There was an old white house that sat behind the Graceland mansion. Elvis’s uncle Travis Smith and his family had lived in it once, and by this point it was mostly used for storage.
Elvis took one look at it one day and decided it had to go.
Priscilla wrote about it later in her book “Elvis and Me.” She said Elvis “didn’t like the looks of” the place and told his dad Vernon to get a bulldozer “right away.” Vernon had no idea what his son had cooked up.
What happened next is one of those stories that makes you wish somebody had a camera running.
Elvis put on a football helmet and a big furry coat. Then he climbed up onto the bulldozer and drove it himself while his buddies stood around cheering him on. They knocked the old house flat. And then, just for good measure, they set what was left on fire.
No film of that afternoon exists. But Elvis loved this kind of wide-open horsing around at Graceland, and some of his home movies caught that playful side of him on the grounds.
Home-movie footage of Elvis around Graceland
Now, a fire that big doesn’t go unnoticed. Pretty soon the fire trucks came rolling through the Graceland gates, lights going, ready to save the day.
By then there wasn’t much left to save.
Elvis met them with a grin. According to the story, he had just one line for the firemen as they pulled up. “You’re a little late, fellows,” he told them, with what Priscilla remembered as a happy, mischievous smile on his face.
His cousin Billy Smith actually grew up in that little house. Years later, when folks asked why they tore it down, Billy gave a reason that’ll make any horse lover smile. They did it, he said, “to make more room to ride the horses.”
So it wasn’t really about hating an old building. It was about clearing space for the animals Elvis loved and having a wild afternoon with his friends while he was at it.
That’s the Elvis a lot of fans don’t get to see. Forget the man on the stage in the jumpsuit for a minute. This is the overgrown kid in a football helmet, laughing his head off on a bulldozer in his own backyard.
The home movies above are the closest thing we have to standing right there and watching him play.