Elvis Ignited

by Kealing, Bob;

  As Presley waited in his small dressing room high above the stage, he scrawled his signature on the wall, circling it for emphasis. Today that faded autograph is still a closely guarded treasure; kept under a clear covering and cut out of the wall after a water leak nearly ruined it. The Polk Theater remains a stately landmark in downtown Lakeland. On the night Presley arrived, seven young male ushers waited outside the theater. One of them sneered at a Presley playbill and remarked: “The thought of him makes me want to go inside and vomit.”

  After weeks of preview stories, Donaldson finally had the chance to see Presley in action: “He lumbered from behind the curtain … hitching up his trousers. Everybody screamed. He leaned back, grinned at the musicians and swayed. Everybody screamed again.” As the girls pressed toward the front of the stage, a photo shows Presley leaning forward on one knee, moving tantalizingly close. Lakeland police officer Jimmy Mock Sr. has his back to the crowd, partially bent over, knee up on a low railing, looking none-too-pleased to be the human barrier between the screaming girls and the object of their teen crushes. Staring at Presley, sixteen-year-old usher Clyde Hostetler in a white shirt and bow tie seems oblivious to the maelstrom surrounding him.

  While photographer Art Perkins took pictures, Mildred Slayton, who was married and older than most in the crowd, handed him flash bulbs. “It was just absolutely fascinating watching the kids. They tried climbing on the stage and they [the police] kept pushing them back.”

  Another controversial aspect of Presley’s performance was the way he laughed and smiled. Was he laughing with the crowd, or at them? Slayton thought the latter: “He was such an egotist. He kept looking in the wings with such a grin, as if he were saying, ‘Look at all these people making asses of themselves.’” Presley told reporters it was fun watching his young fans: “I get tickled at those kids in the front row. And then too I get tickled at my own mistakes. I’m all the time forgetting words.”

  After the first show, stage manager Lee Gregg had to warn Presley not to be so careless with the microphone, the only one in the theater. “He went out with the mike and he’d let it loose to flop back and forth on the stand,” Gregg explained. After a good talking to, he said Presley “behaved himself.”

  Always standing in the shadows, ready to count up money from the till, Tom Parker complained that fans couldn’t hear the singer and demanded a better PA system for the afternoon and evening shows.

  Between concerts, June Juanico stepped out to get Presley some water. “Is June just one of your 25 regulars?” Donaldson asked, referring to Presley’s attempts to downplay his relationship with June in the press. He looked disgusted, but it was Presley himself feeding that kind of information to reporters, along with Parker. “She means more to me than any other girl ever has,” said Presley in a show of candor. “But I haven’t known her very long.”

  Presley, who complained that he slept only three to four hours a night, looked worn out. And who wouldn’t be, when the downtime between shows included a continuing dialogue with the press? Donaldson took issue with Presley’s explanation that his gyrations were all simply part of feeling the music.

  “Surely Elvis,” Donaldson probed. “You don’t honestly believe that all those motions simply are part of feeling the songs?”

  Presley broke into a smile and admitted, “Well, part of it is put on you might say.” Score another one for the enterprising young reporter. The most incisive, interesting, and controversial comments from and about Elvis Presley during his Florida tours came in association with his August 6 stop at the Polk Theater in Lakeland. Presley told Donaldson his favorite song was his new single, “Don’t Be Cruel.” He said he loved his fans and despite all their screaming and hysterics, it didn’t make him nervous. He recounted throwing his trousers out of the hotel window in Miami to fans down below. “I don’t know if they tore them apart or not,” said Presley. “When I left, they were still fighting over them.”

  Finally, after all the preview stories, interviews, and staking out the young king of rock and roll, Donaldson summed up what it was like to experience Presleymania in Lakeland. “It’s hard to make a clear cut statement about the 21 year-old singer,” she concluded. “On stage he is obscene, ridiculous and sullen, yet he gets $50,000 a week because of his on stage appearances. Off stage he appears polite and good-natured, only too eager to tell the truth about the way he acts and feels.”

