Back in 1964, Elvis made a movie called “Kissin’ Cousins.” It’s a silly one, with Elvis playing two different characters at the same time. One of them is a backwoods fellow named Jodie, and early in the film a couple of his cousins hand him a brand new shirt. It’s cream colored, covered in bright embroidered flowers, with snap buttons down the front. He wears it right through to the end of the picture, including the big title number.
That very shirt just came up for sale.
Julien’s Auctions put it in their “Played, Worn & Torn” sale in Nashville on October 22, listed as Lot 121. Julien’s are the folks who handle a lot of the big music memorabilia that comes to market. The shirt was made by Nudie’s Rodeo Tailors, the North Hollywood shop that dressed half of Hollywood and Nashville in rhinestones and flashy western wear for years.
Here’s the moment from the film, where the cousins hand Jodie that flowered shirt.
The scene where Elvis is given the flowered shirt
Now for the part hidden inside the collar.
When the seller set out to prove the shirt was really Elvis’s, they went looking for his old customer file. Nudie’s records live these days at the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles. They pulled Elvis’s paperwork, and his name was spelled wrong on it. Not “Presley.” It read “Presely.”
Then they turned the shirt inside out. The little Nudie’s label stitched into the collar had the very same mistake, and the very same order number as the file. As Julien’s put it, “both the archive document and the label share the same misspelling of the customer name, ‘Presely’ rather than ‘Presley.'” A typo nobody caught in 1964 is what tied the shirt to the King all these years later.
The lot even quoted the line from the film’s script, the moment the cousins bring Jodie his gift: “Jodie, you come back here and see what we brung you…. And a shirt with yellow flowers all over it. Lookit. Isn’t it purdy!”
As for the price, Julien’s figured somewhere between $10,000 and $20,000. It went for $28,800, well past the high estimate. It sold along with an MGM promotional photo and a Japanese album.
If you want to watch the shirt do its job, the title number is the place to look. Elvis has it on for the whole finale.
Elvis in the flowered shirt during the title song
Funny thing is, the clearest look at that collar label is in Julien’s own auction photos. The little mistake sat out of sight for sixty years, and it’s the reason anyone can say for sure this shirt was his.