Colonel Parker didn’t know much about the movie business. His only experience was the two low-budget films that Eddy Arnold made, and he’d had few dealings with Hollywood executives and producers. Here he would be going up against the big boys, some of the fastest-talking and -thinking dealmakers in the entertainment industry. These boys were slick, smart, and every ounce the actors as the stars they put in their movies, and they were quite used to getting their way.
The Colonel figured he knew just about all he had to know about recordings, tours, endorsements, and peddling souvenirs. But this was going to be a different ball game and the Colonel had never taken a swing, much less got up to the batter’s box. But he had three things going for him: a sharp mind, a pair of brass balls, and a longtime friendship with Abe Lastfogel, president of the powerful William Morris Agency in Los Angeles, California.
Lastfogel, referred to as “The Pope” at the agency, was a Hollywood legend and the ultimate wheeler-dealer. Born in New York in 1898, Abe was one of eight children raised in a cold-water tenement. His father worked in the meatpacking industry and spoke no English. Abe started work at the age of fourteen as an office boy for William Morris when the agency had a staff of four. By 1932, he ran William Morris. He was a short, stocky man who wore bow ties and smoked cigars. He was famous, not for the stereotype of a Hollywood agent, screaming, cursing, and throwing phones, but for being calm. When the US entered World War II in 1941, Lastfogel was chosen to head the USO’s overseas entertainment efforts, Camp Shows.
Within a year after Pearl Harbor, Camp Shows put on professional entertainment in 1,500 camps and installations every two weeks. Camp Shows units landed in France only forty-three days after D-Day. The Allies were still bogged down in Normandy. By V-J Day, Lastfogel’s singers, dancers, and comedians provided 428,000 performances.
After the war, his client list included Jimmy Durante, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Mae West, Al Jolson, Edward G. Robinson, Lana Turner, Rita Hayworth, James Cagney, David Niven, Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, George Burns, Will Rogers, and Danny Thomas.
Lastfogel and Parker first met in the 1940s, and the Colonel made a deep impression on both Abe and his wife, Frances.
“That Tom Parker is a winner,” Frances Lastfogel, a former vaudeville singer, told her husband. “You should keep your eye on him.”
He did, and they remained in touch throughout the years. No doubt the Colonel thought Lastfogel would be a great ally, and he planned to use that relationship capital strategically. With Elvis as his prized client, it was time to call in that favor.
Hal Wallis, one of the most successful producers in Hollywood, had been hounding Colonel Parker for a few months ever since he saw Elvis on Stage Show. It wasn’t like Wallis to tip his hand. As production chief at Warner Bros., the fifty-six-year-old Wallis had produced such classics as The Adventures of Robin Hood, Sergeant York, Casablanca, High Sierra, and The Maltese Falcon with Humphrey Bogart. As far as producers and studios went, it didn’t get any bigger or better.
Wallis also had a hand in catering to the youth market. He produced many films with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, but by early 1956, sensed the famed comedy duo wanted to go their separate ways and was looking for someone to fill that void.
Colonel Parker was intimately familiar with the law of attraction. The more somebody wanted something or someone, the more you kept them at bay. Wallis sensed great potential with Elvis but wanted him to do a formal screen test before he invested his time and a studio’s money. Parker felt Elvis was a proven commodity and didn’t want anyone “test-driving” his client. If Wallis wanted him, he’d have to pay, and pay through the nose, just like everyone else. Wallis wasn’t going to budge on that matter, but he still let it be known that he wanted Elvis badly. He started a telephone and letter-writing campaign that lasted for several months, to the point where Colonel Parker was vexed and worn down. He finally agreed that Elvis would take a screen test for Wallis at the cost of a round-trip ticket, hotel, and fifty dollars a day in expenses, which would be paid by Paramount Studios, which was eager to see what the singing sensation could do.
