DATE: 1956.
WHAT IT IS: An automobile purchased by Elvis Presley that, according to legend, was repainted purple after he had made his color preference known in a manner that was quintessentially Elvis.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE: The car is purple and has white upholstery, whitewall tires, tail fins, and massive chrome detail.
The car languished in a backyard shed for many years, then was left out in an open field, where, exposed to the elements, it began to crumble away. The 1956 convertible Cadillac Eldorado Baritz had been a precious possession of Elvis Presley’s when he was a hot young rock ‘n’ roll star, but just as he faded from public view for a time in his later years only to reemerge in a new blaze of glory, so his car was forgotten until it was rescued at an auction and restored by a used car dealer and his wife, both Elvis fans.
Elvis Presley had a passion for cars. Once his new fame had accorded him sufficient income, he purchased a pink Cadillac in December 1954. Some months later this car caught on fire and was destroyed, and in the summer of 1955 Elvis acquired another Cadillac, a pink Fleetwood. The next year he bought a pink Cadillac limousine. When it became widely known that Elvis was driving pink Cadillacs, he was forced to give them up, as his car would be mobbed. He gave his 1955 Fleetwood to his parents, but it wasn’t long before Vernon and Gladys couldn’t drive it either. Thinking Elvis must be driving the car, fans besieged his mother and father.
The Presleys had been relatively poor, and with Elvis’s escalation to stardom, Cadillacs were seen as a suitable reflection of the family’s newfound wealth and rise in social status. Whatever the psychological reasons that drew Elvis to Cadillacs, 1956, the year he bought his Eldorado Baritz, was a watershed year for him; the cost of the sumptuous vehicle was not an issue. (Elvis’s taste in cars eventually broadened, and his later purchases included a Rolls-Royce, a Ferrari, an MG, and a Stutz Blackhawk.)
The well-known story of Elvis’s transformation from impoverished country boy to the “king of rock ‘n’ roll” is classically American. Born in Tupelo, Mississippi, on January 8, 1935, with a stillborn twin brother, Elvis was his parents’ only child. The family had little money but found inspiration at church, where Elvis was exposed to gospel music. Recognition of his musical talent came early, as he won fourth place in the Tupelo State Fair talent contest in which he was entered by his fifth-grade teacher at East Tupelo Consolidated School (later renamed Lawhon Elementary School). Elvis attended Humes High School in Memphis, where his family moved in 1948, and after graduating he worked for a tool company, then drove a truck.
One summer day in 1953, shortly after he graduated, during a lunch break from his job Elvis went into a recording studio and paid four dollars to record a couple of songs so he could present the acetate demo to his mother as a gift. The following January he returned to the studio, owned by Sun Records’ head Sam Phillips, to record some more songs, and met Philips there for the first time. Phillips was looking for a white male who could sing soulfully and invited Elvis to record some songs with top-notch musicians he hired for the occasion. One of the songs in this session in early July 1954, “That’s All Right,” became a regional smash, and Presley began appearing on local television shows and having additional local hits. He had two different managers before Colonel Tom Parker took over the reins of the young singer’s career. In late 1955, RCA bought out Presley’s Sun Records contract for a then-exorbitant sum, and with the proceeds, Elvis purchased the Cadillac that he later gave to his parents. RCA and Elvis wasted no time in readying the new product for the market, and the following January Elvis went into a Nashville recording studio and recorded a package of new songs that would make him a star.
Indeed, 1956 was a banner year for the young singer. Elvis topped the national pop charts with “Heartbreak Hotel,” “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You,” “Don’t Be Cruel,” “Hound Dog,” and “Love Me Tender,” and he appeared on the national television shows of Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, Milton Berle, and Steve Allen, in addition to making two of his three famous appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show (his third Ed Sullivan appearance was in January 1957). Sullivan had initially refused to book Presley, but changed his mind after the singer had performed on the other shows, paying $50,000 for Presley’s three appearances. In March 1957, the now-celebrated twenty-two-year-old icon of the young generation purchased an estate in Memphis called Graceland for $102,500.
