Tag: Jerry Schilling

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We Saw You: Jerry Schilling on “Elvis” the Movie

Jerry Schilling at the Memphis premiere of Elvis at The Guest House at Graceland (Credit: Michael Donahue)

Jerry Schilling was Elvis’ buddy for 23 years after he played football with the King one hot Memphis afternoon on July 11, 1954.  

Schilling, who was 12 at the time, went on to become part of Elvis’s entourage, a business associate, and a long-time friend.

Now Schilling  is watching himself being portrayed on screen in Elvis. The motion picture, which opens June 24th, was directed by Baz Luhrmann and stars Austin Butler as Elvis. “I think the movie, overall, is the best piece of work in a project done on Elvis,” Schilling says. “One, I think it answers a lot of questions by just telling the story of misconceptions of my friend.”

And, he says, Luhrmann, “put his heart and soul into it and put together an unbelievable cast.”

The project took 11 years from the idea to the finished movie, Schilling says. “There were sets burning up in Australia, Covid, you name it.”

But the delays “gave them time to really marinate this story. And everybody went back and rethought it and made it a much better film.”

Schilling now is manager of The Beach Boys, who recently released Sounds of Summer: The Very Best of The Beach Boys box set. 

Author of the 2006 book, Me and a Guy Named Elvis, Schilling also has been involved in numerous Elvis-related projects. “Over the years, I have produced more shows on Elvis than I think anybody can count. I’ve cast or been part of casting various actors to play Elvis over the years. And I’ve worked with others cast by other people.”

He thought Michael St. Gerard, who played the King in the 1990 Elvis TV series, was “innately Elvis, because he was playing the younger Elvis and he didn’t have the high collars and jumpsuits and everything. But when I saw Austin Butler, he had the young Elvis down. He had the middle. He had the end. He didn’t overdo it.”

Austin Butler at the Memphis premiere of Elvis (Credit: Michael Donahue)

Butler concentrated on the part, Schilling says. “For years he did nothing but become Elvis. He was not a performer, not a singer, but a terrific actor. It was Denzel Washington who brought Butler to Baz Lurhmann. They had done something on Broadway — The Iceman Cometh. Denzel was so impressed with his work ethic.”

Butler’s role as Elvis was “multi-faceted,” Schilling says. “He did a lot of his own singing, which Michael didn’t do. I will never take anything away from Michael St. Gerard. I was in awe of him.”

But Butler was “so sincere. He fell in love with the character. He said it was like, ‘I can climb Mt. Everest.’ That was the challenge.”

But, Schilling says, “He doesn’t overdo  it. He does it subtly. None of that curling the lip, ‘Thank you very much,’ all the bullshit. He’s got charisma. You want to be around him. You like him. And, you know what? When he walks in the room he’s got that little shyness Elvis had as well. It’s like a magnetic attraction goes to him.”

And, he says, Butler “fell in love with Memphis.”

Butler and Lurhmann spent time in Memphis and Tupelo, Schilling says. “They really put their heart and soul into this movie and I think it shows on the screen.”

Schilling met Lurhmann three years ago at dinner with an RCA executive during the promotional tour of the Elvis Presley: The Searcher at HBO documentary that Schilling conceived. “I think he was still looking for his Elvis at this point. He just said, ‘If this ship pulls anchor, I want you on it.’”

Baz Luhrmann at the Memphis premier of Elvis (Credit: Michael Donahue)

Schilling and Priscilla Presley got together with Tom Hanks — who plays Elvis’ manager, Col. Tom Parker — before filming began. “Priscilla ran into Tom Hanks’ wife, Rita Wilson, at the grocery store and Rita said, ‘Why don’t you and Jerry Schilling come over for dinner?’ This is two weeks before Tom went to Australia to start filming. So, we go there and Tom opens the door and the first thing he says is,  ‘Jerry, are we going to talk about the Beach Boys or Elvis?’”

Hanks is a huge Beach Boys fan, Schilling says. But they spent the next three or four hours talking about Elvis and Parker. “Priscilla and I really wanted to give a full picture of Colonel Parker to Tom.”

The movie was “pretty much finished” when Schilling met Butler. “Priscilla and I went to New York for the Metropolitan Gala that Baz Luhrmann invited us to.”

They met Butler in a revolving door at The Carlyle hotel on their way out to dinner a few days before the gala. “He comes in and says, ‘Hi,’ to both of us. Seems like a nice guy. Good looking guy. It’s Austin. So, he goes, ‘Oh, my God.’ He’s really nervous. He says, ‘I want you two guys to be happy with this.’”

Schilling and Priscilla wouldn’t commit to going to the Cannes Film Festival for a showing of  Elvis until they saw the movie. So, Lurhmann arranged a special screening of the film for the two of them.  “I purposely didn’t sit next to her. I sat down, wanting to have my own thoughts. I wanted her to have her own thoughts. Half way through, I’m beside her. By the end, Priscilla looked at me and said, ‘Well, I guess we’re going to Cannes.’”