On March 25, the day after his final appearance on the Dorsey Brothers’ Stage Show, Elvis flew from New York to Los Angeles, where he was met at LAX by Colonel Parker, his assistant Tom Diskin, and William Morris agent Leonard Hirshan.
From his discussions with Colonel Parker, Wallis knew that Elvis wanted to become a dramatic actor in the mold of James Dean, Marlon Brando, Rod Steiger, and Karl Malden. However, Wallis saw Elvis as a media celebrity who could easily fill in as a movie star. That move, in fact, had become a Paramount staple. The producer set up the screen test to judge how both Elvis’s dramatic and musical talents would come across on film.
Presley’s screen test consisted of two parts. First, using a toy guitar, Elvis would lip-sync a performance to his recording of “Blue Suede Shoes.” It was intended to see if the energy and sex appeal that came across in Presley’s TV appearances could be transferred to film. Following would be two dramatic scenes from The Rainmaker to assess Elvis’s acting potential.
If Elvis was nervous, he certainly didn’t show it. His natural charisma took over, and not only did it take over the screen, it leapt off it. Wallis was extremely pleased. With the test out of the way, Colonel Parker was in a better bargaining position than ever before.
In April 1956, Colonel Parker flew to Los Angeles, where Lastfogel whisked him to the exclusive Hillcrest Country Club on Pico Boulevard to meet Wallis. They were there to negotiate a deal for Elvis’s first feature film, Love Me Tender, for 20th Century Fox,8 starring Debra Paget and Richard Egan, who grew sideburns to play Elvis’s older brother. At first, the studio wanted to sign Elvis as a contract star for around $700 a week. The Colonel rejected that idea immediately. Not only did he want a $15,000 salary9 for Elvis for four weeks of work, but he also demanded a percentage of the gross profits.
Lastfogel could not believe his ears. A percentage deal was virtually unheard of at that time, especially for someone who had never acted before—not even in a high school play. Wallis was aghast. The Colonel quietly pointed out that they wanted Elvis in the movies because they knew his millions of fans would buy tickets.
“It’s as simple as that,” the Colonel said. Lastfogel wasn’t sold. He leaned over and whispered to Parker that he was overreaching.
“Colonel, you’re losing this deal for us,” he said.
Colonel Parker looked Lastfogel dead in the eye and said, “Abe, you can’t lose something you don’t have.”
“It’s just not done this way,” Lastfogel said. With that, the Colonel got up from the table and walked out of the meeting. A few hours later he received a call in his room at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.
“Okay,” conceded Wallis. “You have a piece of the action.”
Although Elvis received third billing in the film, the various posters, one-sheets, lobby cards, publicity stills, and advertising featured a full-length shot of Elvis standing, with guitar in hand, proclaiming, MR. ROCK ’N’ ROLL IN THE STORY HE WAS BORN TO PLAY! On October 28, 1956, at the Paramount Theatre in New York City’s Times Square, a large cutout figure of a mystery man holding a guitar with a question mark teased the next film that would appear there.
Love Me Tender10 debuted on November 16, 1956, while hundreds of young girls gathered outside the Paramount Theatre screamed Elvis’s name as the large cutout was unveiled. This welcome, of course, was all arranged by Colonel Parker. Actor Richard Egan’s contract called for him to receive top billing; the Colonel got around that by getting the studio to place a huge fifteen-foot blowup of Elvis in front of major theaters.
Love Me Tender was so successful that film costs were covered in the first three days of its release. It was the first of thirty-three films Elvis made, all non-exclusive as the Colonel would never tie him down to one studio. Hal Wallis turned out to be their favorite producer, involved in nine Presley pictures in all. He reluctantly had to loan Elvis out to Fox for Love Me Tender as he was busy working on Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957) at the time.
In between recording sessions, movies, and television, Elvis continued making concert appearances. But not without problems. While he may have been the heartthrob of young ladies around the country, that certainly wasn’t the case with their boyfriends and many of their parents. Rock ’n’ roll was under constant attack in most of the puritan press. Many radio stations refused to play Elvis’s music, and some even smashed his records on the air.
