also my newest RCA Victor escape - er, release."
There was an apologetic shrug in response to the audience's laughter, and
then, after an altogether sincere tribute to the studio, the director, and all
the members of the cast, and "with the help of the very wonderful Jordanaires,"
he sang "Love Me Tender." It is a curious moment. Just after
beginning the song he takes the guitar off and hands it to an unseen stagehand,
and there are those awkward moments when he doesn't seem to
know quite what to do without his prop and shrugs his shoulders or
twitchily adjusts his lapels, but the moans which greet the song - of surprise?
of shock? of delight? most likely all three - clearly gratify him, and
at the end of the song he bows and gestures graciously to the Jordanaires.
When he comes back for the second sequence, the band is shown,
with Jordanaire Gordon Stoker at the piano and the other Jordanaires in
plaid jackets at least as loud (but nowhere near as cool) as his own. They
rock out on Little Richard's "Ready Teddy," but when Elvis goes into his
dance the camera pulls away and, as reviews in the following days will
note, "censors" his movements. It doesn't matter. The girls scream just
when he stands still, and when he does two verses of "Hound Dog" to
end the performance, the West Coast studio audience goes crazy, though
the New York journal-Ammcan's Jack O'Brian, after first taking note of
Presley'S "ridiculously tasteless jacket and hairdo (hairdon't)" and granting
that "Elvis added to his gamut (A to B) by crossing his eyes," pointed
out that the New York audience "laughed and hooted." "Well, what did
someone say?" remarked host Charles Laughton, with good humor, at
the conclusion of the performance. "Music hath charms to soothe the savage
breast?"
The show got a 43.7 Trendex rating (it reached 82.6 percent of the television
audience), and in the Colonel's view, which he shared gleefully
with Steve Sholes, really boosted Presley's stock with an adult audience
for the first time. A number of disc jockeys around the country taped the
performance and started playing their tape of the new ballad on the air,
and that undoubtedly hastened the release of the single, which came out
about three weeks later. In the meantime prerelease orders built up to
close to a million, and the Colonel pushed RCA to find that millionth customer
not only as a confirmation of Elvis' well-established popularity but
A U G U S T - O C T O B E R 1 9 5 6 339
as a credit to Ed Sullivan, and the power of his show, which could then be
proffered to Sullivan as a gratuitous gift.
There were just two more weeks of shooting before Elvis was scheduled
to leave for the Tupelo homecoming concert that had been booked
in July. Filming was originally supposed to be over by then, but now he
was going to have to come back for a few more days after the concert.
That was all right. He was enjoying himself now. They had filmed his
death scene, which the director said was really going to touch audiences
everywhere. Colonel was busy making deals and keeping everyone on the
set off balance in a way that irritated some but always tickled Elvis.
"We're the perfect combination," Elvis often told friends. "Colonel's an
old carny, and me, I'm off the wall." At one point the would-be producers
of a rock 'n' roll pastiche called Do Re Mi approached Colonel about getting
Elvis to sing a couple of songs in the picture for $75,000. Colonel professed
to be insulted, then offered to roll the dice for his boy's salary, double
or nothing. Other members of the Love Me Tender cast claimed to be
shocked, and William Campbell was convinced that Elvis' lack of reaction
as Colonel told the story indicated an acceptance of his role as chattel or
worse, but in Elvis' view, the Colonel was simply a very smart man:
"He's a very amusing guy. He plans stuff that nobody else would even
think of." And as he made clear to more than one interviewer who tried
to cast the Colonel in a Svengali role, "We more or less picked each
other." What people didn't understand was that Colonel mostly kept out
of his hair. He took care of business, and he left Elvis to take care of his
private life. Oh, he could be a pain in the ass sometimes, and he expected
Elvis to keep his nose clean in order to maintain his end of the bargain.
But for the most part he just left him alone - and he did his best to help
Nick out, too. Elvis was glad Colonel liked Nick. Nick didn't have anything
better to do, so he was going to come to Tupelo with them. Elvis
was looking forward to showing him Memphis for the first time.
