Clothes and Objects: “You Can Drink My Liquor From an Old Fruit Jar … But Lay Off Of Them Shoes!”

Following the tour of Graceland, and the planes and cars, I was still only halfway done with my tour. Over on the ticket pavilion side of the street is basically a little Elvis village. There are gift shops, and a restaurant, and also different exhibit rooms. The exhibits are not static. They swap them out, choosing different topics and “ways in” for different shows. While I was there, there were three exhibits: one in the “Sincerely Elvis” museum space which focused on Elvis’ impact on the world through the media. There was also an exhibit devoted to the 1968 NBC special, and one called “Elvis On Tour”, which was all about Elvis’ final years of nonstop touring and Vegas appearances. The exhibits were all spread out through the pavilion and one was down the block aways, past the planes. There were a lot of people milling about, but it’s a spacious area so it never felt cramped.

The Sincerely Elvis exhibit was wonderful in that there were so many CLOTHES. (Not sure if I have mentioned my love of seeing his clothes?)

There was fan memorabilia, and video clips – of his earliest shows, of his induction into the Army, of him racing past throngs of vans into a waiting limo – footage from throughout his life in the spotlight. There were posters of his films in every language under the sun. Movie magazines. Elvis purses, Elvis lipsticks. Elvis buttons. Elvis matches. And excuse me, but “Oy Gevalt Elvis?”

Later, when I hooked up with Jen again, she murmured to me, “I saw a pin that said OY GEVALT ELVIS …”

There was so much stuff in each display case and I loved that Oy Gevalt Elvis caught both of our eyes.

The exhibit was a winding path through a dark and specifically lit place, with big glass display cases on both sides. It was an overwhelming amount of STUFF. I tried to not just skim. I did want to see everything. Sometimes in museums I go on “auto-pilot”. I refer to it as “museum-itis”, when a saturation level is reached and although your body continues to move forward through the exhibit, your mind is not processing what you see, and your eyeballs are barely seeing! There was a lot of stuff in this exhibit that I have seen in pictures, or at least heard about, so to see it in the flesh was really exciting. There were suede shoes monogrammed with EP. There were outfits he wore at different events, or shows, or interviews. Periodically, throughout the exhibit, a TV screen hanging from the ceiling broadcast a small documentary about whatever Era in Elvis’ life we were focusing on.

In this exhibit were all of Elvis’ police badges (one of his obsessions during the 70s, which led him to the White House door). We also saw multiple costume sketches from Bill Belew, who designed some of Elvis’ most famous costumes in his later years. There was Elvis’ 6 page scrawled letter to Nixon, with an entire page devoted to all of the phone numbers where Elvis could be reached at different times. There were other famous clothes and objects.

I caught my breath when I saw the gold suit. It was designed for Elvis in 1957 by Nudie Rodeo Tailors in Hollywood. Colonel Tom Parker signed off on it. It cost $10,000.

Elvis only wore the entire suit a couple of times (and of course it is immortalized forever on the 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong album cover, with Elvis standing in that confident open stance). It is a tuxedo. It is head to toe gold. It has glittering silver beaded cuffs and lapels. Elvis wore gold shoes. He became an Oscar statue, basically.

Elvis always had flashy tastes (onstage anyway – offstage, at least in the 50s, he wore dark suits, white shirts, and dark ties, like a Jehovah’s Witness almost), and he had seen Liberace in Vegas and had been blown away and inspired by how FAR Liberace took his persona. Elvis was already going far at that time, but kept pushing the limits, and the gold suit became notorious. It was a big deal. At one show, Elvis had fallen to his knees during a song and some of the gold leaf flaked off onto the stage, and the Colonel had warned Elvis that he needed to modify his movements to save the suit. Elvis didn’t reply, didn’t argue, but he DID stop wearing the pants. He only wore the jacket from then on. Modify my movements to keep the suit safe? You have got to be out of your mind, Colonel. Thanks for sharing, but I’ll just not wear the damn $10,000 pants and keep rolling around like I want to.

Elvis, March 1957, at his famous controversial Pan Pacific Auditorium concert when he rolled around on the ground with the RCA Victor dog. Gold jacket, black pants. Take THAT, Colonel.

The gold suit announced Elvis as another kind of performer entirely. He already was ahead of the pack, but the gold suit put him into strange unchartered territory. It was a finger pointed upwards: “I’m going up THERE.”

To see the gold suit was such a pleasure.

Along with the American Eagle jumpsuit from 1973, this is probably Elvis’ most famous onstage costume.

