late June, 2005
- Celebrating the King: Fans dusting off their blue suede shoes for Elvis Week
By GEORGETTE GOUVEIA
(South Bend Tribune, June 26, 2005)
Hard to believe, isn't it, that an entire generation has grown up, graduated college and started careers since Elvis Presley last sang live on planet Earth? And I'm referring to the real Elvis, not the ersatz Elvises inhabiting Vegas and car shows in Indy.
Yet in the 28 years since Aug. 16, 1977, there has been no let-up in the number of fanatics, followers and curious who come to Graceland, Presley's Southern Colonial mansion home set back from the highway in the midst of a fast food/gas station strip like a tulip in a bed of weeds. Graceland has become the biggest tourist attraction in Memphis and one of the most popular in the United States since opening to the public in 1982. More than 600,000 people walk through Graceland's halls annually, making this one of the nation's most visited homes.
Graceland, the late Elvis Presley's mansion in Memphis, Tenn., has become one of the nation's
most popular tourist destinations
since its opening in 1982.
Photo provided/GRACELAND
It is never busier than in mid-August, around the anniversary of Presley's death. That time has become an unofficial holiday in the entertainer's honor and a full week -- this year, from Aug. 8 to 16 -- is proclaimed Elvis Week. This, says Todd Morgan, Graceland's director of media and creative development, is the time when the diehards come in droves. The week's highlight occurs Aug. 15, the eve of the anniversary of Presley's death, when thousands walk from Graceland's circular driveway to the Presley grave site in the Meditation Gardens behind the house, then back to the front gate as part of a candlelight ceremony.
The tribute started spontaneously on Aug. 16, 1977, when Elvis died suddenly. As soon as his fans heard the news, they dropped their day-to-day obligations to come to Memphis and comfort one another as they stared in disbelief at the grand pillared mansion. More fans came the next year. Before long, a tradition was born. Regardless of dates, few are bored with this paean to the King, a 14-room mansion that rock's first superstar bought for $100,000 in 1957. Visitors might be awed, grossed out, thrilled or shocked. But boredom is rare.
The general tour starts sedately enough as you enter the front hallway from which you view the dining, living and music rooms. They seem as if they could fit in any wealthy person's home. There's a 15-foot-long lush, white sofa and a black Story & Clark baby grand piano. The family portraits give away the identity of the owner of this particular house; one of young Elvis and another of wife Priscilla and 2-year-old daughter Lisa Marie are sentimental favorites. Nothing seems particularly outrageous. Then the tour descends the mirror-covered staircase. And that's when you encounter the offbeat.
Tiffany lamps and more than 350 yards of hot paisley fabric on the walls and ceilings set the tone in the billiards room; Elvis wanted it to have a turn-of-the-century feel. The blue and yellow television room boasts three TV sets -- there are 11 more elsewhere in the house -- lined up side by side so Elvis could watch three football games simultaneously.
Three televisions were installed in Elvis' TV room so that he could watch multiple football games at once.
He got the idea from President Lyndon Johnson, who liked to watch all three major network newscasts simultaneously.
Photo provided/GRACELAND
The jungle room
Finally, you climb back upstairs and enter the den. Graceland guides say Elvis furnished it on a whim. While driving past a Memphis furniture store, Elvis stopped his car and within a half hour purchased every piece of furniture that reminded him of Hawaii. That included a sofa and chairs covered in faux fur, solid green carpeting for the floor, walls and ceiling, an easy chair with carved wooden snakes as arms and an artificial waterfall that often went berserk, flooding nearby rooms. The room has become known as the jungle room, but Elvis never called it that. The media did, and the name has stuck.
