Elvis

Back Home: Elvis Arrives in Memphis

Yep. It's an official homecoming for Elvis at 21, Photographs by Alfred Wertheimer this week. The national traveling exhibition is now open for business at the Pink Palace Museum in Elvis' hometown. What can you say about Memphis? It's food, it's music, it's an iconic American city to be sure. Here's a bit of background about the destination from our Elvis at 21 co-curator Warren Perry, a writer and researcher at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery who also happens to be a Memphis native:

"Before Elvis came along, Memphis was a cotton town and built on river commerce. Alongside and after Elvis, artists like Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Roy Orbison gravitated toward Sun Studio. In the 1960s and '70s, Memphis’ response to Motown was Stax Studio, but even in the face of such powerhouse combinations like Isaac Hayes and David Porter, Otis Redding and Carla Thomas, and Sam Moore and Dave Prater (Sam and Dave), Elvis was [IS] still the most identifiable face in Memphis music.

The city reflects, in many places, the same culture of Southern food and slow living as it did in Elvis’ day. Restaurants like Barksdale’s on Cooper, Interstate BBQ on South Third Street, and Broadway Pizza on Broad Street represent the spirit of Memphis cooking at its finest and most fun. Elvis would be proud to see that Sun Studio on Union Avenue is alive and well; it's a small stop on the Memphis tour, but a necessary one. Also, Memphis’ downtown would be a surprise to Elvis; Beale Street doesn’t really begin to act up until ten or so at night—of course, that would jive well with Elvis’ waking and sleeping habits."

What are your thoughts and/or memories of Memphis? Post your comments here on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/elvisat21

Elvis and Ike

Sure, the Midwest boasts more than 30% of America's cropland, lakes and rivers galore, lots of cheese, and another Men's Final Four basketball title, but until now, it has been void of one very important thing--"Elvis at 21, Photographs by Alfred Wertheimer."

Elvis, in all his black-and-white, twenty-one-year-old glory, will make his first appearance in the Midwest (at least in this century) at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum on April 7.

If you're not already a fan of the national traveling exhibition, it covers just one pivotal year in Elvis' life, the year 1956, right smack-dab in the middle of a decade that introduced social and political unrest into an otherwise complacent country.

Perhaps at the opposite ends of social spectrum were Elvis and Dwight D. Eisenhower, one a symbol of radicalism and the other of the establishment. How did the president feel about Elvis? According to the Eisenhower National Historic Site in Pennsylvania" . . . the First Lady was very tolerant of Elvis, his pelvis, and rock n' roll. The President, however, approved of neither. In fact, he refused to let his grandkids play Elvis records within range of his hearing. According to his grandson David, the President was shocked to discover that his two favorite songs, O Sol Mio and Army Blue, had been redone by Elvis and renamed It's Now or Never and Love Me Tender."

Eisenhower evidently warmed to Elvis after the singer was drafted into the Army without complaining or pleading for special accomodations, but the two never met in real life.

Elvis was introduced to Eisenhower's vice president, Richard Nixon, but years later when Nixon was actually in the White House. Photographed together in December 1970, Nixon and Presley made for an odd pairing; nonetheless, a mutual respect existed between the parties. Nixon later wrote: "It was a pleasure to meet with you in my office recently, and I want you to know once again how much I appreciate your thoughtfulness . . ."

For more about Elvis and the year 1956, visit the traveling exhibition, now in Abilene, Kansas!

In Search of Elvis in Richmond, Va: Part 4

All along, I had a hunch that this inconspicuous corridor in the belly of the Science Museum of Virginia was my "Elvis hallway." But, it wasn't always so obvious. In 1983, several years after the museum opened, the west side of the building was totally renovated to accomodate a new planetarium and theater: overhanging ironwork was removed, doorways and windows were closed off or totally modified.

Matching up the features in the photo, like the intricate ironwork curving to the left side of the original image, the large industrial window, and those broad stone floor tiles was impossible. Other than Tom's intuition about the location of the photo, how could I prove that Elvis was right here?