Priscilla Presley at the Memphis premier of Elvis (Credit: Michael Donahue)

They knew Luhrmann was going to make his type of movie. “Baz is a very private filmmaker. He’s going to do what he wants to do. So, you never know” — like the Russwood Park concert scene, where Elvis/Butler pulls out all the stops with his seductive gyrations, shakes, and wiggles. Schilling was 14 when he went to that show. “In real life,  it was much more subtle than they make it in the movie ‘cause you’re making a movie. But he did make the statement and he did his own show. And it was a ‘wow’ show.”

Elvis had recently appeared in a tuxedo singing “Hound Dog” to a dog on TV’s The Steve Allen Show after being introduced by Allen as “the new Elvis Presley.” Elvis, Schilling says, told the Russwood audience, “I’m not going to let those people in New York change me. That was his way of saying, ‘You’re going to get the real Elvis.’” 

Was Parker a villain in real life? “The film is really difficult for me because I know the controlling side of the Colonel. I know the bullying side.  But I also know the human side of the Colonel. I don’t think he was dishonest at all. The only concern I have was when Elvis wanted to do A Star is Born and travel overseas and have his own production company.”

Tom Hanks at the Memphis premier of Elvis (Credit: Michael Donahue)

Elvis eventually started his own production company with himself and Schilling as heads of the company. But he never got to travel overseas. “The Colonel didn’t want it known he wasn’t an American citizen. But, creatively, the Colonel was really holding Elvis back.”

Elvis did “some good movies,” but most of them were the same type of musical. “I think I lost my friend at an early age because of creative disappointments. He was embarrassed and he tried to fight. And the machinery was too big.”

As for Elvis’s ambitions, including doing more serious roles, Shilling says Parker and other business associates “killed all that.”

With every Elvis musical, there was a soundtrack, “no matter how good or bad the music might be. At one point, Elvis said, ‘I’m not doing any more of this stuff.’ And the Colonel said, ‘You’ll fulfill your contract or you’re not doing anything.’”

As for Schilling talking back to Parker in the early days, he says, “Listen, I wasn’t in a position most of the time to be telling Colonel Parker what to do, or any of that.”

Schilling stopped working for Elvis for a time and went into film editing. “Because I quit working for him, I didn’t have to be under the Colonel’s supervision. For me, idolizing, looking up to Elvis as a 12 year old, and him not having a hit record when I met him, to be able, years later, to discuss a movie of his or a tour of his, that’s full circle.”

But, Schilling says,  “There was a human side of Colonel Parker. Did he love Elvis Presley? Yes. Did Elvis love the Colonel? Yes.”

And, he says, “It was the best team. Elvis never forgot what the Colonel did for him in the beginning. It’s hard to get all that in the film.”

Schilling is portrayed in the movie by Luke Bracey. But Schilling hadn’t met Bracey when he, Priscilla, Hanks, and Butler flew to Cannes. “I asked Tom Hanks, ‘So, how was Luke Bracey playing me? I haven’t met him.’ He said, ‘He was the voice of reason through the whole thing.’ And Austin said, ‘Yep. He really was.’”

“I think what it means to me — and I think what the message they were trying to give me — is so many times the guys around Elvis were these hangers-on who laughed when Elvis laughed. And were just ‘yes’ men.”

Schilling wasn’t one of those. He remembered when he “challenged” one of Elvis’s decisions. “And he goes, ‘Okay, you can go back to Memphis if you don’t like it.’ Over the 23 years I knew him, we had three or four arguments. It wouldn’t have been a real friendship if we hadn’t.”

Schilling was “totally pleased” with Bracey’s portrayal of him, which he says was respectful and based on facts. “They read my book, I’m sure, more than once. Austin told me they read everything.”

Schilling says Bracey “doesn’t overdo anything. And yet when it was time to maybe have a difference of opinion whether it was Elvis or it was the Colonel, he played it right. He didn’t come back and do a big argument, which I wouldn’t have done either. He got me down.”

In trying to put Elvis’s life in perspective, Schilling says, “We’re all familiar with the ‘68 Comeback Special’ and what that did to Elvis’s career when it was really, as the movie says, in the toilet.”

 Elvis, the movie, is “the ‘’68 Legacy Comeback,’” Schilling says. “I think this is going go do for his legacy what the ‘’68 Comeback Special’ did for his career while he was alive. It gives viewers an understanding of how special this man was.”

Schilling adds, “Ironically, 68 years ago in July was when Elvis’ first record was played, and when I met him.”

When I interviewed him, Schilling was headed to see the Elvis movie with Priscilla for his fourth time, and Priscilla’s fifth. “I’m glad this movie will be a record years from now for the history of Elvis, the ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s, and of Tupelo, of Memphis. It really needed to be documented. If this was written and not filmed, I would put it in the National Archives.”

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We Saw You: The Elvis Memphis Movie Premiere

Austin Butler, who plays Elvis, and Michael Donahue at the Memphis premiere of “Elvis.” (Credit: Austin Butler)

If Priscilla Presley gives her seal of approval to your portrayal of Elvis in a movie, that’s all you need.

