Elvis Ignited

by Kealing, Bob;

  “You could hear the screams to Bird Creek Bridge,” said Gete. “The drivers shouted, ‘You can’t do this!’ Already done. Bring my money you can have your truck.” The film honchos came huffing and puffing to the Pure Oil station ready to see to it that the suspected hijacker be thrown in jail. But that never happened. “In addition to running the Pure Oil station,” Keasler reported, “he is a special deputy sheriff. He got his money.”

  That evening Gete changed his shirt and reported to his night job as a member of Elvis Presley’s security team. “Fine boy, everybody likes him. Nothing put on. Nothing phony,” Gete assessed. “More than I can say for a lot of other….” Those “other” folks couldn’t very well have someone on their own payroll thrown in jail.

  Back at the Port Paradise, Anne Helm insisted on writing Presley a personal check for ten dollars to cover her cumulative card game losses. “I didn’t want to owe him in another life,” Helm said. As she expected, her relationship with Presley fizzled soon after they finished shooting the final interior scenes back in Hollywood. Some shots inside the Crystal River High School gymnasium, deemed unsatisfactory, were scrapped.

  Long after Helm had forgotten about it, the canceled check came back in the mail. It appeared Presley had endorsed it and cashed it at a liquor store. For years she doubted the authenticity of Presley’s signature. To satisfy her own curiosity, she consulted an expert, who assured her it was indeed his. Generations later Helm retained the quirky souvenir of her days working with Elvis Presley and being his on-location girlfriend.

  To commemorate Presley’s time there, town leaders in Inglis and Yankeetown entertained a motion to rename Levy County Road 40 “Follow That Dream Parkway.” In Inglis, where the earliest scenes were shot, the measure passed, and now that one-mile stretch bears the name of the film. “If it’ll bring people into our little town that’s a good thing,” said Inglis mayor Carolyn Risher in 1996. Next door in Yankeetown, where the bulk of filming had gone on around Bird Creek, the measure was voted down. “Elvis Presley does not personify Yankeetown,” said Mayor Jimmie Wall in a veiled reference to the drug use that contributed to Presley’s death in 1977. “He only came to this area to make a movie for his own benefit.”

  As a result of that decision, for fifteen more years, only the Inglis mile of State Road 40, so imbued in Presley lore, commemorated his time there. Follow That Dream Parkway ran out miles before reaching the site of the main film location. Thick plant growth and litter thrown from the roadway make it hard to fathom that Pumpkin Island was ever a film set. The Bird Creek Bridge is unremarkable except for the occasional folks fishing there. Few know that the guardrail along the bridge is where Presley sat for many of the film’s publicity photographs.

  “Elvis boarded a plane at Tampa, his cigar tilted jauntily,” Keasler wrote of Presley’s departure from Florida’s west coast. There were more films to be made, the next all the way across the country in Seattle. “Colonel Tom Parker, who evidently went back by flying carpet, left a wake of secret laughter,” Keasler concluded. Something about covering Elvis brought out the best in Miami journalist John Keasler, who could just as deftly elicit smiles or tears. Sixteen years to the week after his adventures with Elvis in Yankeetown were published, Keasler was with him one more time at Graceland: “Elvis had been a skinny country kid who lived in a tiny frame house and made river rafts and dreamed of being a truck driver. Now they came—wearing overalls, business suits, high fashion, rags—to see him in his copper casket, in his plush and fabled palace…. I took a last look down at Elvis and left.”

  With apologies to Yankeetown’s former mayor, he could not have been more wrong. The reason innumerable people were able to come into contact with Elvis Presley in the summer of 1961 and cherish those memories was his willingness to interact with them; to do something for their benefit. Besides those who appeared in the film with Presley, many others showed up on his doorstep for a photo or autograph at the Port Paradise Hotel and out on location.

  The girls on a road trip, the young boy who dreamed of being a musician and got an autograph and a ride on Presley’s boat, the grandmother who baked him a pie, fans who came from thousands of miles away just to get a glimpse of Presley, the young men who became security guards, the stand-ins, the extras, the bank president, the girls who formed a club consisting of those who’d gotten a kiss from Presley—to a remarkable degree he accommodated them all.

