Picture a small chimpanzee in a tiny outfit, sitting with Elvis Presley and his buddies like he’s one of the guys.
That was Scatter. And for a while, he really was one of the guys.
Before he ever met Elvis, Scatter had a job in show business. He worked on a Saturday morning kids’ TV show in Memphis, hosted by a local personality called Captain Bill Killebrew. The show had more chimps than it needed, and Killebrew wanted to cut the act down.
So in the early 1960s, Elvis bought Scatter. Graceland, Elvis’s mansion in Memphis, says it happened in 1961, though one fan timeline puts the sale in October 1960.
Elvis’s friend Alan Fortas, part of the tight crew of pals later nicknamed the Memphis Mafia, had a theory about why Killebrew picked Graceland. He reportedly said Killebrew “figured Graceland was the kind of untamed place where a monkey would feel at home.”
He wasn’t wrong.
Scatter got his own wardrobe of human-style clothes. He hung out with Elvis and the boys at their parties, and he went along when Elvis headed west to make movies.
This short clip lays out the basics of the King’s oddest roommate.
During the 1960s, Elvis had a chimpanzee named Scatter
At first it was all fun. But then Scatter started getting harder to handle.
Chimps grow strong fast, and a chimp who’s spent his life around a TV studio and a rock star’s entourage doesn’t have much reason to sit still. The guys around Elvis had their hands full.
The wildest stories come from Hollywood. According to Graceland’s own account, Scatter broke loose one day and ran straight into the office of Samuel Goldwyn, a big-name Hollywood movie producer.
He tore the place apart.
Two security guards had to walk him out, one holding each side. Alan Fortas later said he “looked like he was under arrest.” After that stunt, Scatter was shipped home to Graceland.
Some of the other tales are harder to pin down. Stories passed around by fans over the years claim Scatter liked to sneak drinks of whiskey and would lift up women’s skirts at parties. Nobody can fully confirm those, but they’ve followed his name for decades.
This documentary digs into more of Scatter’s strange life with the King.
The Crazy Life of Scatter – Elvis Presley’s Pet Chimp
How Scatter died is still a bit of a mystery. Some people say he just got old. Others have long whispered that a worker at Graceland, worn out by his antics, may have poisoned him. There’s no record that settles it either way.
People haven’t let him go, though. Comedian and director Bobcat Goldthwait once said on a talk show that he was working on a movie about Scatter, calling the chimp “so close to the king.”
Goldthwait also claimed the chimp is buried in the backyard at Graceland, a few steps from the house where he used to party with Elvis and the boys.