Tourists have called it everything from tacky to grotesque to simply, unique. Some see it as a product of a poor boy from the Mississippi backwoods who loved his parents and invited them to live in his plush new home, then filled it with the evidence of the wealth he never dreamed he'd have. This included the essential and the excessive. Todd Morgan says all he sees in the den is a man with a sense of humor. It doesn't bother him that a year after their visits, many tourists unable to recall the living and dining rooms will vividly remember the jungle room. But Morgan does get annoyed that some visitors come with prejudices and use the home to fit their preconceived ideas. "Some people want him to weigh 300 pounds and have two handfuls of pills," concedes Morgan. It's this attitude that frustrates and angers him -- for the Elvis you meet here is neither a saint nor a reckless Sybarite. He is a sensitive man with deep interests in religion and philosophy and a keen sense of humor. His problems and the fact that he had them is neither denied nor downplayed. They are put into perspective.
Outside Graceland
Graceland's outbuildings today have names such as the Hall of Gold and the Trophy Room, and they have been turned into showcases for Elvis' kudos and collectibles. Among them: Grammys, gold records, movie posters and stage costumes including one with sequins that was the last he would ever wear. Morgan says some visitors who pass it shake their heads and say Elvis was too fat to have been able to fit inside it, supporting Morgan's premise that some don't want to let go of their perceptions.
But you will also see evidence of the Presley wit of which Morgan speaks. Resting in a case by his costumes is the singer's jewelry. Included are a Hebrew chai and a Christian cross. Elvis wore both. "Why miss Heaven on a technicality?" Elvis was known to ask with a smile. But he seriously studied all faiths in looking for an answer to the purpose of existence and a solution to his question, "Why me?"
For lighter diversions, Elvis had cars. From a dune buggy to a 1955 pink Cadillac to a 1973 Stutz Blackhawk, Elvis drove them all. All his vehicles are lovingly ensconced in the Elvis Presley Automobile Museum, one of several supplemental attractions in a large plaza across the street from the home.
The exit is through Meditation Gardens by the graves of Elvis, his parents, his grandmother and his twin brother who died at birth. But the grave site is just a minimal part of the Graceland trip and Morgan de-emphasizes it. Of the entire experience Morgan says, "There's nothing cold or morbid or sad here. Graceland is a celebration. Elvis inspired us to dream and live our dreams."
- The immortals
By GEORGETTE GOUVEIA
(JOURNAL NEWS, June 26, 2005)
Considering that they're all dead, it's been a very good year for Marlon Brando, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley. Indeed, this year should prove a high point in their life-in-death careers. On Thursday, Christie's in Manhattan will auction Brando's personal property - hard on the high heels of a successful sale of Monroe memorabilia at Julien's Auctions in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, a Broadway musical, CBS miniseries and Discovery Channel poll have kept Presley in the spotlight - as new books, an illuminating documentary and a DVD boxed set anticipate the 50th anniversary of Dean's death, on Sept. 30. All of this, of course, generates considerable income for the estates of stars who first wrote their names in stone more than a half-century ago.
... When it comes to selling, however, Presley is still The King. Recently named one of the top 25 Americans - by a poll for the Discovery Channel's "Greatest American" series, which concludes with the No. 1 pick at 9 tonight - Elvis made $40 million last year, leading Forbes magazine's list of most profitable dead celebrities. Presley and Monroe are in a completely different class from Brando and Dean, who are nevertheless extremely collectible, says Robert Schagrin, co-owner of Gotta Have It!, a Manhattan emporium that deals in investment-quality pop-cultural mementos. ... Monroe embodied both the soft underbelly and brittle exterior of the blond bombshell. The Dionysian Presley blended sex with indigenous music to become the first rock star. Yet they all had - have - one quality in common, Schagrin says "There's a magic ... they possessed."
... That luck may be defined as the perfect union of an individual and an era. "Elvis said, 'I came along at the right time'," says Laurie Foos, author of the new novel "Before Elvis There Was Nothing" (Coffee House Press). In a larger sense, the 1950s, a repressive yet relatively stable period in America, provided the platinum setting in which the jewel-like talents of Brando, Dean, Monroe and Presley could sparkle, as well as the restless yearning in which dramatic change could be born. Gail Levin's evocative PBS documentary "James Dean: Sense Memories" presents the '50s as a watershed in which young people began shaping culture rather than leaving it to their elders.