With his suave looks, shiny black pompadour, and unique singing style, not to mention a selection of up-tempo songs that showcased his electric rhythm—his nickname “Elvis the Pelvis” referred to his whirling gyrations—the southerner had by now captured the public’s imagination and was in the process of transforming the relatively new genre of rock ‘n’ roll into the cultural idiom of the younger generation. Indeed, Elvis Presley was on his way to becoming not only rock’s most famous and enduring individual star, but the most imitated, recognizable, and celebrated singer of the twentieth century. In 1956 he even commenced what became a flourishing movie career, debuting in the Civil War drama Love Me Tender, the first of thirty-three feature films he would star in.
With his outstanding success, Elvis had the financial freedom to indulge himself. And so after having picked out and paid for a brand-new white 1956 Cadillac Eldorado Baritz while in Houston on one of his concert tours—Elvis frequently performed in Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana—on June 12 Elvis flew with his eighteen-year-old girlfriend June Juanico (who purchased her airline ticket under the name June Pritchard) to Houston to pick up his new Eldorado. Elvis wasted no time trying out his new set of wheels, and the next day drove it back to Memphis with June.
Elvis adored the car, but after only about a year and a half he decided he needed a new one. In December 1957 he traded in his Eldorado Baritz. Having “inside” information on the crooner’s swap, Lena Moskovitz, an acquaintance of Elvis’s mother and fan of the singer, rushed to the dealer and purchased it for $4,000 in cash and a trade-in on her 1954 Cadillac. Moskovitz drove the car until around 1964, then parked it in a shed at her Phoenix City, Alabama, home. Here the car remained hidden away. When Lena Moskovitz Smith died in 1974, her husband, Herbert O’Dell Smith, a stuntman whose specialty was being buried alive, moved to College Park, Georgia, leaving the Eldorado in an open field, probably in Phoenix City, Alabama. Here the car was exposed to the elements and to vandals who scribbled graffiti on it.
Although Elvis never regained his ’50s stature, he wasn’t long out of the public mind in later years. His biggest career slump occurred from 1966 through early 1968. His so-called comeback concert in 1968 at a Hollywood studio (his first concert since 1961) was number one in the ratings, and this reception showed that the indifferent box-office success of his movies had not been his fault. Elvis, who had 105 charted hits, was the number two artist of the ’60s, number eleven in the ’70s, and the number one concert box-office draw in both 1973 and 1977—the year he died, in August. During his last few years, Elvis, who was damaging his health by abusing prescribed drugs, was no longer so drawn to the limelight, but he wasn’t a recluse. He undertook concert tours, as well as regularly attending movies in Memphis, driving around town, and signing autographs for eager fans at the gate of Graceland.
After rotting for years in an open field, Elvis Presley's 1956 purple Cadillac was recovered and restored to its original splendor.
In 1976, the car was purchased for $975 at an auction by James Cantrell, a used car dealer, and his wife, Jean, from Columbus, Georgia. The Cantrells spent $30,000 of their own money to restore the car and repaint it purple. The couple intended to show the restored car to Elvis as a surprise. Unfortunately, just before the restoration of his 1956 purple Cadillac was completed, Elvis Presley died at the age of forty-two.
Elvis is dead (sightings notwithstanding), but his Eldorado is a reminder not only of the star’s lavish tastes as a young man, but of his flamboyant nature.
On July 27, 1957, just over a year after he bought it, Elvis drove his Cadillac Eldorado Baritz into the Jimmy Saunders Custom Auto Shop in Memphis to have it painted. He also had mechanics add taillight bullets, convert the interior to purple and white, and inscribe the floor mats with his EP monogram, but painting the exterior of the car weighed heavily on his mind. In fact, shortly before he took the car over to Jimmy Saunders’s, Elvis demonstrated to his maternal aunt, Lorraine Smith, exactly what shade of purple he had in mind.
Young Elvis, conversing with his Aunt Lorraine at Graceland, mentioned his intention to have the car painted. A simple announcement of a common task to be sure, but there was to be no mistake about the color. Picking up a bunch of purple grapes, he asked his aunt to follow him outside. In the driveway, Elvis lifted his arm and smashed the grapes down heavily on the car’s gleaming white surface. Then he turned to her and declared, “That’s the color I want it to be!”
LOCATION: Graceland, Memphis, Tennessee.