Baby, Let's Play House_ Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him - Alanna Nash [96]
While the other performers took turns onstage, Elvis flirted with her in another part of the theater, leading her into a dark, narrow alcove along the stairway, lit only by a window and a fifty-watt lightbulb. Al, walking from the men’s lavatory, which doubled as the musicians’ dressing room, was surprised to find the couple there and realized he’d stumbled on an intimate moment. Elvis, dressed in a dark suit and white buck shoes, propped his arm on the stair rail, slouching toward his date, who coyly leaned against the wall. She tipped the lower half of her body, inching toward him, her feet with his, so that the two of them made almost a V-shape standing so close together.
Al was in a quandary. “Do I leave them their privacy or should I be a good reporter? If I shoot this, Elvis may have me fired.” Then he took the chance, seeing they were so absorbed. He started shooting, keeping his distance at first, and then moved closer, closer, and closer still, until he was up on the railing of the stairway. He snapped a shot from above, looking down just as Elvis nuzzled the girl’s cheek, his arms spread wide, one above her against the wall, the other anchoring him on the railing. It was so sensual, and their bodies so eager, that if the photo were rotated, it would seem as if the two were in bed.
The photographer scarcely breathed. He asked to pass them (“May I get by?”), but they were so focused they didn’t even care. Al pivoted so that the window was behind him, illuminating his subjects with front-end sunlight and fill lighting from the dangling bulb.
“Betcha can’t kiss me, Elvis,” the girl said, sticking out her tongue.
“Betcha I can,” he teased back. And then he made his move, sticking out his own tongue until the two were pressed together, tongues and noses, his waist pushing up against hers. By now, the girl was leaning back on the stair rail, and anything could happen. Al snapped the shutter, capturing the famous image, a distillation of the rock-and-roll road show, and Elvis at his uninhibited best.
The whole thing took a tenth of a second, and then all Al heard was, “We want Elvis! We want Elvis!” A minute later, Elvis sprinted onstage to give four thousand people, mostly women and girls, the performance they had paid to see.
Just who Elvis’s date was that day remains a mystery. Since the image appears on commercial products, several women have approached Wertheimer through the years, each insisting she was the one. But whenever the photographer asks them questions about the day before or the day after, their stories never gel. “I think Elvis kissed thousands of girls. He loved kissing girls.”
After his shows that night, Elvis climbed back on board a northbound train—flying scared him—for his live appearance with Steve Allen the next evening. It was a Sunday. The show went as planned, Elvis wearing his prom-night blue suede shoes with his tuxedo and performing “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You” along with “Hound Dog.”
He would record the latter song the next day at the RCA studios on New York’s East Twenty-fourth Street, along with “Don’t Be Cruel” and “Any Way You Want Me.” Meticulous at getting what he wanted on tape, though, as in his Sun days, still arriving unprepared, Elvis took control of the recording session. (“Try a little more space,” he told Scotty at one point.) After several takes of “Don’t Be Cruel,” he squatted on the floor so his ears were at the same level as the huge speakers in the corner. No, he said. They would need to do it again.
By the end of the day, he had insisted on twenty-eight takes of “Don’t Be Cruel,” and thirty-one of “Hound Dog.” It was excessive, but no one was going to argue with him, because he was an idiot savant in the studio, knowing what would work, even if he couldn’t always articulate it quickly. Beforehand, he’d spoken again to the press, saying that “Barbara Hearn of