  In the end, the burlesque dancer analogy was apt. Give them a wink and a nod, a few gyrations. Tease them, get them all worked up, yet show them very little. Take their money and move on to the next town. It was all out of the former carny confidence man Tom Parker’s playbook. At the same time, Presley’s undeniable talent and one-of-a-kind voice were making an indelible and historic mark on the Billboard charts; the ultimate endurance test separating legends from lessers.

  Again it was Donaldson doing all the memorable reporting in Lakeland. She noted that Presley’s records had already grossed $6,000,000, not bad for a kid “who never took a guitar lesson and cannot read music.” In two weeks leading up to the Lakeland shows, his remake of “Hound Dog” sold 900,000 copies, “to set a new alltime high.” Those undeniably remarkable sales figures rarely found their way into the trite musings of small town reporters, big city columnists, or apologetic editorial boards.

  Besides the photo of him on the stairs, Donaldson had another special memory of her time with Presley, an autograph which he inscribed: “To Elvy, from Elvis the Pelvis.” That night, Parker left town to do more advance work for the tour. Presley and Juanico were assured of having no late night surprise visits from him in their hotel room. After witnessing the extraordinary response from young female fans at a trio of Florida tour stops, Juanico was feeling insecure.

  “What’s it like to be loved by so many girls?” she asked him.

  Presley tried to put into words the feeling of being onstage during all the electrifying hysteria. “It’s almost like making love,” he explained. “But it’s even stronger than that.”

  In her memoir Juanico said her feelings of insecurity were more justified than ever with that statement: “Not only did he have his choice of girls, he was making love to all of them at the same time.”

  That night, the two kissed passionately and slept in the same bed. If there was any time for Presley to forget about Tom Parker’s admonition not to get too close to his Mississippi flame, it was August 6, 1956, alone with her in a Lakeland hotel room. At what Juanico described as the “point of no return,” Presley came to a dead stop. “We can’t do this baby, the time is not right,” he told Juanico, who was clearly ready to consummate her love for Presley. “I was tingling all over,” she wrote.

  Within fifteen minutes the exhausted singer had fallen asleep. Juanico’s virginity was intact, and even in his absence, Tom Parker’s hold on the young king of rock and roll was never more in evidence. Lakeland represented a turning point; the gloves were now off between the press and Presley. With his mushrooming popularity came more and more scrutiny about his effect on fans, some of whom were already lining up in St. Petersburg within hours of his last Lakeland show.

  14

  A Real Test

  August 7, St. Petersburg

  “Today’s the Day!” screamed the first sentence of the St. Petersburg Times’s article on Presley’s three-concert appearance, his first in Tampa Bay’s southern city.

  Reporter Anne Rowe wrote of the recent tug-of-war between leading national television hosts Steve Allen and Ed Sullivan over which of them would be the next to book Presley. Initially, Sullivan had no desire to bring to his widely popular variety show the controversial, oft-criticized rock and roller. Sullivan changed his mind after Presley’s ridiculous tuxedoed appearance in early July singing to a hound dog on Allen’s program propelled Allen to a Sunday night ratings victory. Wheeler dealer Tom Parker engineered a blockbuster three-show pact for Presley to appear on the Sullivan show later that year for $50,000—equal to about $400,000 toda
y.

  In contrast, Presley’s bandmates were left out of the lucrative payday. Scotty Moore received $78 for the same three performances. Through these types of deals, Parker reinforced his “you’re expendable” message to Presley’s guitarist, the man largely responsible for the signature sound of his biggest hits to date. As Presley grew rich and more isolated from the bandmates he once considered equals, who could blame them for resenting being left off the money train? It was human nature and exactly how Parker wanted it. Presley and Parker were the haves and Scotty, Bill, and D. J. Fontana were the have-nots.

  “I look back now and realize it was all about the music, never about the money,” Moore reflected. “It had to be or we would’ve quit.”

