Gå til innhold

Den nye Forumkaféen v2


L4r5

Anbefalte innlegg

Videoannonse
Annonse

To sign up for Hulu, you will need a U.S.-issued payment source, such as a credit card, debit card, PayPal account, or third-party billing provider (iTunes, Amazon, or Roku).

Sucks da, hjelper da ikke med VPN heller :(

Eller misforstår jeg at de tar kort fra hvilket som helst land så lenge det er visa eller noe sånt shit?

Endret av BuffyAnneSummers
Lenke til kommentar
Gjest Slettet+9817324

"We Germans will never understand U.S. foreign policy," a public relations expert in Bonn said laughingly when Presley was sent to Germany. "You save Europe with The Marshall Plan, you save Berlin with the Airlift, and then you turn around and give us Presley."



590719_Baltimore Sun_02.pngHeave … Ho … And away we go



They smashed his records

Elvis Presley first pounded into German ears in 1957 with the recording, "Heartbreak Hotel." The top German disc jockey, Werner Goetze, reacted by smashing the record against his mike-stand. Reviewers pegged Presley with names like "the whiner," "yowling boy" and "the lovesick stag."

Ferdinand Anton, archaeologist and President of The Munich Hot Club, complained to the popular U.S. Armed Forces Radio Network: "Presley's howling is a throw back to sexual Stone Age cave music, without its religious overtones."

Then, somehow, "Don't Be Cruel" slid safely past Goetze's hammer and became a blockbusting teenage hit.

On the autograph market Presley's signature climbed sharply from one to three German marks. A signed Presley photo could be traded for ten of his closest German imitator, Peter Kraus. A Munich publisher felt the lifting Presley tide and rushed out the first German teen-age magazine, "Bravo." He at once discovered what other German publishers have since learned, that a Presley photo cover guarantees heavy newsstand traffic.

Disc jockey Goetze, overrun by the stampede, looks back through the dust at what happened: "Our bomb shelter generation revolted against the stiff, straight old ways. They threw away their lederhosen (traditional leather shorts) for blue jeans and started standing and walking like cowboys. They were bored with '0 Tannenbaum!' and skipped 'Ach du lieber Augustin' to hear rock n' roll. Elvis Presley was just what they were looking for -- an American Pied Piper to lead them to excitement."

And photographed his feet

Presley's first formal meeting with the German people was at a press conference staged a few days after his arrival. For two hours under frying hot lights, his face pushed into a microphone bush, Elvis sat at a small wooden table and let 150 reporters hit him with questions. Newsreel and television cameramen peered into his mouth and behind his ears while other photographers aimed under the table at his shifting, nervous feet.

"Do you like classical music?" asked a reporter from Hamburg, birthplace of Brahms. "It puts me to sleep," Elvis blurted, then recovered himself. "I mean it doesn't say anything to me. Like Stan Kenton's music doesn't say anything to me either." Germans who had their own difficulties with Kenton nodded understandingly.

"Would you like to meet Brigitte Bardot?" another reporter asked innocently. Presley grinned, "Yes, I would." "But she's engaged," the reporter slyly shot and the room hushed. Elvis's face grew serious. "I meant I wanted to meet her as a performer."



590719_Baltimore Sun_03.pngYesterday: Elvis drove American kids wild



590719_Baltimore Sun_04.pngToday: More grown up but still a teen-age favorite, he has been dating Vera Tschechowa, German film star



The conference was a turning point. German reporters were amazed that the untrained, unschooled singer they'd been calling "lardhead" could master so wild and cynical a meeting. They went to their typewriters and conceded that Presley himself was "likable," "modest," "a well-mannered, intelligent young man" however hideous his music might be. "Bravo" appointed itself Elvis's shield-rattling defender.

There were other victories for Elvis. Traffic police who kept a watchful eye on his powerful cars were impressed enough with his responsible driving habits to use him to publicize a safety campaign. (Each day knots of teen-agers fidget at traffic lights between Presley's home and his camp, playing an innocent gamble. If a red light stops him, they win an autograph. They groan and beg grinning police to lift a hand when a green light lets him roll past.)

German soldiers, who first believed rumors that millionaire Private Presley had a captain as his personal valet, were surprised to learn the facts: that he pulls slightly more than his share of dirty jobs (to offset suspicions of favoritism), that he stands in line on payday with everybody else, that he shows a snappy respect for rank, that his own men approve of him and that officers decorate him with their prize verbal medal -- "good soldier."

