Picture a mailman walking up to Elvis Presley’s door in 1957 with another sack, and it isn’t letters. It’s bears, plus a few fluffy pandas with button eyes.
They came from everywhere, sent by teenage fans who’d heard one little rumor.
The story went around that Elvis collected teddy bears. It wasn’t true, according to a 2017 look back by Minnesota Public Radio. But fans believed it, and so did two songwriters.
Kal Mann and Bernie Lowe heard the same gossip and wrote a song around it. They called it “(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear,” and Elvis sang it in his second movie, Loving You.
It came out in June 1957 and shot to No. 1 on the Billboard chart, where it sat for seven weeks.
So now the rumor had a soundtrack. If you were a fan, the message seemed pretty clear. The king of rock and roll wanted a teddy bear, and you could send him one.
Give it a listen and you’ll see why the girls lost their minds.
Elvis Presley – (Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear (Official Lyric Video)
The bears kept coming, thousands of them by most accounts.
Most stars would’ve shoved them in a storage room. Elvis had a better idea, and it went back to something he’d done the year before.
In 1956, polio was still a terror for American families. The disease could leave kids unable to walk or even breathe on their own. A vaccine existed, but plenty of teenagers weren’t bothering to get it.
So in October 1956, Elvis rolled up his sleeve backstage at The Ed Sullivan Show, one of the biggest TV shows in America. He was 21. The cameras were rolling.
You can watch the moment for yourself here.
Elvis Presley Gets The Polio Vaccine On The Ed Sullivan Show
That shot made headlines, and Elvis stayed close to the fight against polio after that. He backed the March of Dimes, the fundraising campaign run by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis.
Then came Christmas 1957.
On December 26, according to Minnesota Public Radio, Elvis gave thousands of those fan bears to the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis. A newspaper report from early 1958 described a trunkful of teddy bears and pandas meant for an auction during the group’s fund drive. Bears that fans had mailed to Elvis could now raise money to help sick kids.
But the bears got a proper send-off first.
On January 8, 1958, his 23rd birthday, Elvis had a “date” at Graceland, his home in Memphis. His guest was Mary Kosloski, an eight-year-old girl who’d been a March of Dimes poster child. The two posed for photos surrounded by the bears and pandas on their way to the charity.
He showed up about two hours late, reportedly after a long night of birthday partying.
Mary didn’t seem to mind. She got her picture taken with Elvis Presley, right in the middle of a pile of bears that kids all over the world had wrapped up and mailed to him.