  Jeanette Dundas convinced her hard-working single mom to drive her to Crystal River to try to see Elvis Presley. “I was on the verge of tears from the pure joy of it,” she recalled. “Then I started to panic. What if he wasn’t as nice as I thought he’d be? What if he rejected me?” Like many thirteen-year-old girls, she struggled with a negative self-image that tugged at her to run and hide from the audacious notion of meeting the one and only Elvis Presley. “I was clumsy, awkward, plain and scrawny,” said Dundas. “I felt so ugly with my Lilt permed hair flying in every direction.”

  Yet she resisted the urge to withdraw from her one chance to meet Elvis. So there outside the Port Paradise Hotel she waited alongside her mom and best friend. Dundas tried to remember all the details: the exact date and time, August 8, 1961, 6:45 p.m. When a white Cadillac pulled up, she stood frozen in her spot while other fans rushed up to it.

  Presley moved along until eventually he was right beside the shy teen. Not knowing what to do, Dundas asked him to say the word “bare,” like only he had said it in the spoken-word interlude from “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” He didn’t respond. Only after agonizing silence and his signing more autographs did Dundas finally get the interaction she was waiting for. He wheeled around and said the word. “Now are you happy little girl?” Not exactly; it all happened so fast that Dundas didn’t have a chance to reply.

  Just then someone in the crowd pushed forward, very nearly causing Dundas to fall. Presley reacted, took hold, and tucked the starstruck teen under his right arm: “Little girl you better stick close to me so you don’t get hurt.” The ugly, scrawny girl who couldn’t stand the way she looked spent the rest of the autograph session under Elvis Presley’s arm like the junior prom queen of the world.

  In 2011 Yankeetown leaders finally approved a proposal to rename State Road 40 “Follow That Dream Parkway.” Photo by author.

  “I was so happy my insecurities flew out the window,” she recalled. And when Presley finally finished the last of his day’s work signing autographs and posing for photos, he started off for his room. For a few fleeting moments, he had made Jeanette Dundas feel special like no one ever had. She blurted after him, “Elvis, I love you. I really love you.”

  He looked at her, nodded and smiled, “I know you do and I love you too.” Perhaps some of the details have grown a bit more melodramatic with the passing decades, but that’s how Dundas recalled the special time with her childhood idol. Presley gave fans moments like that again and again at the end of long days spent working in the hottest time of the year in Florida. Had he just been in it for himself, he could easily have waved them all off or left it to members of his security team who were all adept at being the bad guys.

  How does that not personify Yankeetown?

  In the countless articles generated, and among people interviewed during Presley’s time in Crystal River, few recall him uttering a harsh word. And when he did, it wasn’t directed at someone personally. Even Tom Parker, the manager many revile as a money-grubbing manipulator, brought Elvis to Pioneer Go Home as an honest homage to those like himself who came to Florida to begin anew; to stake their claims in the sunshine gold rush. Presley was one of them.

  Finally, in September 2011, Yankeetown mayor Dawn Marie Clary went before the Levy County Board of Commissioners with a request to approve Resolution 2011-57, the motion that designated State Road 40 from Yankeetown to the Gulf of Mexico as Follow That Dream Parkway. Fifty years after principal filming wrapped under the Bird Creek Bridge, fifteen years after Inglis town leaders saw fit to rename State Road
40 passing through their part of town, Yankeetown followed suit.

  Generally speaking, Follow That Dream is regarded by his fans as one of Presley’s better films; a chance to show comedic as well as dramatic range. Critics like Bosley Crowther of the New York Times were dismissive: “Judging by this laboriously homespun and simple-minded exercise about just plain folks, somebody must have decided that the Presley films have been getting a little too glossy lately.” The film premiered in April 1962 at the Marion Theater in Ocala. The evening’s star attraction did not attend. By then Presley was back in Hawaii filming Girls, Girls, Girls.

  No more would Presley’s Florida fans have a chance to see and interact with him up close. Most of them were resigned to the fact that Elvis Presley the young rocker had morphed into a B-movie actor-singer for good, and that was that. They moved on to other artists and music, until Presley finally made a move to get out of his artistic rut and reignite his cultural relevance.