Threats of bodily harm and even death forced Colonel Parker to resort to different methods of sneaking Elvis into hotels and venues. One way was to have Elvis lie on a couch, cover him with a piece of canvas, and have it “delivered” to his suite. Another method was to have him hide in a laundry truck if he was headed to a concert.
On one date in Iowa, word spread that he would be pelted with eggs, tomatoes, and other assorted produce if he took to the stage, so police searched every young man as he entered the building. To demonstrate how civic attitudes changed toward Elvis from community to community, when he arrived in New Orleans, the Colonel arranged for him to receive the keys to the city. In Oklahoma City, police and members of the board of censorship attended his afternoon performance to see if they would permit a second show that evening. The chief of police not only saw nothing wrong with his act but asked the Colonel if he could bring his young daughter backstage after the next show to meet Elvis. (Of course, the Colonel took full advantage of the wide disparity in Elvis’s popularity. While his female fans were buying all the “I Love Elvis” buttons, their boyfriends were spending their allowances on “I Hate Elvis” buttons. The Colonel loved it whenever he could cover the spread and sell to both sides.)
Elvis seemed bewildered by all the animosity directed at him. It appeared as if every ill in the country from juvenile delinquency to a complete breakdown of the nation’s morality was being blamed on him and his music. And it was coming from everywhere, from the press to the pulpit. An irate preacher in Des Moines, Iowa, blasted him: “Elvis Presley is morally insane! The spirit of Presleyism has taken down all the bars and standards. Because of this man we are living in a day of jellyfish morality.”
Opposition was especially heavy in the Catholic community. In Canada, eight girls from Ottawa’s Notre Dame Convent School were expelled after attending one of his shows. In St. Louis, girls from Notre Dame High burned him in effigy and destroyed mounds of Elvis souvenirs while praying for forgiveness for their excesses. Many Catholic schools posted “off-limits” notices on their bulletin boards whenever Elvis appeared in their town or city.
All of this weighed heavily on an ailing Gladys Presley. She and Vernon were beginning to receive hate mail at their Memphis home, accusing them of inciting juvenile delinquency through their son. Marie Parker was also receiving criticism from her friends in Madison, Tennessee. Her Garden Glove members told her that she should be ashamed of her husband because his star client was corrupting youth. Church members also began to shun her. This was the period when she began an intense dislike for her husband’s world of show business and would tell anyone within earshot about her hatred of the industry. It was quite a change from the days when her husband had represented “respectable acts” like Eddy Arnold and Hank Snow. Back then, Marie was one of the social leaders of the community. Now, she was a pariah. And she didn’t like it one bit.
The Colonel never really took any of it seriously. He knew that controversy was good for business. A reporter once asked him what he thought of Elvis’s suggestive moves onstage. His response was classic Colonel.
“I’m thinking of putting a wiggle meter on him to see how many wiggles he gets per minute,” he quipped. “I wonder if there’s a world wiggle wecord, er record, out there somewhere.”
Despite the adverse press, the demand to see Elvis in concert, in films, and on television ran high. Ed Sullivan said Elvis would never appear on his popular Sunday night variety show, which broke out many entertainment acts.
If you appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, it meant you’d arrived in show business. For Mr. and Mrs. America, if Ed Sullivan had someone on his show, that person was Someone.
“He’s just not my cup of tea,” Sullivan said dismissively of Elvis. That cup of tea must have boiled over when he finally caved into the public pressure. When he got around to calling Colonel Parker, he was told the price was $50,000, nearly ten times more than any previous act.
