Elvis, the secret photos
29 junio 2008 Posted in Elvis presleyElvis Presley remains the most famous and most loved rock star of all time.
But for almost all of his 21 years in the spotlight, until his death in 1977 at the age of 42, he remained a distant enigma to his fans.
Surrounded by a mob of minders, he hardly ever gave interviews and virtually the only published photographs of him were those carefully selected by his manager, ‘Colonel’ Tom Parker, to show Elvis in a wholesome light.
Don’t cry, Daddy: Elvis takes a phone call in his swimming shorts after coming in from the pool in his back garden. His workshy father, Vernon, who retired at 39 when Elvis became famous, can be seen in the background. From the moment Elvis began singing professionally when he was 19, he became the head of his family
But at the very beginning of his career, when his first hit, Heartbreak Hotel, was bounding up the U.S. charts, things were different.
Wanting all the publicity they could get for their new singer, Elvis’s record company, RCA, hired freelance photographer Alfred Wertheimer to spend a few weeks following the young star around.
Don’t be cruel: The night before Elvis recorded Hound Dog, he sang it on national television to a stuffed dog. At the time, he was bitter about this incident, feeling humiliated by what he saw as a silly stunt. Later, when he went to Hollywood, he would spend nearly ten years being further humiliated by similar stunts. He could have refused, but he rarely did
So, in March 1956, Wertheimer went to work. Meeting Elvis at a New York TV studio, he later hung around his hotel suite, observed him recording Don’t Be Cruel and Hound Dog, photographed him alone and unnoticed on the New York streets, and then went out on tour with him where the groupies were already beginning to line up.
All shook up: On his way to a concert in Richmond, Virginia, Elvis pretends to throttle his date for the night. Even in these early days he never liked to be alone – an early Memphis Mafia minder rides in the car with the couple
He shot almost 4,000 black-and-white, fly-on-the-wall frames of the singer on the very cusp of unimaginable fame, many of which have rarely been seen.
And what pictures! Wertheimer had never heard of Elvis before taking the commission, but through his lens he watched as over a few short weeks America capitulated to the singer.
No blue suede shoes: Until late in his career, when he owned his own plane, Elvis never liked to fly, and during those weeks of 1956 he would shuttle between Memphis and the TV studios in New York by train – something which would soon become impossible because of the fans. Here, we see him reading a comic that had come free with a newspaper
It was the last time the private Elvis, the ‘real’ Elvis, who was even prepared to have the photographer follow him into his bathroom and bedroom, would be caught on camera in this way.
All shoot up: Aged 21, playing with a revolver. All his life, Elvis liked guns and his habit of shooting TVs when he didn’t like the show was legendary. Colonel Parker would never have allowed this snap to be published
By the early summer of 1956, a veil had fallen between Elvis and his fans.
Parker had decided no one from the media would ever get this close to his star again.
From that moment, Elvis entered a cocoon, locked out from the real world by his enormous fame and his manipulative manager.
Love you tender: With his first big record cheque, Elvis went out and bought his parents a home of their own in Memphis. Here, he’s kissing his mother, Gladys, unembarrassed by the youthful acne on his shoulders
But why were all Wertheimer’s photographs in black and white? Didn’t he take any colour shots? The answer will surprise. No, he didn’t.
Roustabout: It was Elvis’s ambition – later to be thwarted by his manager – to be a serious movie star like James Dean or Marlon Brando. At home in Memphis, he sits astride his Harley-Davidson, wearing a cap similar to the one worn by Brando in The Wild One
‘Don’t waste colour film on him,’ Wertheimer was told by the RCA publicity department.
Colour stock was expensive, and as the record bosses had decided Elvis was probably just a flash in the pan, it would be a needless extravagance.
Personally, I like the brutal honesty of monochrome. But could any publicity department ever have been more short-sighted?
You’re The Boss: Dutch-born Tom Parker changed his name from Andreas Cornelius van Kuijk – but was known as ‘The Colonel’. Elvis said of him: ‘I don’t think I would have been very big with another man. Because he’s a very smart man.’
