THE ELVIS FILES PHOTO SHOP
We've received a lot of requests in order to sell some of our highly sort after original photos as seen printed in our magazines and books. We've come this far to offer ─ to the delight of many fans ─ a premium choice of selected 8 by 10 or 8 by 8 inch pictures ─ from the original negatives.
Printed on premium paper and wrapped in a printed paper sleeve.
Suitable for framing
Set#01 - Nine photos from Portland, Oregon. Arrival at Union station, press conference.
Set#02 - Nine photos from the actual concert in Portland ─ Multnomah Park. Sept. 2, 1957.
Set#03 - Nine photos from "If I Can Dream" NBC TV Special.
Set#04 - Nine photos from "Memories" NBC TV Special.
Set#05 - Nine photos from Toronto, Canada at Maple Leaf Gardens, April 2, 1957.
€45.- each set (#01- #05)
Set#06 - Eighteen photos from "Elvis Summer Festival - TTWII." Volume 1-2-3 '70.
€90.- set
Set#07 - Twelve photos from Fort Homer Hesterly Armory in Tampa, Fl., August 5, '56.
€60.- set
Prices are including world-wide shipping - send email or order directly with paypal or creditcard
"They jammed the Union station, the Multnomah hotel, the Multnomah stadium gateways."
They thrilled to every word, every breath of the famed entertainer. Here was heaven, a haven in otherwise conservative life of studies, dishes and mowing the lawn.
Here was a miracle wrapped handsomely in a single package ─ a miracle wearing the exciting name of Elvis Presley. There were many who at the end of the day were slightly frustrated, in some cases even disillusioned. Some of these were among the 500 first jubilant and later disappointed Presley fans who crowded Union station at 4:30 p.m. Monday for a glimpse-oh, please, just a glimpse ─ of the man.
Others were included in the hundreds who blocked the front entrance of the Multnomah hotel where the man of the hour was to while away several of his Portland hours only to later discover that clever agents had smuggled him through the side door, unobserved by teenage eyes.
At the station he escaped the crowd by edging quickly from the last car on the train to a waiting convertible. Scarcely more than 15 fans not among the official party were able to reach the scene before the auto made its fast exit. Meanwhile, those 500 Presleyites at the station slowly grew aware of the disappearing act.
In the eighth-floor governor’s suite at the hotel he stayed with 12 troupe headliners, eating and making merry over the sounds of Presley records. No unauthorized persons were allowed near the floor, and the few die-hards who did slip by advance guards were halted and quickly ushered from the area by an efficient squad of policemen, Presley’s three security officers and cleaning women. Then, at 8 p.m., on to the stadium, where again he bypassed scores of you-know-who expecting their idol to travel down the ramp into the stadium.
Instead, he jumped from a cab at the head of the Multnomah Athletic club, adjacent to the stadium, where he met with newsmen and photographers in a half-hour press conference. Numerous winners of local disc jockey shows posed with him following the conference. Everywhere, photographers’ shutters clicked.
I [Dorothy Smith] was completely shook up Monday night. Who wouldn’t be after exposure to two Elvis Presleys, in one evening? There’s definitely the on-stage Elvis and the off-stage Elvis.
The inside story of the 1968 performance which made Elvis Presley cool again
By Warren Manger for MIRROR on-line
Elvis Presley in 1968 was a fading star.
He had not performed live in seven years, his Hollywood films had been panned by the critics (though they were loved by his fans) and musical tastes had moved on to The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. But then Elvis made his ’68 Comeback Special and with that one sensational TV show, he was The King once more. But if his manager Colonel Tom Parker had got his way the show which transformed Elvis and saved his career would have been very different.
Parker’s plan was for a corny Christmas special, with Elvis in a cheesy tuxedo singing 26 festive favorites. The show’s director Steve Binder had other ideas. Steve says: “Colonel Parker gave me an audio tape, it was an hour of recorded Christmas songs. It never entered my mind that was what we were going to do.
“I told Elvis I thought his career was in the toilet. He hadn’t had a hit record in years. He wasn’t making any movies, so what was really making him this superstar was just Colonel Parker and his publicity machine.