Did Brando, Dean and Presley - with their rebel appearance - initiate this tectonic shift, or merely symbolize it? While many experts say both, Brando, writing in his 1994 memoir, "Songs My Mother Taught Me," had other ideas. "Because we were around when it happened, Jimmy Dean and I were sometimes cast as symbols of this transformation - and in some cases as instigators of alienation. But the sea change in society ... would have occurred with or without us. Our movies didn't precipitate the new attitudes, but the response to them mirrored the changes bubbling to the surface." Those changes had been simmering since the early 20th century, Gehring says. The difference was that the '50s represented "the first time there was so much affluence in the middle class. Kids had the free time to get into trouble."
And what stars most often explored, on- and off-screen in the strait-laced '50s, was the sex that reveals as it conceals: Elvis' pelvis swiveling just south of the TV camera; Marilyn's white halter dress undulating in "The Seven Year Itch" (1955); Brando's bare back rippling through a torn T-shirt in "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951). "It was done with a wink as opposed to [today's] open-mouthed 'Duh,' " says Sam Staggs, author of the new "When Blanche Met Brando: The Scandalous Story of 'A Streetcar Named Desire' " (St. Martin's Press). "I can't imagine anyone being turned on by Brad Pitt or Britney Spears. They just bore me to tears."
"Not only is the Marilyn story a narrative, it's a symbolic narrative," says Churchwell, who sees Monroe's transformation from drab, orphaned Norma Jean to glamorous but troubled Marilyn as an act of self-determination. "It's Cinderella. It's rags to riches. It's Greek tragedy." Novelist Foos describes Presley as "a representation of the drama and the downfall of the American dream." It's poignant to see how these metaphoric lives intersected: Presley admired Dean, who idolized Brando, who befriended Monroe. The Brando auction contains another of these intersections, a telegram he sent Monroe on Feb. 27, 1961, as she underwent psychiatric care at New York Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan.
Transcending time
... Deaniacs like to speculate on what his life would have been like had he not been killed in his Porsche 550 Spyder on a California highway on Sept. 30, 1955. But there's a good chance he'd be a dinosaur in the youth culture he encapsulated. (One of the most chilling sentences in Churchwell's book is actress Elizabeth Hurley's remark that "If I were as fat as Marilyn Monroe, I'd kill myself."). It's telling that the July issue of Playboy, which contains an article on Brando's last days, chose to run a large picture of the actor in his muscle-T youth and smaller ones of his corpulent, aged infirmity.
But perhaps it's possible to transcend beauty's surface for another interpretation: The '50s icons have freed us from the corpulence of time, enabling us to think of life and death in any way we want. ...
- Illusions of grandeur: image, power and paranoia
By Germaine Greer
(Guardian Online, June 25, 2005)
... Without the creation of a visual analogue that can be replicated ad infinitum, power, no matter how absolute, remains imperceptible. Western autarchs have seen the dissemination of images of their superhuman selves as indispensable to their rule since at least the fourth century BC. As Alexander the Great advanced into Asia, he ordered a depiction of his features to be placed on the coins minted and the medals struck to celebrate his conquests. His profile would be the image chosen for medals and coins, to imbue the new subjects with a due sense of the power of the Greek state along with the illusion of personal rule. Then as now, all was not as it seemed. The face on the coins may have been no more than a mask. There is no record of Alexander actually sitting for a sculptor. Given the rantipole rate of his eastward progress, he probably never did. The profile we have come to accept as that of Alexander is also that of the boy god, Apollo. Alexander's laurels are the same as the ones that gird Apollo's head. That image has outlived Alexander by more than two millennia; now no one knows whether specific images are of Alexander or Apollo. One has unavoidably morphed into the other, which was probably just what Alexander intended. Who cares what he actually looked like? He is the Apollonian profile, brow sliding to axe-blade nosetip without hitch, beardless cheeks, huge eyes, small mouth with pleated lips. This ideal type surfaces occasionally, and like the helots of antiquity we fall on our faces before it. The most stunning recent avatar of the type was Elvis Presley, whose classic profile could have been lifted off one of Alexander's coins. ...
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