Even though Sullivan was one of the most influential people in entertainment at the time, and that people would have killed to appear on his TV show, the host relented and paid the fee. But it was well worth it: he enjoyed his highest ratings ever. More than 80 percent of the country’s TV sets—60 million viewers—were tuned in for the first of Elvis’s three greatly hyped appearances on his show. (Sullivan’s viewing audience at that time averaged about 14 million). In fact, the other networks threw in the towel rather than face the competition. NBC-TV preempted The Steve Allen Show with local movies, something they would also do for Elvis’s second Sullivan appearance six weeks later. The first Sullivan show aired on September 9, 1956, and was hosted by the distinguished British actor Charles Laughton, another “stoneface,” as Sullivan was recovering from an auto accident. Sullivan’s show originated in New York City but, because Elvis was still in Hollywood filming Love Me Tender, his four numbers were performed live at the CBS Television City Studios in Los Angeles, which showed him in full view. It was during his third Sullivan appearance—by popular demand—that the cameras were not permitted to film Elvis from the waist down, a publicity stunt that the Colonel confessed was entirely Sullivan’s idea.
At the end of that run, Sullivan did an about-face and told his national audience, “This is a real decent, fine boy. We’ve never had a more pleasant experience with a big star.”
What a shock this must have been to moral America!
Back in Madison, Tennessee, record amounts of fan mail poured into Colonel Parker’s home office. He insisted that every letter be answered. Fan clubs were popping up all over the world, which meant more marketing opportunities for Elvis, an area of expertise on which the Colonel could have written several books and taught a master class to executives.
One of the first things Colonel Parker did after signing Elvis was to incorporate and form Elvis Presley Enterprises. In 1956, he hired Hank Saperstein, a highly successful film producer, distributor, and promoter to work with him on marketing his star. Manufacturers were selected to produce every kind of collectable merchandise imaginable. By the end of their first year together, Parker and Saperstein came up with more than sixty different pieces of Elvis merchandise, grossing approximately $20 million in sales. The items ranged from shoes, clothing, school supplies, jewelry, buttons, dolls, stuffed animals, wallets, bolo ties, lipstick, hot plate holders, and even dog tags. The “I Love Elvis!” and “I Hate Elvis!” buttons were hot sellers and printed in several languages.
The Colonel was always thinking of new and unusual ways to promote Elvis. To ramp up sales of a new RCA album, the Colonel came up with the idea of giving away a small piece of Elvis’s clothing with each album sale. His parents were asked to collect everything that Elvis no longer wore and ship it to MGM Studios in Hollywood where shirts and pants were cut up into one-inch squares and placed in envelopes that went inside every album cover.
Years later, someone mentioned to the Colonel that the flower beds around Graceland were buzzing with an above normal number of bees.
“Bees?!” exclaimed the Colonel. “Elvis bees! Why, I bet we could get about 25 cents a sting!” The Colonel blazed a trail that set the stage for the marketing of celebrities for generations to come. A writer for the now defunct Look magazine, in its November 13, 1956, issue wrote when referring to the twenty-million-plus teenagers who were dishing out money for Elvis items: “Perhaps it is to lighten our burdens that the Lord sends us from time to time, imaginative men like Colonel Parker who realizes that life is a great hilarious fruitcake loaded with potential profits. It was Parker who founded the Great Elvis Presley Industry.”
Now manager of America’s hottest young superstar, as well as its most controversial, the Colonel arranged for the mayor of Tupelo, Mississippi, Elvis’s birthplace, to proclaim September 26, 1956, as “Elvis Presley Day.” His parents and grandmother and an endless procession of relatives he really didn’t know that well joined him in a triumphant return home as friends and fans turned out by the thousands. He did two shows at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show, the same arena in which he had appeared as a ten-year-old, performing the country classic “Old Shep.” It was his first public performance. Now, over twenty thousand screaming fans showed up and turned the event into pure bedlam. It was later reported that more than fifty thousand people were turned away at the gate. Fortunately, the Colonel anticipated what the reaction would be to Elvis’s homecoming and augmented the hundred members of the Tupelo City Police Department and the Mississippi State Highway Patrol with troops from the local National Guard. Still, some crazed teenagers made it through the police line and ended up onstage where they managed to rip buttons from Elvis’s shirt. Of course, this horrified his mother Gladys and grandmother Minnie Mae, who were sitting in the audience.