And that’s exactly what Priscilla, who was married to The King and is the mother of their child, Lisa Marie Presley, did during the Memphis premiere of the Baz Luhrmann movie Elvis, which stars Austin Butler as Elvis, on June 11th at The Guest House at Graceland.

“Elvis morphed into you,” Presley told Butler on stage before the movie started. “You had his guidance.”

Stars from the movie, director Luhrmann, and members of the Presley family, including Lisa Marie and her daughter, Riley Keough, and Elvis’ buddy and business associate, Jerry Schilling, were at the premiere. They all gathered on stage at one point. The movie is slated to open nationwide June 24th.

The Memphis premiere of Elvis. (Credit: Michael Donahue)

Earlier, I talked to Priscilla and people involved in the film.

I asked Priscilla what sets Elvis apart from other movies and documentaries about the performer. “It’s very sensitive to me and the family,” she says. “Baz has done an amazing job in this film. This has been two years. I know he’s been wanting to do this forever, do a movie on Elvis. But, with Baz, I get a little nervous because Baz does what he wants. He’s got an eye. He’s got such style. But now dealing with such a sensitive story was a bit worrisome [as to] where he’s going to take it.”

But, she says, “It is a true story between the ups and downs of Elvis and Col. Parker, but with his stylized way, beautiful way. Especially with Austin Butler, who plays Elvis so realistically. He had him down pat to the point of a gesture. He studied him for two years. And the story will prove it. When you see it, you think you’re seeing Elvis Presley. But, again, he is not Elvis Presley. He is an actor playing Elvis Presley. And that’s what I like about it, too. He’s not trying to be Elvis. He is his own person.

“But the story is a wonderful story and I think it’s a different take on what we normally see.”

Priscilla Presley at the Memphis premiere of Elvis. (Credit: Michael Donahue)

I asked Butler, who described Elvis as “such a complex human being,” what was the most difficult part of Elvis for him to play. “One of the most challenging things is the fact that he has been held up as either a god-like iconic figure or as this caricature that is not the real man,” Butler says. “So, for me, it was stripping all that away and getting down to his humanity. 

“And the challenging part about that is you want to be incredibly technical. You want to be meticulous about all the details. But it could never be the details sacrificing the humanity.”

Luhrmann told me Elvis movies were shown at the theater in the small town where he grew up. “The matinees were the Elvis movies,” he says. “So, like as a 10-year-old, he was the coolest guy in the world. And then I grew on and all that. He was always present.”

As for making Elvis, Luhrmann says, “I didn’t do this so much out of fandom, although I have a great respect for him. I did this because I really believe he is at the center of America in the ’50s, ’60s, and the ’70s. And he is a way of exploring America. To understand that he was this rebel in the ’50s and it was dangerous to do what he was doing.  And his relationship to Beale Street and people like B. B. King and then him being put in a bubble in Hollywood and then finding himself again in the [Elvis] ’68 [Comeback] Special and reconnecting with gospel, his great, great love. And then, to put it bluntly and to quote one of his songs, being caught in a trap in Vegas. That’s the sort of tragedy of that.

“And yet, what he’s left behind, as you see in that last great performance of him is still the voice and still the spirit. To me, whatever you say about Elvis, he was a spiritual person. And that comes from his love of gospel.”

I received direction from Baz Luhrmann, who showed me how to properly take a selfie, at the Memphis premiere of Elvis. (Credit: Baz Luhrmann)

Kelvin Harrison Jr., who plays B.B. King in Elvis, told me what drew him to the role. “For me, it was just how smart he was and how savvy he was with his business,” he says. “This was a very strategic man, in my opinion, but also [he had] so much heart and soul. And a simple man. He literally was working in the fields, and literally put up a wire on a post and started learning how to play and find sounds playing one string. That is so incredible to me. So I was just so inspired by the tenacity that he had, and just the rawness.”

Kelvin Harrison Jr. and Jerry Schilling at the Memphis premiere of Elvis. (Credit: Michael Donahue)

In the movie, Elvis is astonished at the stage presence, complete with the most amazing moves, of Little Richard. Alton Mason plays Richard in the film. What attracted him to the role was “how powerful, how outspoken and loud he was,” Mason told me. “How sexy he was. How fly he was. And his aura.”

Mason, who said the revered gospel singer Mahalia Jackson is his great-great-great-great aunt, also told me, “I had to develop empathy for not only who he was, but the period and the time that he was in. And him being that in that time, it takes a lot of power, a lot of fearlessness, to choose to be so different in a time like this. It was an amazing learning experience for me, too.”

Michael Donahue and Alton Mason at the Elvis premiere. (Credit: Alton Mason)

I loved what Tom Hanks, who plays Col. Tom Parker, said on stage before the movie began: “As an actor I found myself shooting in castles in which kings once lived in. I shot in palaces that have been turned into museums that were the homes of kings. I shot in museums in which kings and queens have lived in.”

But he told the audience to notice that all of those kings and queens “have an ‘s’ on the end of them. Meaning that there were more than one. At Graceland, we are visiting the home of The King.”