They flew into Memphis on Saturday, September 22, and went out to
the fair briefly that night. On Monday they visited Humes, where Elvis
introduced Nick to his old homeroom teacher, Miss Scrivener, who had
sponsored the talent contest in which he had first performed in front of all
his classmates senior year. Nick did impressions for Miss Scrivener's class,
and Elvis beamed as the kids broke up. He presented the ROTC drill team
with $900 for uniforms and gave another teacher a television set "to be
used for educational purposes." They visited the Tiplers at Crown Elec340
c,., L O V E M E T E N D E R
tric, too, and Nick put his feet up on Mr. Tipler's desk while Elvis explained,
said his former employer, "how he had his money arranged so he
wouldn't get it all at one time." They even went by Dixie's house one
afternoon, and she told Elvis she was getting married, and he congratulated
her and wished her well.
On Wednesday they left for Tupelo around noon. Mr. and Mrs. Presley,
Nick, and Barbara Hearn all drove down with Elvis in the white Lincoln,
missing the parade that was being held in his honor but not missing
any of the hoopla. Main Street was decked out in bunting and a giant banner
that proclaimed "Tupelo Welcomes Elvis Presley Home," while
every store window was decorated at the suggestion of fair manager
James M. Savery with an "Elvis theme." The fact that it was Children's
Day, too, the very day that the children of East Tupelo had been transported
to the fair eleven years earlier and Elvis had quaveringly sung "Old
Shep," only made the symbolism complete.
Vernon and Gladys were practically overcome. She wore a brocade
dress and a locket with a photograph of Elvis around her neck. "It made
me feel bad," she told a friend afterward, "to go back there like that and
remember how poor we was." Vernon, on the other hand, was practically
exuberant. He was wearing a dark suit, white shirt, and tie, with the tie
loosened and slightly askew on this very hot day. Outside the big tent in
back of the stage he spotted Ernest Bowen, for whom he had had a delivery
route when he was working for L. P. McCarty and Sons, the last job
he had held before leaving Tupelo. Bowen was now general manager of
WELO and trying fruitlessly to gain entry to the tent so he could get an
interview for his announcer, Jack Cristil. "All of a sudden this guy hollers
at me - I didn't even recognize him, but it was Vernon, all cleaned up
and greeting me like a long-lost friend. He wanted to know if he could do
anything, and I said, 'Yeah, get me in the tent.' He said, 'Just follow me:
and he just like parted the waves. I asked Vernon, 'How are y' all doing?'
He said, 'Oh, we doing just great.' Said, 'The boy is really taking care of
us.' And I said, 'Good!' "
Inside the tent, while June Carter was performing, or maybe it was
Mississippi Slim's cousin Rod Brasfield, telling jokes for the hometown
crowd about his experiences on the Opry or making a Hollywood picture,
Elvis told James Savery, with some exaggeration - but probably not
much - that this was the first time he had actually been through the
main gate; as a kid he had always had to climb the fence. "And just think,
A U G U S T- O C T O B E R 1 95 6 '" 3 4 1
you're paying me for it, too!" There was a host of friends, relatives, and
acquaintances (and would-be acquaintances) wanting to catch up on old
times, with every one of them, seemingly, reminding him of how poor
they had all been, of how they, too, had snuck into the fair with him. Elvis
graciously received them all, passing offhis success, for the most part, as a
simple twist of fate, but with the father of one old schoolmate who was
attending the University of Mississippi school of pharmacy "so he could
amount to something," his answer was a little more revealing. In the account
of a New York reporter, "Presley grinned at the older man and replied:
'Shucks, why don't you tell him to just get himself a guitar. That's
aU he needs.' "
There was an informal press conference before the afternoon show,
and Elvis returned to the same theme repeatedly. He couldn't "hardly remember
how I looked in overalls," he said. "It's all great," he responded
good-humoredly to another question. ''I've been looking forward to this
homecoming very much. I've been escorted out of these fairgrounds
when I was a kid and snuck over the fence. But this is the first time I've
been escorted in." How about Natalie? someone called out. "I worry
about her when I'm out there where she is," replied Elvis nonchalantly. "I
don't think about her when I'm not." The reporters tried in vain to get
Colonel Parker to say something, but Mr. and Mrs. Presley, who according
to the Tupelo Daily Journal seemed "a little bewildered by all the commotion
... but smiled pleasantly for photographers," expressed their gratitude
first to a reporter from the Journal and, later, to a radio interviewer.
What were their favorite records? the radio interviewer wanted to know.