The key was the east corridor, the passage that led to the "colored" part of the building. Now closed to the public, this area remains virtually the same as it did so many years ago. The bright windows are still there, as are the floor tiles, the doors, the overhead ironwork, and the exterior wall wrapping around the building. The train station is a mirror-image design, and this is exactly what the renovated area would have looked like in 1956.

I went back to the "Elvis hallway" and started matching up details that were faintly visible: There was still a window on the right side of the hallway, albeit smaller, but the scale was dead on. The wooden doors on the left were still there and seemed to provide an anchor for visualizing the 1956 image. Above those side doors, now covered by a large awning, I could see the outline of an old window, also in the original photo. The exit doors--in the center of Wertheimer's image--had been removed, but there was an opening that matched the projected size. This had to be it.

I snapped some photos of my own and took them back to my office. The only way to be sure that this was the right spot was to layer the original image with one of the modern corridor. Once I started deconstructing the contemporary hallway on my computer, I could see that "x" marked the spot, even the base moldings near the floor matched up with Wertheimer's photo. This was the place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, what about that water tower? Remember in the original photo there was a ghostly outline of tall shape in the upper right corner. Was the water tower still there? Looking out just to the west, the tower is, indeed, a proud fixture in the modern landscape--an emblem of Interbake Foods, a regional baking company that packaged its cookies in decorative tins under the trademark of “FFV”, short for “Famous Foods of Virginia”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, if you find yourself at the Science Museum of Virginia in Richmond, wandering down the hallway leading to the Imax theater, you're walking in Elvis' footsteps. Pause and look to the left as you walk beside the museum's gift shop. STOP. You're now standing in the exact spot that Alfred Wertheimer was in when he snapped that famous photo--the hips, the hair, the greatest rock-n-roll legend of our age.

See our Elvis at 21 Facebook page for an expanded photo tour of this series, and be SURE to visit Elvis at 21, Photographs by Alfred Wertheimer at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia, on view from December 24, 2011 through March 18, 2012.

Special thank you to Tom Driscoll, Viktoria Badger, and Diane Lillo for their research assistance!

In Search of Elvis in Richmond, Va: Part 3

So, Elvis had me running again. This time, I was off to Broad Street Station, once known as Union Station of Richmond, and now home to the Science Museum of Virginia. The word for this building is grand. With immense doric columns, a 105-foot-tall dome, and an broad oval lawn leading up to the structure, it commands respect.

Designed by New York architect John Russell Pope, Broad Street Station opened on January 6, 1919, and at the height of operations during World War II, the facility saw thousands of riders and more than 50 trains a day coming and going, up and down the Atlantic seaboard. Passengers--originating in Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Providence, New York City, and everywhere else--were funneled down to D.C. and then to Richmond, the central hub for all points south.

So, how does Elvis fit into this picture of rail travel? If you're up on your "Elvis at 21" trivia, you'll know that the singer did a rehearsal for "The Steve Allen Show" in New York City on June 29, 1956 (the one with the tuxedo and hound dog). Al Wertheimer shot photos of the skits and then boarded a late-night train at Penn Station. Destination: Richmond, Virginia, where Elvis would perform two evening shows at The Mosque.

Elvis pulled into the train station the morning of June 30, 1956. The scene was a reflection of the times--men in fedoras, women in pumps, their hard, plastic suitcases resting on long mahogany benches in an elegant waiting area. Of course, that part of the building was for whites only. The east side of the station (now adjacent to the Department of Motor Vehicles) was for African American patrons and was considerablely less grand than the space adjacent to it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As he walked up the concourse from the train platform, Elvis would have seen the hallway leading to the "colored" facilities and gotten a glimpse of the big, bustling lobby. But, he turned down a solitary corridor, looking for a cab to take him over to the the Jefferson Hotel, about two miles away. According to local historian Tom Driscoll (who not only knows everything about the train station but also used to hang out with his grandfather--a cabbie at Broad Street Station--back in the 1950s and '60s), the west corridor in the back of the building led out to the taxi stand. Could this have been the hallway where Wertheimer snapped the image?

Tom's stories piqued my interest and provided fodder for some forensic field work. Next stop: The "Elvis hallway."

Jump to the last story in this series . . .

