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by Barbara Lien-Cooper and Park Cooper
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For Randy M. Chertow
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1968 was a watershed year, people say. But it didn’t feel like it to me at the time, stuck behind my desk the way I was.
My career always consisted of being stuck behind a desk. During the halcyon days of the studio system, I’d been a big man. I’d worked with everyone from Errol Flynn to Jerry Lewis (I still don’t like thinking about working with Lewis). But TV killed the old studio system. I thought, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” and I got a programming job with NBC. Not the worst job, but I resented where I ended up.
“I know nothing about teenagers or their tastes,” I protested. “I’m an old white guy. I like Cole Porter and Frank Sinatra.”
“Believe me, Charlie, so do I,” my boss’d said to me. “But no one else around here knows what these crazy teenagers like either, so it might as well be you, so it’s either you do this job, or you retire.”
I couldn’t imagine retiring. Retirement meant death. I’d seen too many old executives retire and then fall over of a heart attack. I liked living, so I took on the job like my life depended on it, which I felt like it did.
“Charlie, we think we have a winner here,” my boss said to me one day. “It’s Elvis Presley—he’s interested in doing a TV special. Or at least that’s what his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, says. So read through this script and tell us what you think.”
I looked at the title of the script. It read:
Hamlet: The Rocking Prince of Denmark
“See, we figured it’d be kind of like Mary Martin’s Peter Pan,” my boss said in reply to the look I gave him. “She did at least three versions of that on live TV. We think the teenyboppers will really dig Elvis in a classic.”
“Already I think I’m going to hate it,” I muttered.
“Read it—maybe you can doctor it up. You’ve always been good at script doctoring…”
I read the script. I hated it. “I dunno,” I said to my boss afterward, “I don’t know what the kids like anymore… but when Hamlet comes in in his leather outfit that has a doublet underneath…seriously, I’ve got some real concerns about this. It just seems terrible.”
“Well, do what you can with it, and send it to the Colonel, Charlie.”
So, I did what I could with it, which wasn’t much, and I sent it on to the Colonel. I hate television sometimes, I thought, but heck, even Ida Lupino directs TV shows now. Who am I to try and convince the world that television’s crap?
A few days later, my secretary, a cute little blonde number named Sadie who was also very smart and could type up a storm, buzzed me on the office intercom. “There’s a Mr. Presley to see you, Charlie.”
“Aw, darlin’, you can call me Elvis,” I heard a deep, dark voice say.
Sadie giggled.
Sadie never giggled.
“Elvis is here to see you, sir,” Sadie said into the intercom.
I sighed. I had a bunch of work I needed to catch up on—too many three-martini lunches. “…Show him in, Sadie,” I said, because Elvis was here to see me.
“Thank’yuh vur’ much,” I heard Elvis say.
When Elvis came into the office, I was a bit shocked. Elvis was wearing a black leather jumpsuit. Elvis looked like a cross between an Arabian prince and a motorcycle gang leader.
“Sorry ‘bout the outfit, sir,” Elvis said, “I jus’ got back from a wardrobe fittin’.”
“Please sit down, Elvis,” I said, standing to shake hands.
“Thank yuh, sir,” Elvis said, and he sat down, causing a lot of little leather creaking noises.
“What can I do you for, King?” I asked once we were both seated.
“Now, none of that—there’s only one king, man, and that’s th’ Prince of Peace.”
I nodded. I wasn’t a religious guy, but I respected that Elvis was, so I decided not to rock the boat: “That’s certainly true,” I said. “How may I help you today, son?”
“It’s the script, sir.”
Hm. “What about it?”
“Pardon m’ language, sir, but it’s horse pucky. Now, the Colonel is fine with it. He thinks all Ah need to do is sing to pretty girls, and it’ll be a hit. But the world is changin’ out there, and Ah need to be hip, or Ah’ll turn inta a has-been.”
“You and the Colonel don’t see eye to eye on this?”
“Sir, the Colonel and Ah don’t even see eye to nose on this,” Elvis laughed.
I laughed a polite little laugh. “…What exactly do you think is wrong with the script?”
“Well fer one thing, it’s not a tragedy.”
“I noticed that.”
“Ah thought… hey, if it’s classical… Ah mean, Hamlet’s supposed to be a little sad, right? At least that’s what m’ high school teacher always said. Ah can do sad. If you’ve seen Flamin’ Star or Love Me Tender… Sadness ain’t foreign t’ me.”