Tom Hanks at the Elvis Memphis movie premiere. (Credit: Michael Donahue)
President and CEO of Elvis Presley Enterprises Jack Soden and his wife, Leighann, at the Memphis premiere of Elvis. (Credit: Michael Donahue)
Joel Weinshanker, majority owner of Elvis Presley Enterprises and managing partner of Graceland Holdings LLC and EPE, and Kim Laughlin at the Memphis premiere of Elvis. (Credit: Michael Donahue)
Hal and Geri Lansky and their daughter, Lia Lansky, at the Memphis premiere of Elvis. (Credit: Michael Donahue)
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Jerry Schilling Honored by Memphis Catholic High School

Jerry Schilling’s 1960 graduation photo from Catholic High School.



Jerry Schilling, Catholic High School class of 1960, is a new inductee in Memphis Catholic High School’s Hall of Fame.

To borrow from his buddy, Elvis, Schilling is “all shook up” over the honor.

“It has really been a good experience,” he says.

A producer, manager, and author of Me and a Guy Named Elvis: My Lifelong Friendship with Elvis Presley, Schilling was initiated into the Beale Street Brass Note Walk of Fame in 2007. He has a replica of the note at his home in West Hollywood Hills.

As for Memphis Catholic High’s Hall of Fame, Schilling says, “I didn’t even know they had one. My understanding is it started 10 years ago. Actually, Billy Ray, my brother, was at church and he saw a thing on the bulletin board about Catholic High Hall of Fame. He called me and started putting it in motion.”

The ceremony was streamed online on October 24th.

Schilling, who videotaped his remarks, regarded his four years at Catholic High School as a great experience. “I was three years president of the class and my senior year I was vice president.”

Schilling also played football all four years. Last January, some of his fellow classmates presented him with a replica of his Catholic High football jersey at an 85th Elvis birthday celebration he was doing with Priscilla Presley at Graceland. “Now it is in an exhibit at Graceland.”

In his remarks, Schilling talked about the trophy his team won. “In junior high, when we tied for the championship, I played fullback. And that was the trophy I point out. It used to be in the lobby of Catholic High. They sent it to me about thee or four weeks ago.”

Elvis also gave Schilling a football jersey. That was when Schilling played football with the King in the mid 1950s at Sunday afternoon football games at Guthrie Park. “Football kind of runs through my whole life.”

He began playing football when he was in the fourth grade at Holy Names. “I made the team. I don’t know how because that’s a big age group when you’re that age. Everybody else there was four years older.”

Football brought him and Elvis together, Schilling says.  “I was basically kind of an orphan. My mother died when I was an infant.”

He was raised by his grandparents and an aunt and uncle. “I lived in North Memphis across the street from George Klein.”

Schilling was a fan of  Red, Hot & Blue, the radio show hosted by Dewey Phillips. He was listening the night Phillips played Elvis’s recording of “That’s All Right” for the first time. Phillips told his listeners Elvis went to Humes High School, which was in Schilling’s neighborhood. “Elvis sounded so good. He kind of stuttered. He reminded me of James Dean. So, being a good Catholic boy, I said a little prayer, ‘The neighborhood’s not that big. I’d like to meet this boy from Humes High.’”

Two days later, Schilling went to Dave Wells Community Center, where some guys were playing a pickup football game in Guthrie Park. He saw Red West, “who was a big Memphis football player at the time. All Memphis at Humes. I knew who Red was. And he knew Billy Ray. So, Red is the one who said, ‘Hey, Jerry. You want to play with us?’”

Schilling was thrilled. “A 12-year-old getting to play with 18-year-old Red West.”

He got in the game. “When we got in the huddle, me, Red, and Elvis against three other guys, nobody said anything. And I looked at my quarterback and I went, ‘Oh, that’s the boy from Humes High.’ The most important pass I ever caught was the first one he threw to me.”

Elvis, he says, “was nice, but not overly. He was playing it cool.”

Schilling was “trying to play it cool. I was eight years younger than everyone else. I was trying to be one of the big guys. But Elvis was not a warm-up guy immediately. You had to get his trust. He’s not the guy you see in most of his movies that walked around with a smile on his face singing a song all the time. Elvis was a great guy who could be kind of moody and then give you a little smile showing everything is OK. That’s how the football game was.”

Schilling had plenty of time to get to know Elvis. “We had a 23-year relationship to find out. I lived with him at Graceland for 10 years. But I think he remembered and he knew I thought he was really cool before it was popular.”

They played football every Sunday afternoon through 1956 at Guthrie Park. Within three weeks, everybody had heard Elvis’s record. “Everybody was coming on Sunday afternoon to Guthrie Park because Elvis Presley was playing football.”

The teams got bigger because more and more guys wanted to play. Elvis “started getting little jerseys to differentiate between the teams. And he looked over at me and he threw me a jersey.”

Unfortunately, Schilling didn’t get to keep the jersey as a souvenir because they used them each week. “He gave it to me, but then he took it back. He kept it.”

Elvis couldn’t afford to buy jerseys every week. “Elvis didn’t have a lot of money.”