Elvis employs two full-time German secretaries to translate and help answer the 1,500 to 3,000 letters that tumble into his home each week at Bad Nauheim. Batches of the letters read alike, word for word -- they've been copied from various model English letters supplied by film magazines.

Too busy writing his name

Many of his correspondents are confused about Presley's rank, addressing him as "Captain," "General" and even "Senator." Actually Elvis is Specialist Fourth Class -- he was recently promoted from Private First Class. His pay was raised $26.93 monthly -- to $135.30, including overseas pay.

Military duties, his ignorance of German, and his very popularity have in fact kept him one of Germany's lonelier GI's. "Elvis knows only GI German," giggled a 17-year-old Frankfurt secretary sometimes escorted by the singer. "He says things like 'auf wiener schnitzel' for 'auf Wiedersehen.' "

"It doesn't matter what he speaks," complained another girl. 'There's never a chance to talk. He always has to be busy writing his name."

Whenever Presley closes in on a girl, the friendship is usually blasted by press flash bulbs, then snowed under by high drifts of protest mail. The closest Presley has come to a real romance was with Vera Tschechowa, a film and theater actress in her late teens. Elvis had a brief, bedazzled meeting with Vera last winter, then later drove 440 kilometers -- 275 miles -- from Bad Nauheim to Munich to repeat the experience. From the moment his finger touched the Tschechowa doorbell till his red tail lights disappeared back up the autobahn three days later, his visit was given careful coverage by reporters, official and unofficial.

Vera's 65 fan clubs pelted her with letters, many of them scolding. "Presley is cheap . . . uncouth ... a gangster ..." they said. "Anyone who would attend theater without a shirt or necktie is no gentleman." Friends, producers and newsmen said Vera was risking her career.

Vera remained defiantly loyal. "Elvis," she said, "is very much misunderstood. He is a sensitive, honest and good-hearted friend."

Presley has certain qualities which appeal in a special way to Germans for example his respect for his father and grandmother and his devotion to the memory of his mother. He was discovered by accident anonymously waiting in line to donate blood to the German Red Cross. He keeps as far as possible from public tangles and, were it not for the teen-agers, people would forget he is stationed here.

The German teen-agers are at times a headache. When a practice alert ast four weeks. True love is the devil's crowbar. ;-)

Enjoy!


591017_Medford Mail Tribune_01.JPG

HAS THE ARMY CHANGED ELVIS?

His top sergeant gives frank answers about rock-'n'-roll's idol who was supposed to give the Service headaches but instead became a "good soldier"

by M/SQT. IRA JONES as told to GEORGE RIEMER


591017_Medford Mail Tribune_03.JPG

When i was told that Elvis Presley was assigned to my reconnaissance platoon in Germany, I wasn't the happiest guy in the world. I had vivid mental images of rock-'n'-roll riots, tons of fan letters dumped in my quarters, repeated upbraidings from my superior officers and thousands of autograph hunters under foot.

And when he landed in Bremerhaven, it looked as if all my gloomy forebodings had come true in spades! Four thousand fans had somehow managed to jam themselves onto the docks. When Elvis sauntered down the gangplank, duffel bag over his shoulder, there was a spontaneous roar as they burst through the police line that had been set up. I was knocked over and nearly trampled to death by a gang of wild teen-agers screaming, "Willkom-men! Elvis! Elvis!"

On the train to Friedberg, the 32nd Armored's camp, I nursed my bruises and brooded over my bad luck in getting Presley. His performance record from basic training was good, but I was bleakly pessimistic.

There are 36 men in my platoon. How could a millionaire, a celebrity, with girls squealing for tatters of his clothing, fit in with us?

I decided to bury him washing cars somewhere, but an order from my company commander settled that. "Treat Presley like everyone else," he said, and I knew he wasn't kidding, at all.

As soon as the new men are able to find their way around camp, they start group classes. I gave them my usual talk about what was expected of them as scouts, but this time I shot a meaningful glance at Presley and added, ominously: "I don't have time or room in my platoon for goof-offs."

It takes most men five or six weeks to adjust to their platoon; Presley fit in after only a week The others were watching him closely and when they decided he wasn't a phony or goldbricker, he was in. He scrubbed, washed, greased, painted, marched, ran, carried his laundry and worried through inspections just as everyone else did.


591017_Medford Mail Tribune_02.JPG

He worked in so smoothly that one day the executive officer asked me: "What have you done with Presley? Camouflaged him?"