Private Presley’s army uniform was also in a display case, with all kinds of memorabilia devoted to his years in the Army. Pictures of him in Germany, newsreel footage, his duffel bag, everything. It’s just odd to see the actual clothes that you have seen so many times in footage. It gives the event a reality, it grounds it. This happened. Elvis can be tough that way. The Myth has won over the Man. In many ways, that is right. It’s the music and the work that matters. Lester Bangs knew that. He knew there was something “otherworldly” going on with this guy. The Army was so much a part of that myth-making machine, so much so that I, who wasn’t even alive, don’t even remember how I first learned that Elvis had left his career to go into the Army. I just have always known it. It’s a part of our cultural history and it bleeds down into us through osmosis. Even if you don’t know the details, you know that it happened. Elvis is weird that way. Seeing the objects and clothes that were part of that Myth-Making was invaluable to me.

All along the bottom of the display cases were the Bill Belew sketches which were fascinating. Elvis trusted Bill Belew with his image. Bell Belew thought in a mythical way. He knew what Elvis was after in the 70s and he was Elvis’ go-to guy when he needed a special outfit. He also designed the skintight black leather outfit Elvis wore in the 68 special. He was clicked into a really over-the-top version of Elvis, the Elvis that Elvis himself wanted to portray onstage.

Here is the humble conservative outfit Elvis wore to go meet President Nixon.

Nice to know that Elvis could blend in with regular people if he wanted to. Doesn’t that look like just what you would choose to wear if you wanted to meet the President at 6 o’clock in the morning?

Police badges gleamed along the display case. Pictures of Elvis with cops in different departments in all the cities he visited. Elvis with his arms around policemen, Elvis displaying his badges. Elvis loved cops.

One thing I would have loved to see: an exhibit devoted to Elvis’ vast arsenal of weapons. The gun factor was not mentioned on the tour itself, and wasn’t acknowledged in any of the exhibits (with the exception of the short-lived firing range in the wellhouse). The guns would have been as thrilling and as sexy as the cars. I wonder if Graceland has ever done such an exhibit or if it would make Elvis look too violent. But it’s another piece of the Elvis puzzle: the guns.

June Juanico’s mother’s boyfriend gave Elvis a rifle in 1956

By slowing down, I came across a gem of an object. Elvis fans will require no setup but here goes: Elvis made Viva Las Vegas in 1963 with Ann-Margret. I wrote a couple of posts about their intense onscreen chemistry (which translated to offscreen: they hit it off from Second One). Ann-Margret has described Elvis as a “soulmate” and even in her book, which devotes two chapters to Elvis, she keeps it classy. She has never spoken about their relationship in detail, never given the dirt, and only speaks of him with the highest of praise. She protects him. She is angry at those who come forward who didn’t even know him to tell horrible stories about him. The Elvis she knew was young, idealistic, passionate, hilarious, kind and thoughtful. She is one of the carriers of that flame. The speculation about their relationship is, of course, intense, but in my opinion all you need to do is watch what is going on in that second clip above to see their entire relationship. It’s one of the reasons why the movie has such a spark that some of the others lack. It features at the heart of it a real and urgent romance, and the screen captures it. I don’t need to go into their bedroom. There is their bond, right there.

But there are a couple of things that are common knowledge, either based on Ann-Margret’s book, Elvis’ somewhat unique behavior (unique to him, I mean) during their year-long romance, and the testimony of trusted friends, who all loved Ann, and loved Elvis with Ann, and saw something different brought out in him during their romance. They were similar creatures: well-raised, with protective parents, who believed in God, and loved to wiggle to music. Explosive sexual creatures. She was becoming a star at that very moment, and Elvis, of course, was a giant star already – but from the first rehearsal of a song, when they found that they were actually moving the same way on the same notes, they knew they were kindred spirits.

By that point, Elvis had moved out of traditional dating. He would have one of his guys call up a girl he was interested in, and then have one of the guys pick her up and drive her back to his house. Elvis basically didn’t do his own courting anymore. He didn’t have to. But maybe … it was all a bit too … easy? Uninteresting? Elvis had also stopped going out on one-on-one dates. Maybe because he felt he couldn’t go outside anymore, couldn’t just go to the movies, or dinner … or maybe it was that he had had so much sex thrown at him that he wanted to cut to the chase … who knows. But he wanted to be alone with Ann. Ann-Margret said she knew it was getting serious when Elvis would start taking her out alone. They would take drives, and sit up on Mulholland looking down on all of Hollywood, and talk about their dreams. She was living with her parents. He approved of that, and befriended them. He befriended her landlord.