By the end of their first mind-boggling year together, Colonel Parker had taken a hip-swinging, singing Memphis truck driver under his direction and changed the entertainment and music industries forever. The Wall Street Journal reported that since the Colonel had started marketing Elvis merchandise, they had grossed some $22 million in sales. His records and albums were selling in the millions, and his first movie established him as the next big male film superstar. He was firmly entrenched in the then 90 percent top tax bracket.
With the phenomenal success of Love Me Tender and the resulting hit single and album, the film studios were quick to spot a formula that would work to perfection for the next several years. In Elvis Presley’s case, that meant finding a good working script, recording several songs (including, possibly, a title tune), filming the movie quickly, and lining up the movie to coincide with the release of (hopefully) a number one song. This would be followed shortly thereafter by a quality soundtrack album.
The Colonel was the first manager to conceive of a synergy to cross-promote all these entertainment products. The movie ads would promote the RCA single and album, and the album cover in turn would promote the movie. The system functioned like a well-oiled machine.
Vernon Presley handled all his son’s personal finances. Having survived the Great Depression, Vernon was known to be extremely tight with a dollar. Many times, the Colonel would divert money directly to Elvis without Vernon being aware. A letter he sent to Elvis around this time was written in code (he addressed it to Private First Class Faron Presley) that read like gibberish. But it included a check for $1,000 and was signed “The Admiral.” That, I’m sure, Elvis understood.
In January, 1957, Elvis started work at Paramount on his second film, Loving You, the first of nine movies he made with producer Hal Wallis. Colonel Parker negotiated another incredible deal, including top billing over established stars Lizabeth Scott and Wendell Corey. In addition to a $20,000 salary, Elvis received 50 percent of the film’s net profits. The deal had the potential of making Elvis the highest-paid movie star in history. Vernon and Gladys Presley made a cameo appearance in a concert segment near the end of the film, much to the delight of Elvis. His mother passed away a year later, and it was said that Elvis never viewed the movie again.
The film was another musical drama that could have passed for an Elvis biography—a truck driver who could sing, named Deke Rivers, was discovered by a music publicist. That’s because the script was tailored to Elvis’s life at the time by screenwriters Herbert Baker and Hal Kanter, who also directed the picture. Kanter traveled to Memphis to meet with Elvis and to shadow him for a few weeks. He went to Shreveport, Louisiana, to witness Elvis’s last performance on the Louisiana Hayride. He saw firsthand the reaction from the fans, as well as Colonel Parker’s handling of his client, all of which ended up in the script.
Elvis received his first screen kiss from not one, but three starlets. Not a bad way to earn a paycheck. The results from the film were the same as before: Loving You became a top-grossing motion picture for Paramount Studios, and its lead single, “(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear,” backed with “Loving You,” became a million-selling single. The album, which was loaded with hits and famous cover songs, spent ten weeks at number 1 on the Billboard Top Pop Album chart. It was later certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
The film premiered on July 9, 1957, at the Strand Theatre in Memphis, and opened nationally on July 30. The single-screen theater wasn’t as grand as some of Memphis’s other movie cathedrals, but it sat approximately a thousand people and could accommodate large crowds on a date night. To cash in on Elvis’s massive appeal, for the first time ever, Paramount made a conscious decision to bypass the established first-run theater system. Instead, they opted for a wide release, placing the movie in neighborhood theaters across the nation. This new structure, which the studio called the “Presley Pattern,” delivered the product straight to its market by cutting the expenses of splashy premieres in downtown theaters, choosing to place the film directly in suburban theaters for a wider and more profitable release.