" 'That's All Right: " said Mr. Presley. " 'Baby, Play House: " said
Gladys. "That's a good one," said Mr. Presley. "And 'Don't Be Cruel: "
added Mrs. Presley. "There's so many of them I can't remember the
names," said Vernon. "It was terrific," said the interviewer in summation
about the parade he had just determined that they had missed, "and everyone
was having such a fine time and I know that you're sorry you
missed it and I know that you've heard it was a wonderful parade....
Well, r m sure that you know that the whole town is just wide open to the
Presley family."
Mississippi governor J. P. Coleman, whose car had been mobbed by
fans who mistook his arrival for their idol's, was backstage, and while
they were taking a picture together, Elvis told the governor he thought he
might go into politics himself. Oh, what would you run for? asked the
3 4 2 '" L O V E ME T E N D E R
governor. "The city limits," said Elvis affably. A highway patrolman
asked Elvis to autograph a pile of pictures, and he signed away. Then it
was time to go out and do the show, and he manfully made his way into
the sea of sound.
He was wearing the heavy blue velvet shirt that Natalie had given
him, even in all this heat, and Colonel had arranged for a ceramic model
of the RCA dog, Nipper, to be placed onstage. Fox Movietone News was
filming the show, and from the first notes of "Heartbreak Hotel" the
crowd of five thousand - mostly teenagers, mostly girls - went crazy.
There were forty city police and highway patrolmen on hand, but "reporters
and photographers had to scramble up on the stage to safety," reported
the Journal, "when Elvis first opened his mouth and a yelling wave
of teenage girls broke for the guitar king." At the conclusion of "Long
Tall Sally," Governor Coleman was announced, and after Elvis quieted
the crowd ("Excuse me, Governor," he apologized to the startled chief
executive), Coleman read off a text that proclaimed the young Tupeloan
"America's number-one entertainer in the field of American popular
music, [our] own native son." Then Tupelo mayor James Ballard presented
him with a key to the city in the shape of a metal-sculpture guitar
and declared, "The people of this community and of this city admire you
and certainly are proud of you." "Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, ladies
and gentlemen, very much, and, uh, and uh - " The crowd's
screams drowned out any further comments he might have had in mind.
"I was right at the back of the stage watching him," said Ernest
Bowen. "I saw him bring that crowd to hysterics, and he did it by teasing.
He knew just how far to walk to the end of that stage, he would lean just
far enough so that they could touch the tip of his finger." One time he
leaned too far and had a silver button tom from his bright velvet blouse.
In the middle of "Don't Be Cruel," fourteen-year-old Judy Hopper, from
Alamo, Tennessee, scaled the five-foot-high stage to throw her arms
around her idol, who only appeared amused. After that six policemen
stayed onstage with Elvis. He ended up with "Hound Dog," naturally, at
which point pandemonium really broke loose. "Elvis," shrieked the girls
in the front row, among them fourteen-year-old Wynette Pugh, later to
become famous as country star Tammy Wynette. " 'Elvis,' they
shrieked," reported the Journal, "tearing their hair and sobbing hysterically,
'Please, Elvis.' "
After the show photographers got some more shots of Elvis with his
A U G U S T - O C T O B E R 1 9 5 6 <-.. 343
mother and father, and a British journalist named Peter Dacre from the
London Sunday Express ascertained that he would like to go to England,
so long as he didn't have to fly ("If something were to go wrong on a
plane, there's no land under you. That's a long swim"). Then he was escorted
back to his hotel by the four highway patrolmen assigned to him to
get some rest for the evening performance.
Fifty National Guardsmen were added for the evening show, which
was anticipated to draw half again as many spectators. There must have
been close to fifty thousand visitors to town, including sightseers and
lookers-on, the biggest crowd that anyone could remember since Roosevelt
had visited at the height of the Depression. Elvis was relaxed and
chewing gum but disappointed that he wasn't feeling better for the occasion.
'Tve looked forward to this day for a long time," he said, "and the
heck of it is, I'm sick today." He asked for the girl who had crashed the
stage that afternoon and was introduced to Judy Hopper, who had her
picture taken with him and said, "It was even more thrilling than I
dreamed it would be."
The evening performance was, if anything, less inhibited on the part
of the audience than the earlier one. At one point Elvis stopped the show
to admonish the crowd in a good-natured way that little kids were getting
hurt and that he wouldn't go on if they didn't sit back down. They were
back up again for "Don't Be Cruel," though, and by the end they were
almost out of control. "As howling sirens carried Elvis away, the fairgrounds
were wild with crying teenagers," declared the Journal, "who
fought for a chance for a last look at the boy who put burlesque back in
business in a big way."