He was overwhelmed by his feelings for her. He wondered if their ambition for their own careers would wreck a marriage (should they get married). He never dated ambitious people. He didn’t really date show business people. He wondered if that would be a problem.

There were lots of forces going on keeping them apart. But here is a fact. Ann-Margret revealed it in her book, although it just gets a brief line, and not even in the Elvis chapter – it comes much later. While they were dating, Elvis gave her a custom-made round bed.

Everyone knew about the bed, and his friends snickered behind his back about why he gave her the bed, and what it meant, and wakka wakka, and all that, but Elvis kept his counsel. He always kept his counsel about stuff like this. His good friends, the inner circle, sensed how overwhelmed Elvis was in his feelings for Ann – and obviously that had translated into the bedroom, but again, all of that is sheer speculation.

The fact remains he bought her a giant ROUND bed as a gift.

He didn’t buy her a car. He bought her a BED.

Speculate as you will.

In one of the display cases, a couple of Elvis’ personal checks were on the wall. 5 or 6 of them. I could have just scanned them and moved on. But I didn’t. And there was the check for the bed, in Elvis’ handwriting, with a note along the side of the check: “PERSONAL GIFT FOR HOME OF MISS ANN MARGRET”.

The bed cost $780.

I peered at his handwriting like a crazy person trying to squint between the lines back to that time. I had to laugh at myself as I did so. I was imagining that I saw a subtext in his handwriting: “I am in love with this woman and the sex we are having is blowing my mind, even though I have already had so much sex in my life I can’t even remember it all. But this? SEX WITH LOVE INVOLVED? OMG IT’S AWESOME. HERE’S A ROUND BED, ANN. KTHXBYE”

I absolutely loved coming across that check.

I then moved on to the Elvis on Tour exhibit. It was a small corridor only, with some of the jumpsuits on display, and some of the clothes that you can see him rehearsing in in the documentaries of the 70s. The flashy silk shirts. I ran into Jen there. She was sitting on a bench watching a documentary made about the documentary Elvis on Tour (archival footage section headed up by a young Martin Scorsese). It’s an incredible documentary anyway, but it was wonderful to sit there, surrounded by intimidating jumpsuits and jeweled capes and Austin Powers-ish velvet coats, and hear his friends and family talk about why Elvis on Tour (the documentary) was so special. Interestingly enough, there was a whole section on the moment I have already written about, of Elvis listening to the Stamps onstage, the Stamps that Jen and I had just seen. Jerry Schilling talks about the use of the split screen in the documentary, and how it is the best example of the split screen he had ever seen, and if you’re going to use the split screen then it’s for moments like THIS. Schilling said that it was one of the most powerful and personal examples of who Elvis actually was ever captured on film, and I completely agree. Jen and I sat quietly watching the documentary (that last shot, of Elvis quiet in the limo, lost in thought, vulnerable, is killer … one of the most almost fragile moments ever caught of this giant superstar). The Polk Salad Annie suit was there. Outrageous.

The bell bottoms on the jumpsuits were, at times, wider than the shoulders.

I then moved on the 68 Special exhibit, which was pretty small and basically an excuse to shuffle people into the 68 special giftshop. But they did have some excellent items. First of all, I walked into the space (which was just a side of the gift shop, not an elaborate museum like the other exhibits), and immediately saw the back wall which had the red neon ELVIS sign, one of the set pieces of the special. And standing in front of it was the head-to-toe white suit Elvis wore during the famous “If I Can Dream” finale.

Again, when you see some of these clothes in the “flesh”, you realize that Elvis (despite his later years of bloat) was not only lean, but thin. Tall and thin. That was a hot hot suit.

A documentary about the special was playing on a screen above the exhibit and people were seated in the couple of benches placed there. There were 4 or 5 glass cases placed around with different objects in them. Like I said, it was not an extensive exhibit, but there were some cool finds.

The dangerously sexy leather armbands he wore during different parts of the special, along with the leather suit. It made him look tough. Radical. Subversive.

Elvis’ copy of the gold embossed script of the special, which was then just called “Elvis”.

There were other outfits he wore as well, plus the small blue leather chair he sat in during the informal sessions section of the special. It was a small blue chair, like any office chair, except with NBC embossed in the back.

Jen said to me later, “It seems to me that the 68 special is still very avant garde and ahead of its time.”

For someone who had just learned about the 68 special that morning, to come to that very correct conclusion tells me that the exhibit had done its work.

You watch that special now and it is still unlike anything else, before or since.

Just like Elvis.