Shortly after the movie wrapped, Colonel Parker received a letter from famed Hollywood director, Cecil B. DeMille, whose works included The Ten Commandments, Union Pacific, and The Greatest Show on Earth. DeMille praised Parker as a “deep nick in Elvis Presley’s wheel—and certainly to his good.” The Colonel wasn’t starstruck by any man or woman, but I can assure you this telegram was one of the Colonel’s prized possessions.
Elvis had barely completed Loving You before he was on the set of Jailhouse Rock in May 1957, utilizing the same successful formula as before. The film co-starred former child star Judy Tyler, who died in a tragic Wyoming traffic accident just a week after filming was completed.
Jailhouse Rock would long be considered one of Elvis’s best films, with the title song becoming a number one smash hit. The main production number from Jailhouse Rock was choreographed by noted dancer and choreographer Alex Romero, from films taken of Elvis performing onstage, and is recognized as the forerunner to today’s pop music videos.
Stars like Paul Newman, Russ Tamblyn, Jean Simmons, and Gene Kelly dropped by the set to watch Elvis perform, applauding when a scene was completed. These were people Elvis grew up watching and admiring, and it must have felt surreal that these celebrities were now coming to his place of work to fête him. Elvis, of course, was gracious and polite, and his reputation for impeccable Southern manners resonated throughout Hollywood. Word of mouth was that he was a good guy and there was no diva-like behavior with him.
Colonel Parker went the extra mile in his job duties by keeping in constant contact with Vernon and Gladys Presley to let them know everything was going well. When the Colonel couldn’t call or write, he had Tom Diskin handle it. On May 21, 1957, just after filming began on Jailhouse Rock, Diskin wrote a letter to Vernon and Gladys Presley informing them that Elvis was happy, well, and enthusiastic. He also apprised them of Elvis’s condition after an emergency operation. Lastly, Diskin informs Elvis’s parents that his El Dorado could no longer accommodate all of his staff (“The Memphis Mafia”) and that he needed to buy a limousine.
Diskin’s mention of the Presleys’ new home was a reminder of Colonel Parker’s largesse. On April 19, 1957, the Colonel co-signed a loan for $29,250 with the bank so the Presleys could purchase a home at 1034 Audubon Drive in a well-to-do Memphis neighborhood. While Elvis was making good money, the Presley family had absolutely no credit rating on their own. With Vernon’s prison background and the state of their finances, Vernon and Gladys had been unable to obtain a loan. The Colonel came through for them. Thanks to him, the Presleys had a nice home and every monthly payment of $160.61 was made on time, thanks to Elvis’s royalties from “Heartbreak Hotel.”
The Presleys loved their new four-bedroom ranch-style home with a carport and backyard swimming pool. However, the postwar suburban abode failed to provide privacy from an increasing army of fans who congregated there, some of whom began camping on the Presleys’ front lawn. The neighbors even complained they couldn’t park their cars and could not cross the street without a police escort for most of the thirteen months Elvis lived there.
Elvis later found and fell in love with a beautiful colonial estate set in an oak grove in Whitehaven, Tennessee, just eight miles south of Memphis off Highway 51, later renamed Elvis Presley Boulevard. He christened the estate “Graceland.” Today Graceland is the second-most-visited home in the United States, after the White House, and millions know it by name and image.
Ruth Brown Moore, then separated from her husband, sold the property, which included a four-car garage and its fourteen surrounding acres, to Elvis on March 19, 1957, for $100,000. A month later, his parents moved into the enchanting mansion. Elvis wasted no time making the place his own, erecting a stone wall and installing the famous music-themed gates. Elvis, who was filming Jailhouse Rock at the time, didn’t spend his first night at Graceland until June 26, 1957, but he visited while the work was in progress.
