Here’s something to look forward to — “Elvis at 21.” It’s a traveling exhibition of photos taken by Al Wertheimer of a young Elvis Presley.
The three-year, nine-city tour includes a stop at the Clinton Library, appropriate. Remember the Secret Service gave Clinton, a Presley admirer, the code name Elvis. I don’t have dates for the exhibit’s arrival here. It opens Jan. 8 — Elvis’ birthday — in Los Angeles.
Vanity Fair provides a fascinating look at the young photographer’s assignment to document the life of the future icon. One of his photos used in the Vanity Fair article — Elvis with a high school girl friend — is shown above. You ask if Elvis is still relevant?
According to a 2002 Harris Poll, 84 percent of Americans “have had their lives touched by Elvis Presley in some way.” Graceland, his home at 3764 Elvis Presley Boulevard, in Memphis, attracts 600,000 visitors annually and has been made a National Historic Landmark, a designation it shares with Mount Vernon, the Alamo, and Pearl Harbor Naval Base. Elvis has sold more than one billion record units worldwide and has headed Forbes’s list of Top-Earning Dead Celebrities every year but two since its inception, in 2001. The Elvis Presley Trust earned $52 million in 2008, beating the estate of its closest competitor, “Peanuts” creator Charles Schulz, by almost $20 million; indeed, the deceased King even out-earned the living Madonna by some $12 million.