His father and brother wanted him to go to Christian Brothers High School, where Billy Ray had gone, but Schilling wanted to go to Catholic High because his friends were going there. He ended up getting a scholarship to CBHS. “I reluctantly went there.”

He began football practice in August, but, he says, “I just wasn’t in it. I didn’t have any friends there. And let’s face it. CBHS was more exclusive than Catholic High. It was different and I really related to Catholic High. So, my brother told my father, ‘I think we made a mistake. Let him go where he wants.’”

Catholic High was the perfect fit. “We won the junior high championship. I was All Memphis.”

He also got a football scholarship to Arkansas State University.

Schilling admits he was a “popular guy” at Catholic High, but, he says, “I never really thought about it that much. I thought about it more recently. I was just trying to get through school. I had a rough time in grade school with my grades. But then in high school it all changed. I guess because of the support and encouragement I got at Catholic High.”

And, he says, “I was a long way from failing the first grade at Holy Names.”

In high school, Schilling looked and dressed the part as the other guys. “Hair-wise, it was pretty cool and different back then whether from ‘Blackboard Jungle,’ the movie, or Elvis. I tried to do it pretty much like the older guys and Elvis. The world hinged on Elvis, but he wasn’t the only guy with sideburns and ducktails. There was a whole group of guys at Humes and whatever. Elvis had to get it from somewhere.”

Schilling used hair dressings like Brylcreem on his hair. “A little bit. I didn’t over do it. I think Elvis used a little more than I did.”

When football season began, Schilling switched to a crewcut.

As for his clothing, Schilling dressed in traditional 1950’s garb. “I wore a lot of white T-shirts and Levis. And I wore black loafers and white socks.”

In grade school, he says, “I had nuns who actually sent me home because my Levis were too tight. I was probably in the sixth or seventh grade.”

And, he says, “Through grade school and the beginning of high school I was real shy. Obviously, I’ve made up for it.”

But, he says, “All through high school and even through college and when I went to work with Elvis I was, basically, very quiet. I think Priscilla said in her book the first two years I lived at Graceland I never spoke.”


In high school, Schilling kept his friendship with Elvis to himself. “Nobody at Catholic High knew about it. But I’m hanging out with Elvis at night and on weekends. Elvis liked me. He was the most famous guy in the world.

“I learned in grade school early on to keep my music to myself. There’s a part in my book where ‘Mrs. Doolittle’ — I changed the name because of the situation — who was the head of the PTA at Holy Names, would drive us to baseball practice and football practice. They invited me over to their house — they had two sons my age — for a weekend in North Memphis.”

Schilling, who took his records with him, began playing Sixty Minute Man by Billy Ward and his Dominoes, which attracted “Mrs. Doolittle’s” attention. “She came in when she heard that and was furious. She said, “Get that ’n’ music off.’ And she broke my record and told me to go home. So, I learned very early I didn’t want anybody to take Elvis from me after I met him. So, I didn’t say to anybody what I was doing.”

These days, Schilling and his wife, Cindy, have been staying close to home because of the pandemic. “I’ve had three dinners, three dentist appointments, one doctor’s appointment, and that’s it. I’ve been really locked down.”

Jerry Schilling and his wife, Cindy, when he was initiated into the Beale Street Brass Note Walk of Fame in 2007.

He still is in management with The Beach Boys. “Just last Friday I got a contract for another year as president and CEO of their management company, Brother Records Inc.”

He also has been keeping up with Elvis, the new movie being made by director Baz Luhrmann. “Col. Parker will be played by Tom Hanks. Elvis is played by Austin Butler, who had a huge part in Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.”

And he says, “Luke Bracey will be playing Jerry Schilling.”

Bracey, whose movies include Monte Carlo and his TV work, Westside and Home and Away, is “a very good actor. He’s a nice-looking guy. I think he will be great. I’m not officially involved at this point, but I have spent some quality time wth Baz Luhrmann. I’ve had a long dinner in New York with him. I’ve had a long lunch. Four hours. We talked a lot.”

But, Schilling says, “Going back to the Hall of Fame Award, there are two things which are now the centerpiece of my living room on top of the entertainment center. And that’s the note on Beale Street, which is huge for me. And I have put my Hall of Fame Award next to to that.”

His years at Catholic High School were more formative than any of his other schooling, Schilling says. “Preparing me for what my life — that I didn’t have a clue — would be.”

Jerry Schilling

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Elvis Turns 85: Rare Show by TCB Band & Other Events Mark King’s Birthday

CREDIT: Photo Courtesy Graceland/Elvis Presley Enterprises

Photo Courtesy Graceland/Elvis Presley Enterprises

Last year, the 50th anniversary of Elvis Presley’s triumphant first residency in Las Vegas was memorialized with an extravagant 11-CD box set, Elvis: Live 1969, and it was a revelation. While “Las Vegas Elvis” suggests a rather kitschy affair to some, these recordings (remixed by Memphis’ own Matt Ross-Spang) revealed a crack band, a quintet fired up by new arrangements, embellished with a small orchestra and background singers, with a new lease on rock history, post-’68 Comeback. It was the first iteration of the soon-to-be-legendary TCB Band.