“Your high school teacher? You studied Shakespeare in high school?” I guess some people just sort of imagined that Elvis was some sort of high-school dropout, who quit school to start singing and playing the guitar… maybe because of the way he talked, maybe because that’s how it probably would have gone in one of his movies, but he wasn’t quite that young, so of course it wasn’t strange that he would remember some things he’d picked up in high school. I just wanted to understand where exactly he was coming from on this whole thing.
“My mama insisted that Ah get m’ diploma, sir. Man, that was tough sometimes. Ah just wanted to do music. Ah could deal with poetry—Ah mean, poetry is just like rock ‘n’ roll lyrics and old hymns, written down. But Shakespeare, man, at first Ah thought Ah couldn’t hack it. But after a while, Ah kinda liked Hamlet. He was like Brando and James Dean and Tony Curtis.”
“You mean, he’s an anti-hero.”
“Yessir. And we live in a world that needs heroes. An’ anti-heroes.”
“Sure, sure. Now, do you have any specific complaints, other than it’s not sad enough?”
“This script is nothing but songs, sir.”
“There are a few songs, yes… But you always sing a few songs in your films… You sang a few songs in Love Me Tender and Flaming Star, if I remember right…”
“Love Me Tender should have been called The Reno Brothers like it was supposed to be. But they didn’t see me as an actor, just a music machine. They just saw me as a jukebox.”
“You were really good in Flaming Star.”
“You saw it?”
“The director is an acquaintance of mine. Don Siegel is a fine director.”
“Yessir, he is. Ah was happy to work with a real director. But about these songs…”
“What’s the harm of a few songs?”
“It’s not a few songs—it’s at least a dozen…”
“Well, we can cut a few of the duds.”
“Then we ought’a cut all of ‘em, ‘cause they all stink like a dead possum on the roadside in Tupelo in the heat of July.”
“Okay, well, which songs are the worst?”
“Boy howdy, where to start? Do you have a copy of the script lying around?”
“It’s on my desk underneath this pile of papers…” I dug the script out from the mess on my desk.
“Okay, look at the page that lists all th’ songs, sir.”
I did. They read:
“Dear Old Wittenberg U”
“Damsels, Damsels, Damsels”
“More than Kin and Less than Kind”
“Hey Nonny Nonny”
“To Be Or Not To Be (Is She The Girl For Me?)”
“Regicide Tonight”
“He’s Your Uncle, Not Your Dad”
“Oh, Ophelia (I Wanna Feel Ya in My Arms Tonight)”
“Hip-Shaking Prince”
“We Will Have No More of Marriage”
“Norway or the Highway”
“When You Find Your Kingdom in the Grip of a Fiend”
“Uh… yikes,” I said. “Okay, these sound dreadful. I kind of skipped over that page…” The King frowned—actual frown lines came to that perfectly-tanned skin. Somewhere, a gaggle of teenage girls were swooning in horror without knowing why. “We need to get you some better songs, that’s all…”
“That’s only th’ start of th’ problems,” said Elvis.
“…Okay, I’m making a list.” I got a pad of paper from one of my desk drawers.
“Ah hate th’ ad campaign they got planned, too. Ah mean, what sort of bull crud is… uh…” He reached into his jumpsuit and pulled out a slightly-sweaty piece of cardstock that I recognized—it was a mini-mock-up promotional poster: Let flights of Elvis sing thee to thy rest, it read, when you see Elvis play Hamlet, Crown Prince of Rock…
“I’ll talk to the ad boys about that,” I said. “It does seem a little frivolous.”
“It’s not respectful to Mr. Shakespeare, sir.”
“All right, it makes sense to respect the Bard… What else is bothering you?”
Elvis took the script from me, flipped a couple of pages, and put the new page back in front of me and pointed. “Lookit the plot summary… a handsome playboy meets his match when he finds himself in Denmark to avenge a wrong… And Ah mean hey, I’m no Einstein, but Ophelia’s supposed to die in the play… and she don’t look like Ursula Andress….”
“You don’t like casting Ursula Andress? She’s popular…”
“They call her Ursula Undress… She’s probably a nice lady, but she’s no maiden—an’ Ophelia’s suppose’ t’ be a sweet, pure li’l girl. Y’know, more like Barbara Eden—man, she’s one sweet lady. Ah liked workin’ with her in Flamin’ Star. Could we get her? Ah mean, she works for your network…”
“I think that she’s too busy with I Dream Of Jeannie… How about Ann Margret?”