In Search of Elvis in Richmond, Va: Part 2

If you read my first blog about Elvis in Virginia's capital city, you'll know that I was feeling a little lost, trying to determine where Elvis was when Alfred Wertheimer snapped the singer's photo in an unremarkable train station hallway on June 30, 1956.

This much I did know: There were two major stations in the area during that period, and one was Main Street Station. Now just a few feet away from the gravity-defying ramps of Interstate 95, this stunning Renaissance Revival building opened in 1901 and must have been the Grand Dame of the city. Even today, it's a remarkable structure with a commanding clock tower and Beaux Arts details that will knock your architectural socks off.

Needless to say, Main Street Station was a good place to start, especially since it was so close to Elvis' next destination that day--the Jefferson Hotel. I arranged a tour of the building with Diane Lillo and Viktoria Badger, who were both versed in the maintenance, history, and resurrection of Main Street Station.

After introductions, I opened my Elvis at 21, Photographs by Alfred Wertheimer book and said, "Recognize this hallway?" The book automatically fell to the spread of Elvis walking out the train station doors. (I've looked at the image so many times, the books seems to remember to take me there.) 

Silence. 

Neither woman could identify the corridor, or the set of doors, or the broad stone tiles on the floor. We flipped through stacks of archival images, glossy pictures of a golden age in rail travel, and older sepia-toned photos that showed horse-drawn carriages waiting for passengers under the elevated train tracks. No connections. What did seem clear was that the photo wasn't taken in the main lobby or any of the other rooms that made up the public quarter of the station.

We needed to search out that hallway on foot. Diane and Viktoria took me back to a set of locked doors. (This is where things always get interesting, right?) With the clanking of chains and keys, the door opened to a massive train shed--the place where passengers would have boarded trains to Anywhere, U.S.A. Divided hallways and new interior walls made this a labyrinth of modern reuse and one that would difficult to de-construct to its former self. Still, I wanted to look into all the possibilities.

And, there was the water tower. In the original 1956 image, there is a very faint outline of a tower above the right door. Could we locate that landmark and thereby determine the location of the hallway? It just so happens that there is a water tower outside the station, in an area of the city called Church Hill; it's clearly visible from the east side of the building. We kept walking. Finally, there was a set of doors. They were dull and metal, instead of wood; they were wider too, with four sets of doors and two glass side lights, but there was a vague similarity. The true badge would be that water tower. Viktoria unlocked the doors, and there it was--in nearly the same spot as it appeared in the original photo.

What about the other clues: The ironwork above the doors, the waist-high wall that turned in front of Elvis, where were they?

We had exhausted our possibilities in the station. This had to be it, but I wasn't feeling overly confident. I returned to main part of the station and was quickly introduced to one more person, as Viktoria summed up the picture puzzle I was trying to solve.

"Oh, no," the newcomer said matter-of-factly. "That's not taken here. That's at Broad Street Station."

Well, in the next entry, I'm headed there. Jump to the next story in this series . . .

Follow the traveling exhibition too!

In Search of Elvis in Richmond, Va: Part 1

For many fans, Elvis is omnipresent. They see his face, hear his music, feel his presence wherever they go. For us, Elvis is in Richmond, Virginia, or at least he will be. Elvis at 21: Photographs by Alfred Wertheimer will be making a stop at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts on December 24, 2011. It's bit like a homecoming, really, since several of the 56 photos in the traveling exhibition were taken in the city.

I jumped at the opportunity to dig into the details of the Richmond pictures, a series that intimately chronicles a mere 24 hours in Elvis' young life.

The photo from that group that most intrigued me was one of Presley walking--sauntering--out of a local train station on a mid-summer day. It appears, on the surface, to be a serene photo. Elvis is the only person in the frame. The shadows and ripples on Elvis' stylish jacket accentuate the curve of his hips--those famous hips. It's just a single figure in motion with perfect light pouring in from every direction.

