“Terrified. Never Forgot.”

May 24, 1956, Municipal Auditorium, Kansas City, MO

Elvis Presley, in May of 1956, in between flying to New York to appear on various television shows, went on a tear through the South and Southeast States, touring at a grueling pace. It was mayhem at every show. He was chased across a football field in Kansas. Angry boyfriends cornered him at the stage door and punched him in the face. His clothes were torn off. But one show stands out, and that is the show on May 24, 1956, at the Municipal Auditorium in Kansas City, MO, because the chaos got so out of control that the show actually had to stop. Elvis only played for 20 minutes before throngs of girls rushed the stage in mass pandemonium. Elvis basically fled for his life. He was not afraid of the girls, not ever, he knew they didn’t want to hurt him, that they just wanted to touch him, but the situation in Kansas City was too much even for him.

The show always goes on, right? But the show in Kansas City could not go on. Elvis sang four or five songs and then was mobbed outright. One girl got through the police line at the foot of the stage, and that was the beginning of the end. She was the first drop in what would become a raging tsunami. Elvis ran backstage, with the audience in hot pursuit. They crowded around backstage, mobbing the exit doors, looking for him like a pack of wild-eyed predators. Apparently, even after he was long gone, the crowds of girls wandered the streets calling out his name, barging into hotels screaming out “ELVIS” into the lobby. Elvis, however, had been ushered out the back to safety. It was all in the papers the next day.

An old family friend, Judith Ross, was 16 years old in 1956 and she was there. I asked her if she wouldn’t mind telling me everything she remembered. Nothing would be irrelevant, no detail too small. She was generous and brave enough to tell me what her experience was like that night. Her experience of him obviously mirrored the experience of millions of other girls, but it is wonderful to get the personal details, to enter into one person’s story, when Elvis was mobbed by a pack of wild girls in Kansas City, Missouri, and was unable to go on with his show.

Thank you, Judith, for your candor!

I was there with Joyce Bias and Linda Russum. I was 16 years old. Front Row. Terrified. Never forgot. The tickets cost $5.00. I have no idea how I got that much money. I experienced my first sexual feelings watching Elvis on the Ed Sullivan Show. He still does it for me now.

Yes, there was pandemonium. We were in the front row, but there was a mass rush to the stage. My friend Linda got trapped at the stage. I screamed because I was terrified. He did the songs that were popular then. “Heartbreak Hotel, “Blue Suede Shoes”, “I Gotta Woman”.

He just walked on stage and the rush began. I do not remember what he wore. It was the smile and the legs. A part of that 16-year-old Southern Baptist girl thought she was watching something “nasty”. I thought I should not be feeling what I was feeling.

I have been terrified of large events ever since. I preferred my Elvis at home in my bedroom from my record player or from the jukebox at the Friday night Mixer.