Elvis smiled a smile that tried to be fond and sheepish at the same time. “Aw, man, Ah love Annie… but she’s just not a maiden, y’know? And Ah love her for not bein’ a nice girl… but Ophelia is a nice girl, not a sex kitten.”
I wrote down the sentence Ophelia should not be a sex kitten, and laughed at how stupid it was to have to write it.
“Don’ laugh at me, man,” said Elvis. “Ah may just seem like some hick to you, but Ah have a diploma and ever’thing… I’ve read Hamlet, and it’s called Hamlet, not Horse-sh—”
“—I’m sorry, I wasn’t laughing at you, I was laughing at the network… at all the networks, really. It’s not just us—if you’d gone to one of the other networks, I swear they might’ve pulled the same thing, or something just as bad, or worse. Taking Hamlet and trying to make it a variety special…”
“…Ah thought they were really gonna let me do Hamlet,” Elvis said in a sad voice.
“Well, I mean, you know, it’s more or less—”
“Ah r’member back in high school, stayin’ up all night listenin’ to Dean Martin, an’ readin’ Hamlet…”
“You like Dean Martin?”
“Sure, man, Dean Martin, and lots of opera… Ah did ‘It’s Now or Never’ because Ah like singers like Caruso…”
“I love Martin and Caruso.”
“Yeah, they’re the most. Anyway, Ah read Hamlet… M’ favorite part was when Ophelia went nuts, crazy as a loon, an’ said: ‘I’d give you some violets, only… they all died when my mamma passed on…’”
God, he was sad! That was a really good reading, I thought. I’m not about to tell him that it was Ophelia’s father who died, not her mother, but damn, that was actually moving…
Elvis looked up at me. “See, Ah know what it’s like to lose someone,” he said.
“Yeah… I lost my wife, several years back…” I said. “That’s why I work so much. It’s better than being lonely…”
“Yeah, Ah hear ya, man. Work don’t heal a broken heart, but it makes the time pass.”
“Indeed it does.”
We sat in silence for a second, thinking about the people each of us had lost.
Finally, Elvis said: “…Yeah, anyway, like Ah said, Ah know the play… It’s about this kid named Hamlet—and Ah’m not totally dumb, Ah know a hamlet is a small village, so it’s kind of a dumb name to give a kid, but whatever—he’s just a boy whose family’s been wronged, and in the end, he dispenses justice, backwoods-style. Anybody who’s ever had a family can relate to that… you stand by your family, ‘cause they’re the only ones who’ll ever really stand by you. So, Ah can un’erstand… Ah mean, if you wanna keep yer family together, but somebody does somethin’ against yer family? You do somethin’ against them. Ah grew up around that kinda thing.”
“Well… yeah… that is what… on some level, that is what it all boils down to, after all…” I said.
“Yeah, it does, man. Family matters, man… family matters. ‘Cause if you lose family members, if you lose somebody, you’re never gonna get ‘em back, man, never ever.”
I thought about my wife, and how she’d said that I always put my job before her and the kids. Nowadays, the kids hardly ever bothered calling.
Then I looked at the expression on Elvis’ face. All by itself, it was about as tragic as the whole play of Hamlet. I’d better say something, quick, I thought. “Yeah, I heard about your mother, Elvis. I’m really sorry…” I said.
“…Naw, man, Ah was talkin’ about m’ twin brother, Jesse Garon. Ah feel that loss ever’ day. So, Ah know that type of mournin’. Ah know how it feels like, like sometimes everythin’ is jus’ so empty, man, so empty. So that’s th’ feelin’ that an actor needs… and then, well, you might think what’s this hick know about Shakespeare, but Ah saw Brando in Julius Caesar, and he was good, man… he made me believe he was up there tellin’ everyone not to praise Caesar but just to bury ‘im… There were scenes in that… and Brando spoke clear, clear as a bell, man… that was actin’, man… that’s the kinda thing Ah wanna do, and that was Shakespeare… if Brando can do it, why can’t Ah, man?”
“Well, it’s nothing against you. It’s just… Hamlet’s a really old play. It might just be because Shakespeare’s language is kind of antiquated that people can’t see you as Hamlet.”