It’s such an intense listening experience, one can’t help imagining hearing it live. Astoundingly, in that embarrassment of riches that Memphians know well, the classic version of the TCB Band will be in our midst this week, when guitarist James Burton, pianist Glen Hardin and drummer Ronnie Tutt appear together at the Soundstage at Graceland on January 11.

Described as “a special concert experience featuring amazing on-screen performances from the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” the footage will have the distinction of being backed live on stage by the TCB Band, plus Terry Blackwood & the Imperials, who also sang with the King in that first residency in Las Vegas. Then, none other than Priscilla Presley and long-term Memphis Mafia member Jerry Schilling will make appearances.

It’s all part of Graceland’s grand celebration of what would have been Presley’s 85th birthday. With such a focus on the passage of time, one can’t help reflecting on the fact that Elvis was 34 when the iconic Las Vegas concerts began: seemingly washed up to the youth-fixated rockers, but in truth more full of energy and wit than he had been for many years previous.

Now, with a generous segment of the TCB Band still alive and picking, such concerns with time seem meaningless. See them now before time rears its ugly head again.

Other grand events for this special anniversary “birth week” include, on the morning of January 8th (the King’s birthday), the Elvis Birthday Proclamation Ceremony on Graceland’s North Lawn. Of course there will be a birthday cake.

Later, The Auction at Graceland will feature artifacts authenticated by Graceland Authenticated. (All the items in the auction will be offered from third-party collectors and none of the items included in the auction will come from the Graceland Archives).

Then, on January 10th, the full dynamic range of Elvis’ repertoire can be heard in force, when The Memphis Symphony Orchestra brings their annual Elvis Pops Concert home to the Graceland Soundstage. Musician and singer Terry Mike Jeffrey and his band will join the Memphis Symphony Orchestra for a birthday salute that will “take you from Memphis to Las Vegas to Hawaii all in one evening.”  It’s a fitting tribute to the King, as we imagine how he might be celebrating this milestone if things had worked out differently.

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Richard Zoglin’s Elvis in Vegas

The conventional wisdom is that Las Vegas is to blame for the ultimate demise of the King of Rock-and-Roll. Though Elvis Presley was at his home in Memphis when he died, some fans and music historians trace his downfall back to his tenure as a star in Las Vegas, Nevada. Elvis in Vegas: How the King Reinvented the Vegas Show (Simon & Schuster), the new history by Richard Zoglin, argues differently. “Las Vegas saved Elvis, at least for a little while,” Zoglin writes, “and Elvis showed Vegas its future.”

In Elvis in Vegas, Zoglin sets up what he calls “the greatest comeback in music history” with the precision of a patiently plotted thriller. Rather than offer a blow-by-blow account of the minutiae of Elvis’ career as a Vegas performer, the author gives an overview of Vegas’ history as an entertainment town, starting with the showgirls of Minsky’s Follies and the jazz-and-booze-flavored machismo of the Rat Pack. It’s a useful overview, for one must understand what Las Vegas represents in the American unconscious to understand the King’s rebirth there.

“It was naughty entertainment for sheltered middle America, helping to loosen the Puritanical standards of the Eisenhower-era ’50s and opening the door to the more audacious taboo-breaking of the late ’60s,” Zoglin writes of Vegas’ early years as more than just a destination for gambling.

Not to fear, diehard Elvis fans; long before the formation of the TCB Band and his stint as a Vegas entertainer, Elvis appears on the pages of Elvis in Vegas. He performed in Sin City early in his career, and he returned again and again to cruise the strip and take in the shows, even before his trendsetting tenure as a Vegas performer. Elvis was drawn back by the late nights and carnival atmosphere, a drastically different environment than the one he was used to in Memphis. In fact, it was a member of the Las Vegas tabloid press who coined the term “Memphis Mafia” as a nickname for Elvis and his coterie of friends and hangers-on, who enjoyed cruising the city in black mohair suits and dark sunglasses.

As Elvis ushered in the age of rock-and-roll, he helped bring about a sea change in Las Vegas, long before his tenure there. The Vegas of the Rat Pack was segregated, somewhat salacious, and dangerous. And, as they always do, the tides of culture changed. “By the late 1960s, Vegas was beginning to lose its juice,” Zoglin explains. “Beatlemania was hardly the passing phase that Vegas thought — hoped — it might be.”

Changes in culture and in appetites reflected behind-the-scenes shifts in Vegas’ business landscape as Howard Hughes bought up property and subverted, to a degree, the mob’s influence. And Elvis, in the process of reinventing his career after spending years filming 31 motion pictures and not touring, was poised to fill the entertainment vacuum.

The stage was set for Elvis, and, fresh from his reinvigorating ’68 Comeback Special, the King was ready to ascend to his throne, not just as the King of Rock-and-Roll, but of America’s collective fantasyland. Always a gifted arranger, Elvis set about cultivating his TCB Band with a renewed energy. “This was the deprived musician, who had not been able to control his music either in the recording studio or in the movies, and now he was going to satisfy all his musical desires on that stage,” Zoglin quotes Jerry Schilling, one of Elvis’ longtime friends.

