Michael Stevens
Elvis sent his private jet a thousand miles in the dead of night. The cargo was a sandwich
One night in 1976, Elvis flew his jet nearly a thousand miles to Denver and back. The cargo was the Fool's Gold Loaf: a hollowed loaf stuffed with peanut butter, jelly and bacon.
She gave Elvis his first movie kiss. Then she walked away from Hollywood for good
Dolores Hart, 18, gave Elvis his first on-screen kiss in Loving You. A few years later, at the height of her career, she left Hollywood to become a Benedictine nun.
Elvis bought this jet months before he died. It sat in the desert for 40 years, until someone turned the key
Elvis owned a 1962 JetStar for only months. It sat in the New Mexico desert for about 40 years, until a YouTuber bought it, powered it up and turned it into a drivable RV.
Elvis handed his guitar to a fan in the crowd and said ‘hold on to that.’ He had no idea how right he was
At a 1975 Asheville show, Elvis gave a fan his black Gibson Dove, the guitar from Aloha from Hawaii, telling him to hold onto it. In 2016 it sold for $334,000.
Elvis saw a kid being jumped at a gas station. He stopped the limo and got out
At 1 a.m. in Madison in 1977, Elvis spotted a young attendant being attacked, stopped his limo and broke it up with a karate stance. A marker still stands on the spot.
Elvis had a golden horse named Rising Sun. He loved him more than almost anyone knew
Rising Sun was Elvis's golden palomino, and Graceland's stable was named after him. When the horse's long life ended, Graceland buried him facing east, toward the morning sun.
Vernon called it the ugliest furniture he’d ever seen. By that afternoon it was in Graceland
In 1974 Elvis bought a whole room of Polynesian furniture in about half an hour. Some pieces came in through the windows, and he never once called it the Jungle Room.
A film vault in a Kansas salt mine held something of Elvis nobody had heard in 50 years
While making his Elvis movie, Baz Luhrmann found reels of concert footage in a Kansas salt mine, and with them about 40 minutes of Elvis telling his own story.
Before the mansion and the jet, Elvis was mowing lawns for four dollars a yard
Before fame, Elvis mowed lawns for $4 a yard with a mower his father bought, then worked as an usher and truck driver. By 1958 he was earning over a million a year.
Elvis paid about four dollars to make his very first record. Then it vanished for sixty years
In 1953 an unknown Elvis paid about four dollars to cut one acetate of My Happiness. It stayed hidden for 60 years, then sold for $300,000 to a secret buyer, Jack White.