“Well, then write a script for a modern audience. Just don’t throw it all away, and rewrite it so no one gets that it’s Hamlet…”
“Sure, that might work,” I said.
Elvis got up and demonstrated what he was talking about—he did a little scene where he pretended he was Hamlet addressing his father’s ghost: “…Daddy, Ah don’ know about this, but you know Ah hate th’ idea of anybody messin’ ’round with Mama, so… Ah’m with ya. Ah guess if Ah have t’ murder Uncle Claudius, Ah’ll just have to go out there and be the best murderer Ah can be.”
“Yeah, something like that,” I said.
Elvis sat back down. “They never take me seriously, sir.”
“Please, call me Charlie.”
“Charlie, why won’t anybody take me seriously, man? Ah’m a good singer. Mama always said that it was like th’ parable of th’ talents, that Ah had t’ use my talent t’ make people happy. She said that when ah sang, the angels smiled. But the songs Ah sing in m’ films don’t make the angels smile… Ah know, ‘cause they don’t make me smile any more. Ah, sure, sometimes Ah get t’ sing a Dylan song or a Ray Charles song, but most of th’ songs, they stink, Charlie, they really do.”
“This… never bothered you before, Elvis…”
“Yeah, man, it did… but this is different… see, th’ thing is, Ah just got married… Ah’m a family man, now… Ah’m gonna be the big 3-0… Ah can’t do these kiddie movies anymore, man… Ah gotta be a man…”
“Hey, that’d be a good title for a song in this movie, Elvis…”
“Y’mean, ‘Ah gotta be a man?’”
“Sure! Goes well with Hamlet’s character… and how about, ‘From a Prince to a King…’”
“Charlie, you’re not listening, man…”
“…I’m sorry.”
“You’re a family man, right?”
“I was before my wife died. At least I thought I was. My career sort of got in the way.”
“Now, that’s no good, Charlie. You got any kids?”
“Two boys and a girl. They’re grown up now. I don’t see them as much as I should. I’m a grandfather now. My baby girl just had a baby girl of her own…”
“I hope to have a baby girl someday. A pretty little girl with blonde hair.”
“…But you have black hair.”
“Hair dye, man. It’s a pain in the butt, too, let me tell ya.”
I laughed. “I dye my hair, too, what there is left of it…”
“Yeah, Ah wondered about yer, uh, hairstyle,” Elvis laughed, referring to my comb-over.
“Gotta try your hardest to pretend to be young in this business.”
“Yeah, the world’s changing, Charlie… The Beatles grew facial hair… some guy who looks like a chick wants his girl to light his fire… Ah look like a Ken doll up there, man… Ah need to be me again…”
“Is there anything you liked about the whole Hamlet production we want you to do?”
“Believe it or not, all Ah like is this costume. It’s nothing fancy… just looks like something I’d wear out on the street.”
I managed to resist laughing at the idea that a leather jumpsuit was nothing fancy, but something he’d wear out on the street. I realized that he’d apologized for his “outfit” when he’d come in not because he thought it was outlandish, but just that he thought it was sort of informal compared to my business suit. I just said, “I get where you’re coming from, Elvis.”
“It’s like the poet says, Charlie. The movin’ finger writes, and it moves on. And Ah gotta move on, too. Ah can’t do teenybopper movies much longer. Ah need to get m’ career outta th’ toilet. Ah gotta make people take m’ seriously again. An’ a musical version of Hamlet just ain’t gonna cut the mustard.”
I was reminded of the bit in Hamlet where Claudius said that while Hamlet was somewhat inartful about how he spoke, he still made good points… in Hamlet, the real Hamlet, not the dreck we gave Elvis… My dad is dead, yeah yeah yeah… even what I’d seen of the choreography seemed a little crass. At first, I’d just thought Elvis wanted to have fun, make money, go on location to pretty places, and kiss pretty girls, but what Elvis really wanted is what I would want if I were him… Everyone thought that Elvis was just some kid who somehow parlayed some musical talent into something more meaningful, but… Elvis had a heart that longed for… things more real. No one realizes it, but Elvis isn’t a kid anymore, he’s an adult, or something like one, I thought. And I feel sorry for him, too. Aw, damn it, I never did learn how to put my own heart in a locker in the morning and pick it up again at the end of the day… maybe that’s why I’ve never gotten farther in this damn business…
The whole time I was thinking those thoughts, Elvis had been sort of lost in thought too, staring off into space again, but now he said something that broke me out of my reverie: “…What a rogue and peasant slave am I…”
“…You would have been a good Hamlet, Elvis,” I said.
