03/11/2025
Tuesday (March 4.) 3️⃣
Even in the freezing temperature, there were five or six girls out there very happy to see him. They just wanted to talk to Elvis, and he liked being around women. He certainly was more comfortable with them than in that scene backstage.After signing some autographs, he went back inside and was called to the telephone. His finger in his ear, Elvis answered with a "Yeah, hello," followed by a short conversation. As soon as he hung up the phone, someone from the television crew came up to him and said, "Mr. Presley, you're wanted for group rehearsal." Elvis rounded up the guys who were working with him at the time—Scotty Moore, Bill Black, and DJ Fontana. They rehearsed two songs, "Heartbreak Hotel" (which would become his first gold record) and "Blue Suede Shoes," from about noon until five P.M. The show was broadcast live at eight P.M .so they could take a break until around seven P.M. when they had to be back at the studio. Back then, tape hadn't been invented yet so the show couldn't be recorded at one time and broadcast later. However, a live broadcast at eight P.M. in New York meant that the show aired at five P.M. in California, which was not a good hour to be getting audiences to watch East Coast programs like Stage Show. Until November 1956, when a company called Ampex invented two-inch tape that allowed studios to rebroadcast shows, the only way to preserve a live television event was through kinescopes. Set up in front of the television tube, these 16 millimeter cameras with large film loads shot directly off the screen at thirty frames per second. Of course, they looked very washed out and you could see the little lines of the television scanning process. But these films or "kines" (many of which later were lost or destroyed) and still photographs are the only record left of these important early years of television.
AFTER the rehearsal, Elvis decided to return to his suite at the Warwick Hotel on 56th Street off of 6th Avenue. By now, I had become his shadow. It was March, so it was already pretty dark as we walked through Broadway. On the way, we stopped off at the Supreme Men's Shop because he wanted to buy a shirt, which at the time cost around three dollars, while tuxedos cost thirty. Holding up different shirts, he would ask me, "Al, what do you think of this one? Think it will it look good on me?"
He was asking me? "Elvis, I'm just not a fashion guy," I replied. "You can't ask me to make decisions about fashion."
Elvis wandered around the store a bit before stopping in front of a door with about ten glossies of local celebrities on it. I thought that one of these days, he would be on the Supreme Men's door like these guys. Then he walked out of the store without buying anything. By the time we got back to the hotel, I was really tired. It had been a long day and Elvis was pretty tired as well. A box full of fan mail was left for him on the couch, so he flopped down and threw his feet up. Taking a fistful of letters, he began opening and seriously reading them. Some of them were six or seven pages long. Looking at him on the couch, I thought, "What do I photograph now?" This was a normal part of his life. This was his reality, not a fashion shoot where you tried to capture fantasy on film. Once Elvis finished reading, he tore each letter up into little shreds and put them on the coffee table.
"Why are you doing that, Elvis?"
"I'm not going to carry them with me. I've read them and seen what's in them. It's nobody else's business."
"Well, that's not so dumb," I thought. "He's his own paper shredder." I started to look around. On the table were these scraps of fan mail, a couple of pill bottles (probably cold or sinus medication), a newspaper and a single paperback book, The Loves of Liberace. It had a picture of Liberace on the cover and had just come out that year. When I glanced back at Elvis, I saw that he was finally dozing off so I decided to do the same. I had to conserve my energy for that evening.
I fell asleep in a chair across the room for maybe half an hour when suddenly I noticed this buzzing sound, like a bee. The couch was empty and Elvis was nowhere in the room. Had he left already? What was going on?…