Elvis and Nick had returned to Hollywood by the weekend, and the
film finished shooting within a week, with a Thanksgiving release date
planned and more prints expected (575) than for any other film in Twentieth
Century Fox's history. Then he was briefly back on tour, with Nick
accompanying him and, with the Colonel's blessing, doing impressions to
open the show; in Dallas Nick was even served with a summons in a
breach-of-contract suit by a Fort Worth process server who didn't know
what Elvis Presley looked like.
The Dallas show, which opened the four-day Texas tour on October
II, marked a watershed for the group. There were 26,500 on hand at the
Cotton Bowl, which according to the Dallas Morning News had not witnessed
such hysteria "since a December day in 1949 when a crazy-legged
3 4 4 '" L O V E M E T E N D E R
Mustang named Kyle Rote tied the score against the heavily favored
Fighting Irish of Notre Dame." It was the largest paying crowd ever to see
an entertainer perform in Dallas (Elvis took home SI8,000 out of a $30,000
gross), and from the moment Elvis appeared, waving to the crowd from
the back of a Cadillac convertible as he circled the field, a kind of highpitched,
earsplitting, seismic wail went up, there were "screams of anguish"
and "shrieks of ecstasy," the papers reported, that never wavered
or stopped. The musicians couldn't hear a thing, apart from the crowd,
and Elvis, dressed in his kelly green coat and navy blue pants with a black
and gold cummerbund, sang by instinct alone, dropping to his knees over
and over again, and ending the show by jumping off the stage with the
microphone and falling to the ground at the fifty-yard line before being
whisked off in a limousine. "It looked like a war out there," said drummer
D. J. Fontana. "That's when it really hit me: we went around the park on
the back of that Cadillac, and all you could see was just thousands of bulbs
going off. I thought, What's this guy done? I just sat on the stage and
looked around and thought, This guy draws more than the football players
do. One man, and, you know, this park is full of people."
It was the same everywhere he went on this tour. There were riots
even when they didn't show up, as teenagers in Temple tore up the Kyle
Hotel because they had heard he might be staying there (he was thirtyfive
miles away, in Waco, at the time). The next night, in Houston, he
begged the crowd three times to quiet down and listen, but with little success.
Meanwhile, the single of "Love Me Tender," which had already been
certified gold, was about to enter the Billboard charts, and Elvis' next
movie, a Hal Wallis production called Lonesome Cowboy, had been announced
to the trades with a projected starting date of December or January.
Reporters were pestering him about his draft status (he had gotten his
pre-induction questionnaire in Hollywood around the first of the month,
but, he said, he didn't know what that meant in terms of being called up,
or how soon that might be expected to happen). Everyone wanted to
know about his love life, of course. He was getting only four hours of
sleep a night, he conceded, but when reporters asked why he didn't take it
easier, he suggested that "the Lord can give and... the Lord can take
away. I might be herding sheep next year." He arrived home exhausted
on Monday, October 15, immediately went to see Barbara, and then called
June about her upcoming visit at the end of the week. "Well, it won't be
A U G U S T - O C T O B E R 1 9 5 6 345
long now," he said for what must have been the thousandth time and
couldn't resist repeating the joke that Richard Egan pulled on him when
he expressed the same sentiment one too many times on the set. "You
remind me of that damned monkey," Egan had said. "What monkey is
that, Mr. Egan?" Elvis blundered innocently along. "The monkey that
was sitting on the railroad track, and the train come along and cut off his
tail. That's what he said. 'It won't be long now.' " Elvis laughed and
laughed - he loved the joke, and he loved being considered one of the
boys enough by Richard Egan that Egan would pull it on him. Then he
told June to be packed and ready; he would wire her the money for her
flight in a couple of days.
E
VERYONE IN B I L OX I knew about June's trip, and everyone was excited
about it. The owner of Rosie's Dress Shop gave her a new outfit
to wear, and the beauty shop trimmed her new pixie hairdo for free.
