Sidney Fields of the New York Daily Mirror had interviewed Galdys and Vernon a few weeks earlier and today, the first of five daily articles appeared.
The interview was syndicated and appeared in other publications later on, one of which was the Canadian newspaper the Winnipeg Free Press, a copy of the page is available in small format on the respective pubication day of 23rd November 1956, Friday
Sidney Fields wrote:The Real Story Of Elvis Presley
He's So Good And Kind, Say His Doting Parents
Chapter 1
By SIDNEY FIELDS
"How can any boy brought up like mine be indecent or vulgar?" Elvis Presley's mother asked. "Especially when he's so good to us and his friends. Why, he always wants to do what's right."
I was visiting the mother and father of Elvis Presley in the nine-room ranch house he bought for them in one of the most exclusive sections of Memphis. Tenn. My purpose was to discover, if possible, WHAT is Elvis Presley. The logical starting point was his parents and his home. Mrs. Gladys Presley, whose middle name, curiously enough, is Love, is 39, plump, placid, and pious. She still somewhat bewildered, but happily bewildered, by the amazing success of her son, and hurt by the heated criticism leveled at him. Her husband, Vernon Elvis Presley, is 40, a gentle, graying, handsome man, as good looking as his son.
Gladys was 16, Vernon, 17, when they were married. "We've been married 23 years," Vernon Presley said, "we've never been apart except during the war when I worked away from home for two week stretches." They do have a deep bond between them, which is nice to watch, and they express it in a quiet kindness. Their maid. Alberta, who is unawed by the Presley furor, is the first they've ever had. When they learned that Alberta had to walk a mile from the last bus stop closest to their home, they bought her a 1953 Pontiac.
FROM TIME TO TIME the curious, adults as well as teen-agers, gather outside the Presley gates. If there are only two or three, Mrs. Presley invites them in and shows them through the house. Recently she opened her doors to two young women from Indianapolis (not teen-agers) and one produced a bottle and asked if she might fill it with water from Elvis' swimming pool. Both were crushed when they heard the pool was empty. But Mrs. Presley elated them again by allowing them to fill the bottle with water from the wash basin in Elvis' own bathroom.
"All of them want to see Elvis' room first." Mrs. Presley said. "And they're always so hushed when they see it." Then she asked, almost shyly: "Do you want to see it?" It's furnished in light-colored modern: Twin beds, an easy chair, radio and record player, record cabinets, bright beige curtains, a few pictures, of Elvis and Elvis' girl friends, and a walk-in closet with at least four-dozen suits and sport coats. Everywhere in the room were stuffed animals. Elvis has a passion for them, and dozens of them are all over the house: teddy bears, pandas, elephants, monkeys and dogs. Perhaps it's a manifestation of a young man who does not want to stop being a child.
"I TOOK HIM to carnivals when he was a kid." Mr. Presley said, "and taught him how to pitch baseballs at wooden bottles and win stuffed animals. He still does it. Last week he won a toy dump truck. It's in the living room." The living room with its sloped ceiling, exposed beams and wood walls, is mixed modern and traditional with a touch of gaudiness. Besides the stuffed animals, it has a small organ which Elvis plays by ear, five pictures of Elvis, including a painted portrait, two framed disk jockey awards and a framed gold record far the million-disk sale of "Heartbreak Hotel." On a table is a Bible Elvis won when he was It by singing in the First Assembly of God Church. "Elvis picked out everything with me to furnish the house," Mrs. Presley said proudly, "and he's always sending new things home. He sent so many lamps home I had to store most of them away."
ELVIS SPENT enough for the house, and probably another when he added such things as a 25-by 48-foot swimming pool, a two-car garage besides the two-car carport already there, and an iron fence all around the place, dotted with musical notes. "We've only been here eight months." said Mr. Presley, "and when Elvis called last night he told me he's thinking of a big farm, a farm." "He phones us every other night, no matter where he is," said Mrs. Presley. "'How's my babies?' he asks us. "We've always been very close. Why, to this day he gets frightened terribly when his father dives into the pool for fear he won't come up. He was always that way about us."
ELVIS ARON PRESLEY is their only child. He did have a twin brother, Jesse Garon, who died at birth. "That's why Elvis is so dear and special to us," Mrs. Presley said. Both parents come from Tupelo, Miss., and Elvis was born there too. Mrs. Presley was one of eight children and her father died when she was 12. She and her brother and sisters chopped corn and cotton until she met and married Vernon, who was a carpenter by trade. “We didn’t get to go to school," she said. Vernon didn’t graduate either. We can only read and write enough to get by. That’s why I always wanted my son to have an education."
The height of learning for them was a high school diploma, and they saw to it that Elvis got one. When Mr. Presley couldn't find work as a carpenter he drove a truck and labored in a paint factory. Mrs. Presley worked in factories, tended a coffee urn in a cafeteria, and was a nurse's aide. She never earned more than $25 a week. Her husband never more than $54. "We were poor,” Vernon added. “When I was sick my wife walked to work many times because she had no carfare. And many times we hardly had any lunch money to give Elvis. But we did eat and had clothes and a roof over our heads. Maybe we got them all on credit, but we had them. We never had much until three years ago, but Elvis never wanted for anything even when we were troubled. And we always taught him right from wrong as far as we knew, though we didn’t have hardly any education.”
THAT WAS ONLY three short years ago, and it was then that Elvis cut his first record, "That's All Right, Mama," stopped driving a truck, and began earning wealth, and fame. "He thought I should retire," Mr. Presley said, "and I agreed." His sole job now is handling his son's personal affairs in Memphis: The house, money, insurance, the Cadillac and Continental Elvis leaves at home. Mr. Presley sends the letters Elvis receives weekly only at home to a central office in Hollywood. A secretary in the house in Memphis tries to cope with the 500 letters a week that are addressed directly to the parents, from gushing well wishers, picture-hunters, or foggy promoters.
A GOOD SPRINKLING comes from indignant parents who are certain Elvis Presley is raising juvenile delinquency in America to new and horrifying heights. One of them compared his wiggling and warbling to a milk shake machine and a strip teaser going crazy at the same time. Elvis will earn well over a million this year, while parents, teachers, civic leaders and clergymen argue whether he's debasing or uplifting the morals of America's youth. “Those things hurt,” Mrs. Presley said. The mildest charge hurled against him is that he is obscene. Many, in the heat of anger, are sure he drinks and take's dope. Neither is true. "He never touched a drop of liquor in his life," his father said, "and he wouldn't know dope if he saw it."