  In St. Petersburg, reaction to Presley’s tame appearance on the Allen show foreshadowed more of what was to come. “Dressing him up in a designer suit and figuratively tying his legs together on a recent Steve Allen production,” said Rowe in her preview article, “has brought tears from many teen-agers who mourn the loss of the ‘old Elvis.’”

  Such was not the case on the current Florida tour. Articles about Presley’s raunchy, naughty-with-a-smile performances left parents worried about exposing their children to such a spectacle. A concerned mother told people at the Florida Theater box office she would consider allowing her daughter to attend the show, but only if she could be assured Presley would behave.

  Outside the Florida Theater at 4:15 a.m., die-hard Elvis fans Clare Carter and Donna Bemis claimed the pole position for general admission to the afternoon concert. Setting up shop at the corner of First Avenue South and Fifth Street, the girls brought along newspapers, Cokes, and their Elvis Presley fan book. A half hour later Nila Shea and Anne Muncy were disappointed to see they could not complete their quest: “We were first in line to see him in Tampa and Lakeland but this time we missed out,” the two explained, sitting outside the theater in the early morning darkness.

  The blond-haired teenage chums already had bus tickets to catch Presley’s performance the following day in Orlando. Rowe anointed the pair “Champion Presley pursuers in point of mileage.” The giant theater marquee announced: “In Person Elvis Presley.” A big sign over the front door read: “COOL air conditioned.”

  Behind the theater fans jammed into every crevice of open space along the brick-surfaced back alley to await the king’s arrival; lining a small stairway below the “Simpson’s Good Food” awning, packing any fire escape that might offer a better view, or just trying to find a small spot to sit or stand among discarded food boxes and standing water.

  Reporter Anne Rowe with Elvis Presley, 1956. Reprinted by permission of Bob Moreland, Tampa Bay Times.

  As people made their way to work on Tuesday morning in downtown St. Petersburg, the crowd outside the theater continued to swell. Around 11:30 the humid summer skies opened up, drenching the young fans. Determined not to lose their place in line, some showed their resolve by chanting, “We want Elvis!” Policemen finally took pity, opening up the doors to the Florida Theater early, letting fans scamper to the best seats they could claim. Some passed the time playing tape recordings of their favorite Presley tunes.

  In his dressing room with local radio personality Bob Hoffer, Presley asked him: “Is that your wife over in the corner?”

  “That is my wife Joanne yes,” Hoffer replies.

  “Woo!” Presley hoots, bringing audible laughter from his bandmates.

  “Now Joanne will be the envy of everybody at the party tonight,” says Hoffer, going along with the joke. “She has been wooed at by Elvis Presley. Thank you Elvis I agree with ya.”

  Hoffer quizzed Presley about his height, whether he played any sports, and how much sleep he got, working so hard. “We do three, four shows a day sometimes,” Presley said, sounding weary. “None of us gets much rest at all. Maybe four, five hours a night.”

  During the Tampa show, Presley confirmed, fans took the gas cap and cigarette lighter from his new Lincoln but not the hood ornament plated in white gold at a cost of $350. In a relaxed southern accent, Presley denied knowing anything about a possible movie pairing with Jerry Lewis or a feud in the press with crooner Pat Boone. “Pat Boone is one of the nicest guys I ever met,” declared Presley, not taking the bait.

  Presley always made time for interviewers and questions, no matter how inane or repetitious they were. Hoffer brought up negative fan reaction to the Steve Allen appearance. Presley acknowledged getting letters from a lot of people who didn’t like it, but he recognized the PR value of poking a little fun at himself. In the interview’s most incisive moment Presley reflected: “I believe that I won a lot of new friends by doing that.”

  During interviews, in recording studios, or in public Presley at times punctuated his answers with ma’am and sir for reasons other than respect. “Non-Southerners don’t understand that when a Southerner says ‘yes sir’ and ‘no sir’ it’s not always a sign of politeness,” Scotty Moore explained. “Coming from a Southerner those words sometimes mean, ‘I don’t like you much—keep your distance.’”

