Daily Quote About Elvis: Marlo Lewis

Elvis Presley and Marlo Lewis, producer of the “Ed Sullivan Show”

Marlo Lewis: intv. April 2, 1992

Ed Sullivan loved show people. He adored them. He sat at their feet. He worshiped them. And anyone that had the discipline to excel was Ed’s love and affection for his business that carried him through to people, and they said, ‘God, he’s a good guy. He likes what we like.’ And that’s the key to it, in my opinion. Every week they’d come to me: ‘Can’t you get Ed to do something – a sketch or something? Let him play Chopsticks with Liberace, do something.’ I said, ‘Fellas, you don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re gonna kill the goose that’s layin’ the golden egg. This guy’s got people by the short hair. Nobody’s gonna go away from him because of what he is. They’re gonna go away from him if you change him.’ … I had met Elvis twice before that, with Ed, and Colonel Parker. And it was all very simple. We made a deal. I think we paid $3,500 for a session, the next one was 75 – but in our regular budget. And Ed had qualms and fears like I’d never seen before, cause he was also so determined and secure in every move he made, whether it was cutting a joke out of an act, or telling a singer not to do it, or telling Maria Callas, who was the great soprano from opera in Europe that if she didn’t sing Tosca she could take her stuff and go back to the Met and not bother us. He was that tough, and he was cruel, but he was right. But with Elvis, he was worried. One of the stringers came to Ed and said, ‘You’d better not put on Elvis anymore because he’s going overboard.’ And Ed said, ‘What do you mean by that? What’s up?’ And he said, ‘Well, Elvis does this shaking of the legs and playing his guitar, and he’s now hanging a Coke bottle inside of his pants so that when he wags his legs it looks like part of his organ has grown quite a bit.’ Now this brought hysterics. I said, ‘Well, what do we do about it? Don’t we just tell Colonel Parker to tell him not to do it?’ Ed said, ‘No. We’re not gonna tell him that cause he’ll take a walk, but what we’re gonna do is put you on a plane, fly you to the West coast, and you’ll photograph Elvis Presley, and I can be happy and trusting that you won’t let ’em see any part of Elvis except from his neck up.’ Years later, Ed and I went to a party for Elvis in Vegas. And Elvis came over to me and he said, ‘Marlo, you’ve done me good!’ He said, ‘Maybe showing only a little of things is a better idea than showing it all at once.’ And that was Elvis.