There weren’t as many replies as expected to the caption contest last weekend. The idea was to come up with what Elvis and Anita Wood were thinking in the shot above.
Reader Tracy:
Anita: Elvis My Darling, I will think of You every night when I go to bed!
Elvis: Honey, If You Do, You Won’t Sleep!!
Reader Nancy:
Anita: Marry me
Elvis: If only you were 14
Reader Isabelle:
Anita: Take the helmet from your hair
Shake it loose, let it fall
Lay it soft against my skin
Like the shadow on the wall
Elvis: Come and lay down by my side
Till the early morning light
All I’m taking is your time
Help me make it through the night
Reader Leon’a:
Anita: ”I promise Baby, I’ll write you every day.
Elvis: “You better, and I don’t want any of them to be ‘ Dear John ‘ letters either !!!!”
Reader Clementine:
Anita:. “Elvis, won’t you be my ‘Special Hound Dog’… Please Baby’ ??”
Elvis:…”Sure Baby, as long as you‘ll be ‘My Devil in Disguise!! “
(And here are the thought quotes I came up with)
Original Elvis Blogmeister
Anita: “I’m gonna miss you so much.”
Elvis: “That loser Robert Goulet better not be hangin’ around you while I’m gone.
If you do get the humor in that one, it’s because you know the story. But some of you might not get it, so it would help to hear about what happened — leading up to Elvis shooting a TV.
The best explanation is a quote by old Elvis buddy Marty Lacker in an interview he did with www.elvisinfonet.com:
“Elvis harbored some bad feelings about Goulet from back in the late 50s when he was in the Army. Elvis’ girlfriend Anita Wood was a singer and she did shows with Goulet and Buddy Hackett. Anita would often write Elvis in Germany, and one time Goulet added a postscript to one of them telling Elvis in a sly way that he was personally taking care of Anita. Elvis didn’t like that and he never forgot, so when he saw Goulet on TV, he shot the TV out.”
No wonder Elvis got mad. He’s overseas in the Army and gets a letter from his girlfriend Anita Wood back home, but slimy Robert Goulet writes on the bottom something like, “Don’t worry, Elvis, I’ll take care of Anita while you are gone.”
Not only did Elvis mad, he carried that grudge against Robert Goulet for years. Sixteen years later, in 1974, he got a measure of satisfaction. It happened while Elvis was working at the International Hotel in Las Vegas. He was in his top-floor suite when he saw Goulet on TV. Elvis took out his gun, shot the TV, and (according to Allexperts.com) said, “Get that s**t outta my house!”
The shot-up TV has had an interesting journey since then. It currently resides in one of the exhibits at Elvis Presley’s Memphis across the street from Graceland.
PBS even did an online feature about the TV being on display at the new complex.
This was actually the second time the TV had been on display at Graceland. On March 20, 2006, It was featured at the opening of the new exhibit called Elvis After Dark. Of course, the items in these exhibits are cycled off and replaced by others periodically, so the TV went into a Graceland storage room.
Then in 2011, famous photographer Annie Leibowitz went to Graceland and photographed the TV. It became part of her exhibit at the Smithsonian Institute.
So, let’s think about this. After thirty-two years (1974 — 2006), the Goulet TV shows up at Graceland. How did it get there? Allexperts.com reported:
“The TV is currently on display at Graceland. It was found a few years ago in the attic above his father’s office.”
It looks like a TV could fit the attic on the right..
Okay, Elvis blasts the Goulet TV in Vegas in 1974, and then has it crated up and shipped back to Memphis, so it could be stored in his dad’s office for thirty-two years. Of course, Elvis paid the hotel for the damaged TV. But it was junk, so why would it be saved? Was there any reason to lug a ruined big-box 25 inch TV up to the office’s attic?
Seems like a stretch, but maybe there’s more to this story that we don’t know that would explain things.
© 2018 Philip R Arnold, Original Elvis Blogmeister All Rights Reserved www.ElvisBlog.net
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