Elvis incorporated elements of all his interests into his Vegas show. Gospel, rhythm & blues, symphonic pop, his friendship and admiration of Liberace — Elvis was more vivid than any time since before joining the Army. At last free of, as Zoglin calls it, manager Colonel Tom Parker’s “non-stop movie treadmill,” Elvis crafted a dynamic, sensual stage show backed by a full band and back-up singers. Where the Rat Pack had been cool and removed, a booze-fueled boys’ club, Elvis was passionate and direct, as tangible as a sweat-stained scarf thrown to the crowd.

In Vegas, with its Elvis impersonators, tribute shows, and Elvis-themed wedding chapels, Zoglin writes, “Elvis, of course, never really left the building.”

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News News Blog

Priscilla Presley, Jerry Schilling, and their friend, George Klein

George Klein, Cindy Schilling, Dara Klein and Jerry Schilling at The Blues Ball.

George Klein. Two words you just know if you live or ever lived in Memphis. Or if you’re an Elvis fan.

Klein, a radio and TV personality – and the King’s buddy – died Feb. 5 at the age of 83.

He was a deejay. He had his own TV show. He made personal appearances seemingly everywhere, including Graceland during the commemorations of Elvis’s death in August. He was even in Elvis movies, including “Jailhouse Rock.”

I remember him as gracious and kind. The first time I saw him was in the 1970s at the old Tadpole discotheque. It was like seeing a movie star. I don’t think I said a word to him that night.

Over the years I called him at his home or work to verify something about Elvis or find out something about the King for a newspaper story. He always called me back and he told me everything I wanted to know.

George Klein

One of the last times I called him was to see if he thought Elvis ever ate the meatloaf at the Arcade restaurant. It was for a food story. Klein said he never went with him to eat at the Arcade, but he told me about the type food Elvis liked to eat. I think Klein knew everything about Elvis.

But nobody knew Elvis like his close friends Priscilla Presley and Jerry Schilling.

The first time Priscilla heard about Klein was when she was in Germany, she says. Elvis was telling her who his friends were. “And George, of course, was at the top of his list,” Priscilla says.

“The first time I met him was when I went to Graceland in 1962 for Christmas. When he (Elvis) had asked me to come there for Christmas. And we drove up the drive of Graceland and he opened up the door and all of his friends were there that he wanted me to meet. And he introduced me to family and friends. People that he thought were very special. George, of course, was right there among them.”

Elvis, she says, “really thought George to be a great friend. They had gone to Humes High School.”

Elvis and Klein “kept their friends close to their hearts over the years.”

And, she says, ‘And beyond with George.”

What made Klein special? “His loyalty. His friendship. His support. I don’t think I’ve ever heard George say a bad word about anyone. He remembered everyone. He was charitable. He would emcee foundations. He was just a great human being.

“You loved having him around. His sense of humor. His relationships with all his friends. He had so many friends that embraced him and vice versa.”

Elvis and Klein “had their own language,” Priscilla says. She recalls them saying to each other, “You Got it right, Mister.”

Priscilla, who kept in touch with Klein, spoke to him two days before he died. “I’ve been speaking with him at the hospital.”

The last time she saw him was when she presented him his Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame Award. “I went and brought it to his home.

“It’s just hard to believe that he’s gone. I don’t know what Memphis will be like without George Klein.

“He’s an icon.”

Schilling, a close friend and business associate of Elvis, and Klein were friends for decades. “He has been my dear friend since the beginning – when my mother was his babysitter and we lived across the street from each other on Leath Street in North Memphis – 777 and 780.

“At Humes High School, George was the president of the class. Elvis didn’t have any real friends at that time in school ‘cause he came up from Mississippi. George was just nice to him. It wasn’t like they were best friends in high school, but George was nice to him. And so right out of high school when Elvis made the record and everything, he trusted George.”

And, he says, the “people Elvis remembered who were nice to him in high school” became the “nucleus of the start of the Memphis Mafia.”

Elvis “didn’t hire like an accountant or a bodyguard or a bookkeeper. He hired people he trusted. Because you weren’t just working for him at that time. You were living with him.”
And, he says, “It was a family. We were all brothers. George was really kind of the glue of all the friends and stuff of Elvis. He knew everyone from every era, whether it was Hollywood, Memphis, early days, later days, George was right there.”

George, he says, “was always nice to me. In later years he called me his ‘West Coast manager.’”

Schilling got Klein a writer for his book, “Elvis: My Best Man: Radio Days, Rock ‘n’ Roll Nights, and My LIfelong Friendship with Elvis Presley.”

“I was his friend sounding board. We never had an official management relationship. We were too good of friends for that.”

George Klein was always George Klein, Schilling says. “George was the same George that he was when we lived across the street from each other. He was six years older when I got to know Elvis in ‘54. George never changed. I think he changed a lot of things.”

Klein, he says, was “a pioneer on rock and roll radio. And when he had the TV show at WHBQ he was the first person in Memphis to have black artists on his station. I think Fats Domino was the first artist.”