Of course, there's a story behind the image that contradicts the quiet. "Very early on the morning of June 30th, I arrived at the train station in Richmond," the photographer Alfred Wertheimer recalls. "A short while later, the train pulled in . . . Junior Smith was walking off the train with Elvis. Elvis took a look around, smiled, and turned on his little radio. It wasn't one of those huge boom boxes you'd see thirty years later, but an RCA Transistor 7 portable radio that had been given to him as a present . . . The next thing I saw was Elvis exiting the train station with his radio blaring."

I read that passage repeatedly. Each time, it was like adding a background score to a silent film. I could hear beats bouncing off the cold stone walls, mingled with the moderate pace of Elvis' footsteps, the photographer stepping hard to keep up just behind him.

I wanted to walk down that hallway with Elvis, to see what he may have seen, some 55 years ago. So, I set out to find this memorable corridor that Wertheimer's June 30, 1956, photograph had imprinted on my mind.

The scene was shot in Richmond, Virginia. How hard could it be to find the location? There are parts of this centuries-old capital city that look as they did 50, 75, even 100 years ago. I figured I had a fair chance of catching up with Elvis, but I had to know where to look first.

Clue #1: Richmond train station. Problem #1: Which one? For locals, it may have been a no brainer, but for a semi-outsider, it was a bit like looking for your car in a crammed holiday parking lot.

Jump to the next story in this series.

 

Why are Al Wertheimer's Images of Elvis Still So Good?

As you may know, the Smithsonian maintains a Facebook page that goes hand-in-hand with the traveling exhibition Elvis at 21: Photographs by Alfred Wertheimer. The crowd that follows the page is as passionate as they are insightful, and their responses to our questions are sometimes worthy of sharing with a larger audience. Check out one articulate fan's response to our question "What makes Alfred Wertheimer's 1956 photos of Elvis Presley so compelling to you?" 

 

 

"I have asked for a time machine, and no one has invented one
yet . . . in fact, the need to travel time came up in another FB [Facebook] group discussion today, and that conversation was also in connection to loved ones who are not here any longer . . . bizarre, it's one of those days. Point is, to me these photos are time travel. Travel to 1956, a point in time where Elvis was crossing an invisible line, a line once crossed, he could never go back over. You can see it and sense this shift in the photos, an unseen force, like changes in the atmosphere, a hurricane was developing. [In] the photo . . . posted yesterday, look how short the line is to meet Elvis, but there is a line and the ladies are sure as heck not there waiting for a train:).The 'atmosphere' changed forever and everywhere, and in 1956, it was captured by Mr. [Wertheimer], thank you.

All the people around E. [Elvis] were clueless at the time as to [his] long-term magnitude. And even though E. had himself said he knew 'something' was going to happen to him, I think E. is most clueless of all at this point in time, also captured. What if E. had never crossed the line, unimaginable . . . but if not, then I would be posting elsewhere . . . and listening to Jim Morrison right now, in a 1970 live performance, singing Mystery Train. This is as close as we come to time travel, for now, and if or when that happens, which people would you bring back with you?"

--Rita Stokes, Elvis at 21 Facebook fan

THANKS, Rita! Keep those great comments coming! For more great responses to this question, visit our Facebook page, and follow Elvis on Twitter too! Elvis at 21, Photographs by Alfred Wertheimer was developed collaboratively by the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, and Govinda Gallery, and is sponsored by HISTORY™.

Elvis and Clinton: Two American Icons

If you follow Elvis at 21, Photographs by Alfred Wertheimer on our Facebook or Twitter pages, you'll no doubt be aware that the popular traveling exhibition is currently at the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum in Little Rock, Arkansas. It's an appropriate pairing--president and icon. Of course, Bill Clinton was only ten years old when Elvis Presley burst onto the national musical scene in 1956, but it was a grand entrance that Clinton would never forget. In his 2004 autobiography, My Life: Bill Clinton, the author cites his early affinity for Elvis: "I loved Elvis. I could sing all his songs, as well as the Joranaires' backgrounds," he recounts. "We watched his legendary performance on The Ed Sullivan Showtogether and laughed when the cameras cut off his lower body movements to protect us from the indecency. Beyond his music, I identified with his small-town roots. And I thought he had a good heart." 