When she went to Western Union on Thursday, she and her friend Patsy
announced proudly that they were waiting for a money order from Elvis
Presley, but they needn't have bothered - everyone at Western Union already
knew she was Elvis Presley's girl from the telegrams they had delivered
from Hollywood. She and Patsy waited and waited, going next door
to Klein's Bakery, trying to mask their growing discomfiture with cream
puffs and coffee. Eventually June went home, utterly humiliated. She was
there only a few minutes when the phone rang. It was Elvis, who told her
that he had run into a little trouble and would send her the money as soon
as he could. She didn't know what to think - she was worried and pissed
off - and when her friend Buddy Conrad came by later, the three of
them, June, Patsy, and Buddy, proceeded to get drunk.
Only on the next day did she find out what had happened. It was in all
the papers. Elvis had been in a fight with a filling-station manager. He had
stopped for gas in his Lincoln at the Gulf station at the corner of Second
and Gayoso. He asked the attendant to check his tank for a leak - he was
getting a gas smell in the air-conditioning vents. When a crowd formed,
the manager, Edd Hopper, asked Elvis to move along; he had other customers
to take care of, too. By Elvis' account he was unable to move, because
of the crowd surrounding the car, and he explained that to Mr.
Hopper, but Hopper got mad and reached inside the car and slapped Elvis
on the back of the head. With that Elvis leapt out and decked the forty3
4 6 '" L O V E M E T E N D E R
two-year-old Hopper, who then pulled a knife. By this time there were
two policemen on the scene, and one of them restrained Hopper's sixfoot-
four attendant, Aubrey Brown, who had gone after Elvis and been on
the receiving end of a punch himself. ''I'll regret this day as long as I live,"
Elvis was quoted as saying. "It's getting where I can't even leave the
house without something happening to me." On his way to the police station,
where all three were booked on charges of assault and battery and
disorderly conduct, Elvis said, "Maybe you'd better put down Carl Perkins,"
when asked to state his name.
Western Union called June shortly after she read the account in the
paper: the money was finally there. When she went to sign the order, she
noticed it had been sent by Vernon, and when she and Patsy arrived at the
Memphis airport the following day, it was the elder Presleys who picked
her up in the pink Cadillac, not Elvis. Elvis had been acquitted of all
charges and advised by Acting Judge Sam Friedman that because of his
"avocation" and the fact that "wherever you go you have a large following
... [you should] try to be considerate and cooperate with businessmen.
Avoid crowds where business will be interrupted." The two gasstation
employees were fined $26 and $16 apiece, but for Mrs. Presley this
was not the end of it. She was frightened of Elvis even going out of the
house, she said. She knew her boy, and she knew he could take care of
himself, but what if some crazy man came after him with a gun? she said
to June, tears streaming down her face. "Now, Mama, he's gone be just
fine," said Mr. Presley reassuringly, patting her on the leg. "That was the
biggest black eye I ever saw," Patsy declared of the picture of Edd Hopper
she had seen in the paper, and that broke the ice a little as Mr. Presley
chuckled, but Mrs. Presley was still visibly shaken.
They stayed around the house for most of the first couple of days.
They played darts and bumper pool, and Elvis shadowboxed with June in
the empty swimming pool, with one hand behind his back. He was clearly
feeling restless and trapped, and his mother got mad at him when, in
sheer frustration, he flung some darts up at the ceiling, where they stuck
until she knocked them down with a broom. "Next time I'm going to use
the broom on you," she said with grim affection, but everyone knew she
was just worried about him. She fixed his favorite fried chicken and little
treats like peanut butter crisscrosses out of her Better Homes and Gardens
New Cookbook. June and Patsy occasionally went out to the fence, where
the fans patiently waited, and they saw Bitsy Mott, the Colonel's brotherA
U G U S T - O C T O B E R 1 95 6 ", 3 4 7
in-law, whom they knew from Florida, working security there. They
were allowed to talk to the fans from their side of the fence but not to go
out on the street and mingle. "You're so lucky," some of the girls said.
They all wanted to know what he was really like, they wanted to know
what it was like to kiss him. Elvis conscientiously came out two or three
times a day to chat and sign autographs, and Gladys sometimes had to call
him two or three times to get him to come in.
Finally on Sunday night he couldn't stand it any longer: they were
going to go out, he didn't care what his mama thought. One of the local
theaters was running the Fox Movietone newsreel of the Tupelo concert,
and he wasn't just going to let himself become a prisoner. Nothing was
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