There is a piece of film from July 1, 1956, in which a 21-year-old Elvis Presley sits alone in a hotel room, talking down a telephone line to a New York newspaper columnist. It looks like nothing much. It is, in fact, extraordinary — because in a career of more than twenty years, that broadcast is the only televised personal interview Elvis Presley ever gave. And he did it just hours after being humiliated on national television.
Here’s what had happened earlier that same evening. Elvis had appeared on The Steve Allen Show, where the producers had dressed him in white tie and tails and made him sing “Hound Dog” to a live basset hound wearing a top hat. He wasn’t allowed to move. It was designed to make rock and roll look ridiculous, and Elvis privately called it the most embarrassing thing he ever did. Priscilla later said flatly: “It was humiliating. After that, he didn’t like Steve Allen at all.”
A couple of hours later, from his room at the Warwick Hotel, he took a call from Hy Gardner — a well-known columnist for the New York Herald-Tribune with a late-night show called Hy Gardner Calling! Gardner’s format was simple and rather charming: a split screen, with the host on one side ringing his guest on the other.
The interview only happened because Milton Berle vouched for Gardner and persuaded Colonel Parker that this wasn’t a trap. The Colonel’s thinking seems to have been that a late-night show aimed at adults might let Elvis charm the very people who’d been savaging him — the New York critics had been especially brutal.
Elvis Presley Interview – Hy Gardner Calling – July 01, 1956
And Elvis, sitting there in a dark jacket looking uncannily like James Dean, whom he idolized, did exactly that. He was asked whether he’d learned anything from all the criticism. His answer is one of the most quoted things he ever said, and it’s worth reading slowly because it comes from a very young man being told by half his country that he was corrupting its children: “I don’t feel like I’m doing anything wrong. I don’t see how any type of music would have any bad influence on people. How would rock ‘n’ roll music make anyone rebel against their parents?”
He also refused to pretend the whole thing was an accident. Steve Allen had been telling people Elvis knew he’d made a mistake with his earlier appearances. That night on the phone to Gardner, Elvis quietly demolished the idea: “I’m aware of everything I do, at all times. It’s just the way I feel.”
The one thing he wasn’t honest about was the dog. Gardner asked whether he’d had fun on the Steve Allen show. Elvis replied: “Yes, sir, I really did. I really enjoyed it.” He was seething, and he said the polite thing anyway — a 21-year-old who understood perfectly well that there are moments when you don’t tell the truth in public.
That’s what makes those few minutes so valuable. Elvis Presley gave hundreds of press conferences over the years, always with reporters shouting and the Colonel lurking nearby. But one time only did he sit down alone for a proper television interview — on the worst night of his young career — and calmly explain to America that he hadn’t done anything wrong.