  28

  Coming Back

  In a darkened sound studio illuminated only by the small red lights of amplifying equipment, television producer Steve Binder witnessed Elvis Presley recording a brand new song. So new that it had been written for him only hours earlier by composers Billy Goldenberg and Earl Brown. Presley asked for all the lights to be turned off and to have a hand-held microphone rather than the overhead boom type more commonly used in recording. It was June 1968.

  Binder and co-producer Bones Howe commissioned the new song, “If I Can Dream,” in hopes of providing an appropriate commentary on America’s emotionally charged political climate during filming of Presley’s 1968 television special. It had been eight years since Presley appeared on television, seven since he finished filming Follow That Dream in Florida, and six years since he topped the Billboard charts. In the meantime, singer songwriters like Bob Dylan, and groups who wrote and recorded their own material like the Beatles and the Byrds, marginalized Presley and his cavalcade of profitable but forgettable B-movie fluff. Only his heartfelt and soulful gospel recordings had brought Presley recent critical acclaim, but in a genre far away from the pop culture mainstream.

  The first time they met to discuss doing a variety special for NBC, Binder was blunt: “Your career is in the toilet.” A dejected Presley told Binder, “I’m scared of television. Berle made fun of me. Allen made me sing to a hound dog.” And despite stellar ratings, many thought his special with Sinatra in Miami to be contrived and boring. Still, Binder assured him, a successful television special would put him back on top overnight as no other medium could.

  The night Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, the two sat up for hours talking about America’s political and racial tumult. Kennedy’s assassination, and the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King two months beforehand, left Presley shaken, wanting to say something relevant in front of a national television audience. Presley had come to trust and respect Binder, a man younger than he, who refused to sacrifice his creative vision in the face of Tom Parker’s usual bullying and bombast. His resolve emboldened Presley for once in his life to tune out Parker and listen to someone in touch with young America; the violence and inner strife was widening its generational divide like never before.

  Binder and Howe wanted “If I Can Dream” to give Presley something hopeful to say. Parker had been pushing for a benign Christmas song to end the special, or a monologue following the formula of establishment performers like Andy Williams. Hearing the lyrics to the new song Binder wanted Presley to sing, “If I can dream of a better land, where all my brothers walk hand in hand,” Parker said Presley would record it “over my dead body.” Presley was moved and asked the songwriting team to play it for him over and over, then finally declared, “I’ll do it.”

  Parker pulled Presley into his office like a shamed little boy. While his manager lectured Binder, whom Parker derisively called “Bindle,” Presley stood at his side mute, head bowed and hands crossed in front of his crotch. When they left Parker’s office, Presley nudged Binder in the ribs and said, “Fuck him.”

  In the dark at United Western studios, Presley began recording “If I Can Dream.” “He started to feel it, and went to the floor and curled up,” said Binder, who was witnessing the remarkable scene made barely visible by the light of amplifiers, the fetal imagery not lost on him. This was an artist bursting from a straightjacket of years of unfulfilling creative pursuits, rediscovering his true essence. The passion Presley poured into the song is evident.

  Steve Binder with Elvis Presley, 1968. Courtesy of Steve Binder.

  When the time came to perform “If I Can Dream” with Presley’s live vocals over a backing track to close the television special, he was filmed performing it in multiple settings. The version chosen to close the TV show was unforgettable. Fronting a giant wall of magenta lights that spelled out “Elvis,” Presley stood dressed all in white. He performed the song with the look and all-consuming passion of a Sunday preacher, complete with dramatic arm gestures. Then, out of breath, he wished viewers a simple, “Good night.” It was a defining Presley performance.

  “I was so happy for him, that was the true Elvis,” said his former Follow That Dream co-star Anne Helm. “I think everyone was stunned by that performance.” Fans who’d gotten close to Presley back in Florida, including Linda Moscato, who said seeing Presley in Miami in 1956 is burned in her brain, was thrilled to see the televised improv scenes between Presley and his surviving bandmates from the early days: Scotty Moore and D. J. Fontana. “He was fabulous, I loved him in the black leather jacket,” Moscato raved. “You could tell he was happy. That was excellent.”