With the movie and recording career taking up most of Elvis’s time, Colonel Parker booked Elvis on only four short concert tours during all of 1957. In March, he played four dates in major Midwest cities. That September he toured the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia with five shows in four days. It was the only time Elvis ever played outside the United States. The following month, he was booked for shows in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Oakland. During the California excursion, he once again came under increased police scrutiny. The Los Angeles chief of police sent word to Elvis through an emissary to “clean up his act” and dispatched several officers from the LAPD vice squad to film his stage antics from the back of the Pan-Pacific Auditorium. Elvis, who was usually very respectful of authority, made an imaginary halo with his fingers over his head and offered his wrists up for handcuffs.
“I’m glad to see I have so many fans in the police department,” he joked. Nothing came of it, but the Colonel told the press afterward that their next concerts would be in Hawaii, “where everyone wiggles!”
At a party in his suite at the Knickerbocker Hotel after the show, Elvis met Ricky Nelson while hosting entertainers Sammy Davis Jr., Tommy Sands, Nick Adams, and Carol Channing. Ricky revealed to me years later that the two of them had a private get-together. He said Elvis, who had watched him for years on The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet, took note that Ricky was now touring and gave him some special advice.
“When you are being led through a crowd of girls by your bodyguards, make sure never to hook your arms with them, just put your hands on their shoulders and let them pull you,” Elvis said. “One time a girl grabbed onto my crotch from behind and I was dragged for a long way before I could get the bodyguards’ attention!”
Ricky howled, thinking that was the funniest thing he had ever heard. But he also knew how treacherous running a gauntlet of crazed teenage girls could be.
Even though Ricky Nelson, who I managed for several years, was competing with Elvis for the title of King of Rock ’n’ Roll, the two men got along well and genuinely liked each other. They played football, baseball, and softball together when Elvis lived in Los Angeles during the “movie years.” They also hung out together in Palm Springs in the 1960s and 1970s. I remember one night we all went to the Howard Manor to see Jody Reynolds and Bobby Craig perform a set. Jody was a friend of mine, but Elvis knew about him. Bobby was Ricky’s keyboard player. The two performed songs by Elvis and Ricky Nelson, and the crowd ate it up. It was a fun evening for all, and the audience went nuts.
Ricky was especially close with Colonel Parker and thought the world of him. Truth be told, there were many times when he was much closer to the Colonel than Elvis. However, Ricky was the rare performer who did not want Colonel to manage him.
“Rick, you should go see Bill Belew. He makes all of Elvis’s jumpsuits,” the Colonel told him once. What the Colonel didn’t know was that Ricky was not fond of the jumpsuit years and left it at that.
Elvis closed out the 1957 tour by sailing to Hawaii on the USS Matsonia for three shows, one of which was before ten thousand servicemen and -women and their dependents at Pearl Harbor. The Colonel and his staff flew over but sailed back on the USS Lurline with Elvis.
By this time, Al Dvorin not only assisted the Colonel and Tom Diskin on tour but he was also booking the opening acts and conducting the orchestra. For the two Hawaii shows, Al figured he could find plenty of good opening acts from the mainland who were appearing there. He was surprised to find there were none. He took in every show on the island before he came across a Polynesian revue performing at the Queen’s Surf Hotel on Waikiki Beach. Al signed the entire group to open both performances and announced it as “Elvis’s special tribute to the beautiful people of Hawaii.” The audience loved it.
For those three shows (two at the Honolulu Stadium and one at the Schofield Barracks), Elvis wore his famous gold lamé jacket. These were some of his greatest shows ever, and his last concerts of the 1950s.
After arriving back on the mainland, Elvis returned to Graceland, where he would spend Christmas of 1957 with his family. His most important holiday greeting came from Dwight D. Eisenhower on December 20.
It wasn’t a card with a tree and Santa on it. It was a standard draft letter signed by the president of the United States.
Elvis was told he had a month to report to Kennedy Veterans Hospital in Memphis for his physical on January 20, 1958. Once he passed, he was the possession of the United States government for the next two years.
The King of Rock ’n’ Roll was being busted down to Private E-1 Elvis A. Presley.