My first day in Los Angeles, I drove up from Long Beach to meet up with my brother, my cousin Mike, offices on Sunset Boulevard. We had the table-read that night, and I had a couple of hours to kill beforehand. So I walked. I feel like I walked 5 miles. Also, dammit, it’s hot there. I came from the Frozen Tundra of the East Coast. I decided to set out on Hollywood Boulevard and find Elvis’ star. I knew where it was (at the very tip-top of the row of stars, because, duh, he’s Elvis.) It was a bit of a hike. Along the way, I visited with luminaries such as Elia Kazan and Mr. Rogers. Hollywood Boulevard is, forgive me, a bit of a nightmare, it’s like walking through Times Square in its current theme-park iteration. But there is a lot to see and not just the array of stars on the sidewalk. I am obsessed with old-school signage, and unfortunately there just isn’t a lot of it in New York. New York wipes out its own history. Granted, Los Angeles is a younger town, but there’s something about the signage there … the signs on sticks/poles on the tops of buildings, slightly seedy, but romantic and evocative. Or big huge old-school neon with blinking arrows … there’s a neediness in the signage, a “Hey there, look at me” kind of thing that I find touching. The city does not look modern in that respect. Everywhere I looked, there was some other fascinating sign to take my attention.
At Hollywood and La Brea, the sidewalk stops, and there’s a big slightly confusing intersection, with a small island in the middle of the intersecting roads. On that island is a small … garden? With four silver statues of naked ladies standing clustered in a circle, hovering beside the two stars that start us off on our journey: Elvis Presley and The Beatles, side by side. You know, Elvis and The Beatles aren’t just gonna be mixed in with the rest of the stars, nestled in between Nipsy Russell and Tom Mix. They need to be watched over by an art-installation of naked silver bot-type females.
Later on, the sun started setting. Los Angeles, the place of the dreamy sunsets, so pointedly beautiful it pierces your heart. The seedy quality of Hollywood then bursts into something close to poetry, with the red sunset light hitting the tops of those signs up in the air, and there’s something very still about it, despite the traffic below, cars and people, despite the urban atmosphere. A drowsy stillness settles down over the buildings.
The Knickerbocker (once a hotel, now an apartment building) stands there, facing the unmistakable circular Capitol Records building. The Knickerbocker sign is huge, red glowing letters, facing the mountains, facing the Capitol Records building, the sign as wide as the building (and the building is quite wide). One of my favorite signs in Los Angeles, and I have “visited” it every time I have gone there. In 1956, Elvis came out to Hollywood to film Love Me Tender. He stayed (with all of his buddies from Memphis) at the Knickerbocker Hotel. It was a hub of young Hollywood. Dennis Hopper talks about going to meet Elvis there, and seeing literally a line of girls in the front room of Elvis’ suite, waiting to meet up with him. A lot of Elvis sex happened in that building. It was the place he holed up in, learning his lines, calling his mother every night, calling his Biloxi girlfriend June Juanico every night, quizzing her anxiously on whether or not she had forgotten him, all the familiar patterns of his life re-established in Hollywood in that watershed year of 1956, when everything exploded for him.
Later, he would have his own house in Bel Air, but for those first couple of months, The Knickerbocker was where Elvis hung his hat.
Isn’t that just beautiful?
And here’s a longer shot, of The Knickerbocker facing the Capitol Records building, literally drenched in that overwhelming sunset light.
On the Saturday before we shot the film, I had some time to kill, and drove up into the posh (understatement) hills of Bel Air, searching for 525 Perugia Way, Elvis’ address for years when he would come out to Hollywood to shoot films throughout the 60s. His home base was always Memphis, but the Bel Air house was very important too. It was (again) a gathering place for Elvis’ friends and girlfriends (or wife, as the case may be), it was a place where he could hide, close the gates and just be himself. But he would come out to the gate, on occasion, and sign autographs, take pictures with fans. It was Elvis as Movie Star house.
Now, the second I turned into his “neighborhood” I got the distinct feeling that I had zero business being up there. It’s secluded. The houses are hidden behind enormous trees. The roads are very narrow and in many cases, they are one-way streets, a clear sign that the only people driving on said roads are people who live/work there. But whatever, I don’t care. I found his house. I pulled into a driveway, of some millionaire’s house, left the Hazards blinking, and then walked over to the gates of Elvis’ house, the gates I recognized from all the pictures. The house is currently for sale (or at least it was last time I checked), so there was no one around. I stood there. I looked at the gates. I looked at the house. I looked at the curving driveway which widens out towards the house.
That is the driveway, of course, captured in a photo – the only photo in existence of said evening: when The Beatles all went to visit Elvis, at his invitation. There is no record of that night, except for the memories of the guys who were there. Apparently there was a jam session that happened later, but nobody recorded it (dammit!!). The night was awkward, Elvis was shy, the Beatles were intimidated, but eventually everything settled in. Each Beatle has told his own story of what that night was like, and the stories are very funny.
Regardless. I was staring at the driveway where Elvis Presley walked out of his house and shook hands with the freakin’ Beatles. So, you know. Pretty cool.