“Yeah, maybe Ah would’ve. But… Ah don’ think this is gonna work out. They’ll never let me be Brando or Dean. Ah had a chance to work with Elia Kazan once. You’ve heard of Kazan, right?” Elvis said.
“Yeah, ‘course I have. What happened?”
“The Colonel nixed it. Ah was even given a chance to be in West Side Story. The Colonel said no t’ that, too.”
“…Gosh, you’ve had some bad breaks.”
“No, sir, Ah’ve been lucky. But Ah won’t stay lucky if Ah don’t do the Lord’s work.”
“You mean, using your talents to make the angels smile?’
“Yes, sir, just like m’ mama said.”
“…Well, Elvis, you might have missed your chance to be a great actor, but it seems to me your real talent is singing. And if you want to do a special with NBC, you should do one that focuses on your talents, not on some horse-pucky script.”
“You mean, we should start from scratch?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“But what about the script? Some nice people went to a lot of hard work to write it.”
“Oh, we’ll give it to someone else—Robert Goulet, or Bobby Rydell, or maybe even Bobby Darin.”
“Yeah, give it to Darin. His ‘Mack the Knife’ kept a lot of good music from charting that year…”
I laughed.
“…You know, if Ah had m’ druthers with a TV special, Ah’d like to just play some music with my musician friends,” Elvis said.
“I think people would like that, Elvis,” I said.
“Yeah, maybe they would. Ah know that people just wanna hear me sing…”
“Look, Elvis. I know nothing about modern music. I don’t know what’s hip or what’s relevant. But I do know a few young-gun directors who would jump at the chance of working with you…”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“But what about the Colonel?”
“Let me talk to the Colonel.”
“…Okay, but just leave me out of it, man. The Colonel has a way of talking me into doing things Ah don’t always want to do.”
“Will do.”
“Y’know, the last time Ah did a TV special, Ah was singing to Frank Sinatra’s toupee.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, Ah’m taller than him, so when Ah looked down at ‘im, Ah was just lookin’ at th’ top of ‘is head… Ah sang ‘Witchcraft…’ but Ah’m no crooner…”
“Heck no. You sing rock and roll!”
“Ah’d like to, Charlie, Ah really would. ‘Cause this script ain’t worth wipin’ m’ butt with… because when the Colonel said Hamlet, Ah thought, heck, maybe someone’s finally respectin’ me… but no, it was just more fun in the sun like with Shelly and Nancy. Heck, man, does Denmark even have a beach?”
“I’m not sure. But it doesn’t matter now. You’re going to sing.”
“And Ah want good songs. Ah want stuff that gets m’ message to get out there, about m’ hope for humanity and ever’thin’.”
“I think those themes are timeless.”
“Yeah, they are. We live in a screwed-up world. Ah wanna make people happy again.”
I spoke into the intercom: “Sadie, set a call for me with Programming, okay? And another with Colonel Tom Parker. We gotta do right by the King, you know?”
“Yes, sir!” Sadie said happily.
Elvis was happy, too, jumping to his feet with a dozen leather squeaks of protest. “Ah’ll remember you in m’ prayers tonight, Charlie,” Elvis said, and then he shook my hand, said goodbye, and left the office.
But at the door, he turned. “Before you talk to those guys, though, man, you should call your daughter that jus’ gave you th’ grandbaby. She’s prob’ly dyin’ t’ hear from you.”
“Will do,” I said.
Then I sat back down at my desk and told Sadie to get my daughter Lucy on line one.
“…Hi, honey,” I said when the call was connected.
“Dad? I’m so happy to hear your voice!” said my daughter.
I felt a lump in my throat. “…I want to hear all about my granddaughter.”
“Well she’s an angel,” said Lucy, “she really is…” There was a bit of a happy sing-song in her voice, like she was talking to the baby and me at the same time.
“Yes, an angel, Lucy, just like your mother was, and just like you are for putting up with your old man for so long,” I said.
After the call was over, I wiped a few tears from my eyes… then I was told that Colonel Tom Parker was on line two. I decided to put on my I mean business voice.
After all, “suits,” as I had learned a long time ago, are never supposed to cry.