Decades later, after Clinton became president, he amassed a substantial collection of Elvis-related swag, some of which will be view at the Clinton Library, in conjunction with the large-scale photographs that make up the traveling exhibit.

If you want to get a true insider's view of both Elvis and Clinton's fascination with him, be sure to make a stop in Little Rock before August 21, 2011, when the Smithsonian's exhibition jets off to its next setting, the Mobile Museum of Art in Arkansas.

Here's a look back at the opening events at the Clinton Library:

"Elvis" and "Elvis at 21, Photographs by Alfred Wertheimer" Opening Night – June 3, 2011 from Clinton Presidential Center on Vimeo.

Where is Elvis now? Behind the scenes with our team

Elvis has left the building at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. In fact, he's already arrived at the next stop on the national tour, the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, PA. Seems like pure museum magic when an exhibition suddenly appears in a gallery. Voila! 

Behind the ropes, it's a bit more complicated than that, and we should know. The registrars here at the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) have installed and de-installed (hung up and taken down) hundreds of exhibitions--that's just one part of their job. 

For this exhibition, Josette Cole was the registrar-in-chief--our Colonel Tom Parker on the scene, making sure that Al Wertheimer's original photographs were safe and secure as they were unpacked, handled, hung on the walls, and removed again after the exhibition.

During a typical de-install, registrars like Cole inspect the objects--large wall-hung photographs in this case--for any signs of damage.They take copious notes to document the condition of the photographs before they're sent to the next museum. If necessary, repairs or touch ups are made to frames and pictures since a Smithsonian traveling exhibition has to look flawless for each venue, even if the show has already been traveling for several years.

We, therefore, believe in a dose of preventative medicine. With the Elvis photographs, registrars installed buffered silca packs to the backs of the images to take out and/or add in moisture to the framed prints--keeping the photographs at a constant relative humidity. Ever seen a poster that's gotten wet? That ripple effect is a tell-tale sign of wicking moisture. Dry heat and excessive light can also damage sensitive photographs, and our rule is to keep objects out of direct sunlight and away from heating vents. (These are great tips for your own treasured items as well.)

General security was also an issue. This is ELVIS after all! "We didn't want anyone walking away from the gallery, with souvenirs", said Cole. As a final measure, the Smithsonian team installed security plates on the backs of the frames that keep everything firmly anchored to the wall.

Of course, the whole process appears seemless, from start to finish. The true museum magic is what happens in background, with dozens of dedicated professionals making the final presentation look fabulous. Nothing but the best for this iconic rock legend; thankyou, thankyouveramuch.

A Wrap-Up of Elvis at the National Portrait Gallery

The three-month love affair that the National Portrait Gallery (@npg) had with Elvis Presley is finally over. By all accounts, the exhibition was a great success there. We were elated to get so much feedback from visitors, some of whom wandered into the museum without a clue that they would come face-to-face with America's rock-n-roll champion and some of whom traveled a long, long way to see it--from Germany, the Philippines, Venezuela, Pakistan, South Korea, and everywhere in between. Of course, the popularity of the National Portrait Gallery and its stellar permanent collections, not to mention an outstanding Norman Rockwell exhibition, brought many people to the museum. Still, Elvis was an enormous draw; according to one curator, there was a 59% increase in visitors to the National Portrait Gallery during the time Elvis was in the house, compared to the same period the previous year.

Numbers aside, the most important thing was that people had fun! "This gallery was the bees knees," announced one visitor, "it was down right spiffy!" Others seemed to get lost in the moment when they saw a younger version of Elvis: "A real treat, as I came of age in the '50s, listening to Elvis," commented one viewer from Maryland. "Excellent exhibit," said another, "brought back many wonderful memories."

The 12-week exhibition culminated in a rockin' Elvis tribute concert that co-curator Warren Perry said was "amazing! [Scot Bruce] and his back-up band could have taught a class on the history of rock-and-roll. The band knew the sound, and they also did the back up vocals; I thought I was in the studio with Elvis a couple of times--they were that good. People were dancing in the aisles of the McEvoy auditorium!"

And that says it all. Elvis at 21: Photographs by Alfred Wertheimer storms into the James A. Michener Art Museum in mid-February 2011.