  Before the show, an audio excerpt from Paul Wilder’s interview was played for all the fans to hear: “I never was a lady killer in high school. I had my share of dates, but that’s all.” Wilder chronicled how the formerly shy kid from Memphis had the entire state of Florida buzzing. “There is nothing in Florida entertainment history to compare him with,” he observed in a Tampa Tribune article. “The startling impact of Presley’s sway over Florida’s teen-agers—and many adults too—is something unique in the state’s social, economic, and entertainment life.”

  Now it was the Suncoast’s turn. After another group of run-of-the-mill warm-up acts, the sleep-deprived crowd who had waited for hours in the rain finally got what they were waiting for. “He hit St. Petersburg with the effect of a small H-bomb,” declared Anne Rowe, “sending fans into mass hysteria.” When Presley appeared on stage in his Kelly green sport coat and dark pants, girls pulled at their hair and shrieked; boys stared in awe.

  The green sport coat was June Juanico’s favorite. Despite her discomfort with all the fans shrieking for the man she loved, she could understand the attraction. “He was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen,” she said. “I too felt the urge not only to touch him, but to grab bits and pieces of him.”

  Then, in the middle of his modest seven-song set, came a major technical glitch: Presley’s microphone cut out. Lakeland’s stage manager, who had chided him the previous night for being too rough with the equipment, would surely have said I told you so. As Presley went on with the show, his frantic waving was at stagehands to get the problem fixed. When that issue was solved, another cropped up. Like a short leash, the microphone cord was too short. “I can’t stand still when I sing,” he told the still shrieking audience.

  Unlike the small African American audience at Presley’s Tampa concert, across Tampa Bay in St. Petersburg, no integration was allowed. As the Times correspondent Jerry Blizin noted: “Had he been travelling with black entertainers, as [Bill] Haley did, he wouldn’t have found a venue in Saint Petersburg.” Black entertainers were confined to their own venue, the Manhattan Casino on 22nd Street South. The barriers of segregation didn’t fall until the early 1960s. “Integrated music just didn’t happen in a resort town eager to avoid anything that might drive away family-style tourism,” said Blizin.

  After one show, police stopped fourteen girls climbing the fire escape to get to Presley. Another left the theater in anguish when the show was over. “I can’t stand it, I can’t stand it!” she wailed. According to most reports, the audiences of 6,500 who saw Presley in St. Petersburg did not get out of control. But the intermittent periods of heavy downpours, sweltering sun, and sensory overload inside caused some fans to faint.

  “I hope we never have anything like this again,” declared exasperated Fire Marshal John Gidley. The city newspaper’s editorial board took notice of the service its police force provided against the throng of charged-
up teenagers:

  “These men have faced the toughest criminals, risked their lives in fast automobiles, chased burglars across roofs, directed parades and demonstrations—but until yesterday they didn’t know what a fellow gets into when he becomes a policeman,” the board opined. “Thousands of screaming, yelling, laughing, pushing, shoving, hysterical teenagers—mostly girls—gave the policemen a real test. Now that it’s over, we’ll pit the St. Petersburg police against all odds.”

  The Florida Theater in St. Petersburg was the only grand palace Presley played during his momentous fourth Florida tour that was later demolished. On October 1, 1967, a bank bought the theater for $225,000 and sold it off in parts like an old car. In 1968 the wrecking ball crashed into the marquee that once carried Presley’s name so vividly. Timeless images of young fans packed in front and down the sidewalk faded, giving way to a parking lot.

  With the tour now past its halfway point, Presley and company were expected in Orlando. The last time he had performed there, a year previously, Presley had opened for Andy Griffith. With a string of number 1 hits and a number 1–selling album in his wake, Presley was now the supernova headliner.

  15

  Just for You

  August 8, Orlando

  At the next tour stop in Orlando another soon-to-be icon of the 1950s toiled away in anonymity. During downtime, writer Jack Kerouac and his nephew Paul raced bicycles through College Park to the local department store to pick up the latest Elvis Presley record. Kerouac described the boy’s affinity for Presley: “He takes his banjo, closes his eyes, and imitates Elvis to a T.”