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We know this, because when he appeared on TV, much of his performances were drowned out by a high-pitched, ear-splitting cacophony.
Presumably these were young teenage women screaming at the hip-twisting, leg-shaking antics of the singer. Possibly, it was just Elvis singing.
But more interestingly – if perhaps not all that surprising – Elvis also drove the boys crazy.
In fact, such was the reaction to The King in that white male-centric, patriarchal cathedral called the American fifties, that The Memphis Flash was frequently threatened by gangs of males outside his shows, letters to the FBI were written, national security called into peril, and penises thoroughly inspected.
Maybe Ed Sullivan was onto something when he alleged that The King had firmly attached some device to his member, cheekily accentuating his trouser(snake) movements when he – erm – jerked around on stage.
"(He’s) got some kind of device hanging down below the crotch of his pants," Sullivan fantasised. "So when he moves his legs back and forth you can see the outline of his cock. I think it's a Coke bottle!"
Sullivan wasn’t the only guardian of virtue underwhelmed by Big E. Steve Allen forced Presley to sing a one minute song to a dog on his show (“Hound Dog” – how about that? – and that show still beat Sullivan’s rival program in the ratings for the first time ever). Said the New York Times of the apparent Devil in Disguise: "(His) one specialty is an accented movement of the body ... primarily identified with the repertoire of the blond bombshells of the burlesque runway."
Even the New York Daily News declared that Elvis was “suggestive and vulgar, tinged with the kind of animalism that should be confined to dives and bordellos". Such as it was that the hegemony of fifties America did all that it could to stop it.
Even a judge forced The Bottled One to tone down his show. Whatever Elvis was doing, it was so outrageous as to draw hostile reactions from the establishment, notably television hosts… and judges!
Maybe the problem was best captured in an infamous letter to J. Edgar Hoover:
"After a show in La Crosse, Wisconsin, an urgent message on the letterhead of the local Catholic diocese’s newspaper was sent to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. It warned that “Presley is a definite danger to the security of the United States. … [His] actions and motions were such as to rouse the sexual passions of teenaged youth. … After the show, more than 1,000 teenagers tried to gang into Presley’s room at the auditorium. … Indications of the harm Presley did just in La Crosse were the two high school girls … whose abdomen and thigh had Presley’s autograph." – Wikipedia, citing Thomas Fensch’s The FBI Files on Elvis Presley.
And so it was that Elvis’ dick became a threat to the national security of the United States threatening it’s very (e)rectitude, its Coke bottling integrity and the American (Spleen and) Ideal. And to think, that millions of women had no problem with this.