“Television was a way to become the biggest star in the world the next day, or fall on your ass and that would be the end of your career. I think he respected my honesty and we just hit it off.”
And so, under his direction, the tux was out and Elvis opened the show singing Trouble/Guitar Man, wearing a tight leather suit as black as his very dyed hair. His sideburns were sculpted – and big, like the collar on his jacket. Instead of crooning by an open fire, he sang with a guitar slung from his shoulders, hips swiveling and lips curling. Behind him was a gantry full of Elvis impersonators following his every move. The most memorable set was an improve session, which had Elvis jamming with his band, laughing and bantering between performances of Heartbreak Hotel, Hound Dog and I Can’t Help Falling In Love. The show made him irresistibly cool again
Tampa Bay Times – Monday, 06 August, 1956.
"Broom-Sweeping Elvis A Regular Guy"
By ANNE ROWE
Dressed as sharp as a cat in black pegged pants, striped belt, blue shirt, white tie, maroon jacket and white buck shoes, the king of rock 'n roll picked up a broom and started sweeping out his dressing room. This was my fabulous introduction to the four-Caddie Elvis Presley, whose reputation had given this reporter reason "to proceed with caution" in his presence.
No need for alarm, though, for Presley posed willingly for press photographers, answered questions without hesitation and seemed to us like a real regular guy during the hour we spent with him in his dressing room before his first appearance at the Ft. Homer Hesterly Armory in Tampa yesterday.
Appearing just a little bit nervous, Elvis swept the floor clear of cigarette butts, and then transformed the broom into a microphone, crooning "Don't Be Cruel" into its handle. Putting the broom aside, he walked outside, where it was only slightly cooler than the stifling heat in his dressing room, surveyed the curiosity seekers lined up at the gale, laughed and hollered, "I'll be right with you" with NO obvious southern accent.
“Elvis in Toronto, Canada at Maple Leaf Gardens. April 2, 1957”
By Kevin Plummer 2013, The Torontoist.
“It goes without saying,” Toronto Star music critic Hugh Thomson wrote in a scathing review of Elvis Presley’s two-concert appearance at Maple Leaf Gardens on April 2, 1957, “he has all the appeal of one-part dynamite and one-part chain-lightning to the adolescent girls, but to one like myself who is neither a girl nor adolescent, I could only feel he was strikingly devoid of talent.”
While a frenzied audience (reportedly composed predominantly of women, ranging in age from four to 64) screamed and cheered in approval as Elvis glided across the stage, seductively cradling the microphone and stopping to rock his hips in rhythm to the music, Thomson seethed: “One rock ‘n’ roll ballad sounded just like the other, and the basic theme and appeal were sex, which Elvis lays on with the subtlety of a bulldozer in mating season, you might say. He is Mr. Overstatement himself. He has to knock himself and his audience out at every beat.”
Elvis’ appearance in Toronto was credited, in the Toronto Telegram, to the efforts of Leaside’s Carol Vanderleck, who mailed off a petition with 2,443 signatures asking him to perform here. The Star suggested responsibility rested with another fan, Shirley Harris, who with the aid of a local radio show collected 2,000 signatures of her own. And it was widely reported in the Canadian press that, on a per-percentage basis, Elvis received more fan mail from Canada than from anywhere else. But it was Vanderleck who Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis’ manager, called personally to announce an upcoming concert at Maple Leaf Gardens.
With one hit song after another through 1956, Elvis skyrocketed in popularity and, Jerry Hopkins suggests in Elvis: A Biography (Warner Books, 1971), Parker was loathe to continue to give his star property away for free on television. So Parker organized a money-making tour in the spring of 1957, starting in Chicago and including stops in Fort Wayne, St. Louis, Philadelphia, and Buffalo. His appearances in Toronto and Ottawa on this tour — and a subsequent engagement in Vancouver later that summer — would be Elvis’ only live performance outside of the United States in his career.
Elvis had only released his first single, “That’s All Right,” four years earlier; his popularity exploded rapidly, with numerous television appearances and Hollywood films in 1956 and early 1957. Still 10 months away from being drafted into the army, Elvis was at the peak of his early career. Everywhere he made a personal appearance, bedlam ensued.
