The Daily Mail has published a slew of never-before-seen candid photos of Elvis Presley shot early on in his career by photographer Alfred Wertheimer (solely in black and white because his record company, RCA, didn’t want to waste color film on him) which are exactly the kind of pics that would’ve made their way around the blogs if there had been such a thing during Elvis’s time. Here are a few of the candid and intimate pics of the King of Rock ‘N Roll, Elvis Presley:
Elvis Presley remains the most famous and most loved rock star of all time. But for almost all of his 21 years in the spotlight, until his death in 1977 at the age of 42, he remained a distant enigma to his fans. Surrounded by a mob of minders, he hardly ever gave interviews and virtually the only published photographs of him were those carefully selected by his manager, ‘Colonel’ Tom Parker, to show Elvis in a wholesome light. But at the very beginning of his career, when his first hit, Heartbreak Hotel, was bounding up the U.S. charts, things were different. Wanting all the publicity they could get for their new singer, Elvis’s record company, RCA, hired freelance photographer Alfred Wertheimer to spend a few weeks following the young star around. So, in March 1956, Wertheimer went to work. Meeting Elvis at a New York TV studio, he later hung around his hotel suite, observed him recording Don’t Be Cruel and Hound Dog, photographed him alone and unnoticed on the New York streets, and then went out on tour with him where the groupies were already beginning to line up. He shot almost 4,000 black-and-white, fly-on-the-wall frames of the singer on the very cusp of unimaginable fame, many of which have rarely been seen … It was the last time the private Elvis, the ‘real’ Elvis, who was even prepared to have the photographer follow him into his bathroom and bedroom, would be caught on camera in this way. By the early summer of 1956, a veil had fallen between Elvis and his fans. Parker had decided no one from the media would ever get this close to his star again. From that moment, Elvis entered a cocoon, locked out from the real world by his enormous fame and his manipulative manager. But why were all Wertheimer’s photographs in black and white? Didn’t he take any colour shots? The answer will surprise. No, he didn’t. “Don’t waste colour film on him,” Wertheimer was told by the RCA publicity department. Colour stock was expensive, and as the record bosses had decided Elvis was probably just a flash in the pan, it would be a needless extravagance.
Had there been blogs back in the day, I imagine they’d have much to say about Elvis in his bathing suit (ZOMG! Elvis looks so hawt in his shorty shorts!) or brandishing a gun (Elvis has gone all G-Unit with his new toy) or his argyle socks (The Big E would fit in perfectly on Gossip Girl). I’m not a big Elvis fan by any means but these are fascinating pics. I imagine there must be many more intimate photos of the man out there … somewhere. If these pics are just coming out, what else is waiting to be unveiled? I find it so interesting that there is still much that we can learn about an icon that has been loved and adored for decades. I wonder if there are any more half-nekkid pics comin’ our way?
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