  Doris Tharp-Gurley, who had skipped school and ridden the bus from Daytona Beach to Orlando in 1955 to see the new singing sensation on whom she was fixated, picked up on the notion that Presley was returning to his roots as a performer: “He was more like what I think he wanted to be, rather than what the Colonel wanted him to be.”

  After the special aired to wide acclaim on December 3, 1968, New York Times critic John Landau wrote, “There is something magical about a man who has lost himself find[ing] his way back home…. He sang with the kind of power people no longer expect from rock ’n’ roll singers.” Presley had gotten his wish; the special sparked a career renaissance. At that moment in time, once again anything seemed possible for Presley as a singer and entertainer.

  With his newfound independence, Presley asked Scotty Moore if at long last he would be interested in embarking on a European tour. “A part of me wanted to be excited about the European tour Elvis discussed,” Moore recounted. “A part of me was afraid to be excited about it. At thirty-six, I didn’t want to be disappointed yet again.”

  Anyone who thought Tom Parker would back off from his control of Presley’s career, or thought Presley himself would be able to forget about the ball-and-chain pledge he had made to let Parker handle the business, was dreaming.

  Despite Moore’s repeated attempts to get back in touch with Presley, the call back never came. Moore never worked with Presley again. Binder too, after successfully marginalizing Parker’s power over Presley, became persona non grata. Parker closed ranks around his star. Despite Presley’s assurances that the special was only the beginning, Binder had made a prescient prediction: “I hear you Elvis, but I don’t think you’re going to be strong enough.”

  The following year Presley did make another move contrary to Parker’s wishes, recording the album Elvis in Memphis, a clutch of personally and socially relevant songs. Mac Davis’s “In the Ghetto” lamented the circle of violence and the lack of care for impoverished children and gave Presley a top-five smash. Later that year his cover of Mark James’s song mourning a crumbling relationship, “Suspicious Minds,” became Presley’s final number 1 hit in America during his lifetime.

  Between 1970 and 1977 Presley performed twenty-five more live shows in Florida; the early ’70s performances reflected the glitzy flair of Presley’s Las Vegas shows. Tom Parker had won again, squelching Presley’s overseas a
mbitions and confining him to a golden cage in Vegas with a breakneck schedule of shows to fuel Parker’s penchant for gambling—and losing—and Presley’s own free-spending binges.

  The later years showcased a legend in decline from years of prescription drug abuse, chronic physical ailments, and weight gain caused by poor eating habits. Still, loyal fans always turned out, and Presley never lost the deep, resonant, and soulful voice that made him such an iconic figure. Ardys Bell saw Presley in Jacksonville four times, including on May 30, 1977, less than three months before his death. Bell, who happened upon Presley the first time crazed fans tore the shirt off his back in Jacksonville twenty-two years earlier, was shocked by his appearance that last time she saw him: “It made me sick,” Bell lamented. “I remember thinking how sad it was.”

  St. Petersburg journalist Anne Rowe also attended the last Jacksonville show and came away similarly saddened. “I remembered him young and full of fun and life. I could hardly look at him now,” she recounted. “The sparkle was gone.” Scotty Moore never spoke to Presley again after the 1968 comeback special. All his attempts to penetrate Presley’s Howard Hughes–like retreat from the world were thwarted. Moore was spared seeing the spectacle of Presley late in his career. “When I think of Elvis, I think of the man I knew in the early years,” Moore wrote in his memoir, “when he was young and vibrant, and ready to set the world on fire.”

  What performer twenty years past an era indelibly emblazoned in his fans’ hearts and minds could possibly live up to that early standard? The ruminations about what could have been if Presley had been allowed to grow as a singer and entertainer and bypass his B-movie period, the endless angst about Tom Parker’s lust for money over any career considerations for his star—the raft of misgivings makes those fleeting early barnstorming days all the more important. He didn’t just entertain and inspire young fans; Elvis Presley set them free. He gave them a reason to sing, shout, scream, cry, dance, and laugh. For a performer to elicit such an array of emotions and such everlasting loyalty and love is a rare and wondrous thing.