A Telegram On Elvis In N.Y.C.

Mr. Presley is not coming out until everyone sits down. The Mercury Ballroom of the Hilton Hotel, like a little theater with stage and cream and gold chairs only in leatherette row upon row on modern red carpeting in the sort of modern design only modern hotels have. The Press, is solid in the first maybe eight rows, and scattered beyond that although every chair is supplied with an Elvis Tour Photo Album rubberstamped “compliments ELVIS and the Colonel” and a wallet-sized picturecalendar (and Meltzer came up with a red Bic pen imprinted with something like “Elvis Presley on RCA Records” that the Colonel, over there in the aisle with a straw cowboy-type hat, had given him; “Isn’t this tacky?” he said). The tv crews were all crowded in front along with a bunch of hunkering still photographers. The Colonel has requested that you please sit down, the man is telling the crowd up front again, setting off a lot of bickering I can’t hear. I pass a note down to Lillian: “Why do we have to go on meeting like this?”

Thed for some reason they bring out Elvis’ father, Vernon Presley, looking very Southern comfortable in a bigstriped suit and thick curly grey hair. He sits down, smiles, doesn’t say a word and the man in charge says something cute about, Mr. Presley has a friend backstage. Immediately El comes out. Squeals, sighs, some women in front of me yell, We love you Elvis! and he poses. Really models his outfit – baby blue suit the kind only fancy stars and rich pimps have with black trim and very weird cut including a raised, furled collar in the back (from the looks of his Tour Photo Album, a trademark, preventing any glimpse of the secret nape of his neck sigh) and a black cape (on this very hot day) which he very consciously flares out by holding one arm cocked at the elbow – and smiles real pretty for the cameras. The network