Along with disk jockey Dewey Phillips, Klein “was right at the heart of it all.”

The last time Schilling saw Klein was two weeks ago. “Cindy (Schilling’s wife) and I went out to the Memphis Jewish Home. George knew we were coming and, thank God, he was having a good day. Which was not a good day normally. But a good day for George. We held hands. We talked almost every weekend of our lives whether on the air or off the air. But we always talked about basketball.”

Schilling became president of the Memphis Music Commission when Coach John Calipari became University of Memphis basketball coach. “He and George and I became really good friends along with R. C. Johnson, the athletic director. Coach Cal, when he went back after the game to talk to the team brought me and George back and we would listen.”

Schilling loved basketball, but he would defer to Klein when somebody would ask them what they thought about the game. Schilling would say, “Yeah, George, tell Coach Cal what we think.”

All the basketball players knew Klein and called him “GK” and “The Geeker.’ He was loved across the board.”

People outside of Memphis knew him, too, Schilling says. “I can talk to U2 or anybody about George Klein. They all know who he is.”

Klein, Schilling says, “never wanted to leave Memphis. He loved Memphis. And he had opportunities out here in Hollywood with the top radio station. He just didn’t want to leave Memphis.”

Then there’s the unmistakable George Klein voice. “Elvis would call it his ‘radio voice:’ ‘Oh, George, knock off that damn radio voice.”

Schilling says he told Priscilla, “I don’t think the bang of George leaving has hit me yet. He was truly for the last 40 years or whatever my best friend.”

Those days when he and Klein lived on Leath Street don’t seem so long ago, Schilling says. “I can hear his mother calling ‘George Boy, get in this house.’ I hope GK hears her calling now.””

Michael Donahue

Priscilla Presley and Jerry Schilling

George Klein with Cindy Schilling, former Shelby County Mayor Bill Morris, Pat Kerr Tigrett and Jerry Schilling at The Guest House at Graceland.

Categories
Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Elvis and Nixon

In the deep recesses of Elvis lore, there is one image that stands out as particularly surreal: Elvis in full 70s regalia shaking hands with Richard Nixon in the Oval Office. As the prologue of Elvis and Nixon reminds us, it is by far the most requested image from the National Archive, more popular than the Marines raising the flag on Mount Suribachi or the Apollo 17 “Blue Marble” shot. As the image stares at us from the walls of countless dorm rooms and t shirts, it poses the inscrutable question, “What the hell was going on here?”

Elvis and Nixon meet in December, 1970

Director Liza Johnson tries to answer that question with Elvis and Nixon, with mixed success. One of the best choices from her and a trio of screenwriters (Joey Sagal, Hanna Sagal, and Cary Elews of Princess Bride fame) is beginning with the morning meeting where advisors Egil Keogh (Colin Hanks) and Dwight Chapin (Evan Peters) try to blithely slip in that the President’s nap time will be curtailed in favor of meeting with Mr. Presley. Kevin Spacey, used to playing a president in House Of Cards, absolutely nails Nixon, all hunched shoulders, quivering jowls, and indignation.

When we meet Elvis (Michael Shannon), he’s restless and irritable, trapped in Graceland’s TV room like a panther in a cage. In this telling, it’s the images of the military flailing around in Southeast Asia and the anti-war movement that drive him to seek an audience with the president. No longer a conduit of youthful rebellion, but an early middle aged, wealthy member of the establishment, he’s disturbed by the direction of the country, and thinks the best way he can help is to become an undercover narc. The alternate theory, long entertained by druggies everywhere, that Elvis, buoyed by the finest formulations from Dr. Nick’s pharmacopeia, was pulling Nixon’s leg, is not entertained here.

Kevin Spacey and Michael Shannon star in Elvis and Nixon.

The truth is, the story of this weird picture of two of the most recognizable figures of the twentieth century is pretty thin gruel for a movie. Johnson treats it as a light comedy, which is appropriate, and is at her most interesting when she’s drawing parallels between the isolation and delusions of the President and the King. Both have two henchmen—Elvis’ are Jerry Shilling (Alex Pettyfer) and Sonny West (Johnny Knoxville)—who dictate the exact terms on which anyone can communicate with their boss. The climactic meeting is like watching two silverback gorillas trade dominance displays in the jungle, and it’s pretty fun.

The film’s weak link is Michael Shannon, but it’s not entirely his fault. There have been many attempts to portray Elvis onscreen, with varying degrees of success. For my money, the best was still Kurt Russell in the John Carpenter-directed Elvis TV movie from 1979. Shannon’s not a bad actor, and he gets Elvis’ body language right for the most part. But the voice is all wrong, and the look is just…well, Elvis was one of if not the best looking man of his century and Michael Shannon is not. He suffers especially when put up against Spacey’s uncanny Nixon.

Despite that glaring flaw, Elvis and Nixon is a good view for Memphis audiences and Elvis fans. It’s understatedly, and sometimes surreally, funny, and Johnson has some genuine insights on the isolating nature of fame. But the definitive film document of Elvis remains to be made.