When we started operational routines, I assigned him to drive the lead scout jeep, my own. I made the choice on the basis of his qualifications, but I admit that I also felt that in my jeep he might keep out of trouble with autograph hunters and the like when we went on off-camp maneuvers.

Unfortunately, my appointment was interpreted in the wrong way by the press which reported that Elvis had a snap job chauffeuring an officer." "Presley and his captain race around picking up German girls," etc. And soon as the news was out that he was driving for his platoon sergeant, the division's press officer was bombarded with mail accusing the Army of giving Elvis preferential treatment. I was called to answer the charges. "I gave him the job because he qualified for it," was my explanation. "I would have picked him if he were named Gerald McBoing-Boing."

At first the protests hurt Elvis. but gradually his common sense helped him put on a hard protective shell. He realized that what mattered was the Army's genuine approval, and this he surely got. My company commander told me: "If Private Presley weren't so distracted by demands from his public, he'd be an outstanding soldier, the kind the Army would like to keep." (Presley, I must admit, shuddered at the notion.)

One day, I was sorting out some old magazines at home, when I came across one with an Elvis Presley article. It called him a "bump-and-grind pied piper leading hysterical, glassy-eyed teen-age girls to ruin in a jungle of crude taste and sensuous-ness." The description of citizen Elvis clashed so violently with the Private Presley I knew that it gave me a start. Could they be writing about the same trim soldier who drove for me?


591017_Medford Mail Tribune_04.JPG

Of course, the Army had cut Elvis hair, but reading that article made me wonder if he had changed in other ways, too. Finally, I told him about the article and asked him whether he thought the Army had changed him.

"Nobody could study something for two years without changing," he answered thoughtfully. "I'm no different in that than anybody else. I think a lot more about the world today than I did back home. When the papers talked about Communism or Berlin or Moscow, I turned to the entertainment section. I always thought that it was only movie publicity when I read that East German youths were arrested for carrying my picture. But since I've been over here, I know differently. The way the Communists see things, I'm one of the cold-war criminals. I'm not only a millionaire-capitalist, I'm a youth leader, a tool of American big-business imperialists, used for stirring up trouble among German youth. At least that's what the East German papers say.

"When I was drafted, I guess I had an anti-Army prejudice. I was taken in by movies depicting the Army as a huge machine tangled up in red tape. I expected the men to be too slow or lazy to do anything. But I learned things are different. The Army is strictly professional."


591017_Medford Mail Tribune_05.JPG
A subdued Elvis dates pert Margrit Buergin, plays a quiet guitar, seems aware the world is watching him.

591017_Medford Mail Tribune_06.JPG

At the end of a day at camp, we usually have a song fest. Elvis joins in but never raises his voice louder than the next man's. Whenever anyone asks him for a song, though, he's quick to oblige. We usually ask for the slow ones like "Danny Boy" and "I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen." He sure knows how to put them across.

"You sing those ballads fine, Elvis," I told him one night. "Does it mean we're making you give up rock-'n'-roll?"

"I sing to make people feel good," he answered. "I don't know for sure what songs I'll sing when I go home because I don't suppose they've been written yet."

The Elvis Presley I know always answers such questions thoughtfully and considerately. Maybe it's one of the ways the Army has changed him. I didn't know him before he stepped off that troopship in Bremerhaven, so I can't say for sure. But I doubt that he was ever like the person some writers make him. The Army has matured him, but I don't think even the Army could have changed anyone as much as Elvis would have had to change, if such stories about him were true.

I know Elvis as a good soldier and a fine man. I'm proud to have him serving in my platoon.


591017_Medford Mail Tribune_07.JPGElvis and his buddies are eager for Stateside news.



Medford Mail Tribune "Family Weekly" - Saturday, October 17, 1959

 

Endret av Slettet+9817324
Copypasta i spoilertag
Lenke til kommentar

Bli med i samtalen

Du kan publisere innhold nå og registrere deg senere. Hvis du har en konto, logg inn nå for å poste med kontoen din.

Gjest
Skriv svar til emnet...

×   Du har limt inn tekst med formatering.   Lim inn uten formatering i stedet

  Du kan kun bruke opp til 75 smilefjes.

×   Lenken din har blitt bygget inn på siden automatisk.   Vis som en ordinær lenke i stedet

×   Tidligere tekst har blitt gjenopprettet.   Tøm tekstverktøy

×   Du kan ikke lime inn bilder direkte. Last opp eller legg inn bilder fra URL.

Laster...
×
×
  • Opprett ny...