Elvis Presley, D16, Drew Pearson Films, Washington Merry-Go-Round.

I suspect that some of you are going to be surprised at the subject of this telecast. You figure I'm supposed to diagnose political situations and foreign affairs or dig up inside stories around the White House. But I'm going to fool you because today I want to relax a bit and report some inside facts about a young man who's become the rage of millions of teenagers and who has some of our experts on juvenile delinquency just about as worried as the teenagers are crazy. I refer to Elvis Presley. Here's a boy of 21 who two years ago was driving a truck for $40 a week. This year he'll make $1 million. He now has four Cadillacs, a three- wheeled Messormith sports car, a motorcycle, a ranch house, and a swimming pool in Memphis. He has police escorts, is mobbed by thousands. He's also a boy who's had more criticism thrown at him than any other entertainment personality, I suppose, in recent American history. But why? Does he really deserve it? What effect does he really have on juvenile delinquency? Just who's to blame? In a minute, I'll tell you the inside story of Elvis Presley, including a prediction. Now, to tell the truth, I'm not an expert on rock and roll. But when I learned the rock and roll music made famous by Elvis Presley had caused teenage riots in two staged countries like England and Norway. When I learned that Elvis had been barred from a Pittsburgh auditorium because of the damage done to the hall by his teenage audience and how he'd been threatened with arrest by a judge in Jacksonville, Florida, and how ministers and educators all over the country had protested his style of singing. Well, I got interested. Here's what I found. Elvis Presley was born just 21 years ago in a two- room house in Tupo, Mississippi and didn't even have a bathtub. Those were depression days. His father worked for the WPA as a carpenter and as a tenant cotton farmer. His family was religious. And at meetings of Holy Rollers, Elvis learned to sing spirituals and play the guitar. His first guitar cost $12.95. Today he pays 300 for his guitars. Yet he still can't read music. In fact, his musical technique is such that sometimes he breaks the strings of his guitar before he finishes a show. However, he has an accompanist. And his guitar is chiefly a decoration to swing around the stage and whip up his teenage audience. Well, when Elvis was 14, his family moved to Memphis in 1949. The Great Depression was over. His father got a job in a factory. His mother went to work as a cafeteria waitress and Elvis got an afterchool job as a gardener. Things were looking up for the Presley family. Meanwhile, Elvis made a hobby out of singing spirituals and hillbilly songs. At this point, he was actually very shy about singing, even for his friends. He was obedient, polite, very bashful. Didn't care much about baseball, football, like other kids. Quite a contrast from today when crowds besiege his car after a performance and police have to protect him from well-wishers, autograph hunters, and jealous males. Well, one Saturday afternoon in June of 1953, Elvis wandered into the front office of the Sun Record Company in Memphis where for $4 you can get a home recording of yourself. He brought along his guitar and recorded two songs, My Happiness, and that's when your heartache begins. Ordinarily, that would have ended that. But a few months later, Sam Phillips of the Sun Record Company was looking for a ballad singer and decided to audition Elvis. Elvis, however, did very badly at his audition and he didn't get the job. He lacked the rock and roll technique that he has today. However, Sam Phillips still thought Presley had possibilities and he suggested he spend a few weeks practicing and then cut another test record. Well, the rest is history. Accompanied by a guitarist and a bass fiddler, Elvis finally was able to make an acceptable record for the Sun Company, Sam Phillips took it then to the local Memphis disc jockey named Dewey Phillips. And the kids of Memphis simply went wild. The local radio station got 47 phone calls and 17 telegrams after the record was played. And Sam Phillips of the Sun Record Company found himself with thousands of orders for Elvis Presley's first commercial recording. That's All Right, Mama. Well, Elvis quit his job as a truck driver, signed a contract with a Memphis disc jockey named Bob Neil, and began singing on hillbilly radio programs and at local roadhouses. He barnstormed through Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, made four more hillbilly records and was a sensation among the kids of the South and the Southwest. Well, at this point, big business in the entertainment world took a hand. Television MC's need to get good ratings and big record companies like to sell records. So, as the word spread about the kid down in Memphis who was creating a local sensation, RCA Victor sent its hillbilly talent scout Steve Scholes down to Memphis to buy a Presley's contract with the Sun Record Company for $35,000 plus a $5,000 bonus to Elvis himself. Three months later, Presley's records were responsible for one half of Victor's entire output. His recording of Heartbreak Hotel sold a million copies in 9 weeks, a new record. Meanwhile, the Dorser brothers signed Elvis for an appearance on their Coast to Coast variety show. And he also appeared on the Milton Burl show where he was widely criticized for his bad taste in performing. Finally, he got into the real big talk by appearing on Steve Allen's new Sunday evening program. The truth is that Steve Allen didn't really want Presley. Steve didn't like Presley's wise guy mannerisms and vulgar body grinds and he had made fun of Presley. However, Steve Ellen was then in a race with Ed Sullivan for TV viewers. So, he agreed to have Elvis and succeeded in beating Ed Sullivan's audience rating for the first time. Well, the competition at Big Time Television is terrific. Ed Sullivan was not to be outdone. He tried to get Presley on his show a year earlier when Presley was only a local southern sensation, but Presley at that time demanded $5,000 for a single TV appearance. And Sullivan had laughed him off. Like Steve Allen, Sullivan considered Presley's way of performing vulgar. But competition is competition. So he offered Elvis $50,000 for three TV performances, the most Sullivan had ever offered anyone. And quite a contrast to the $5,000 he had previously refused. But he had to win back those Sunday night viewers stolen by Steve Allen, and he was successful. Later, Sullivan admitted that Elvis Presley's three appearances on his program had been worth $250,000 to him in publicity. The good taste of Presley's performance apparently wasn't important. A good rating was. Well, that competition between Steve Allen and Ed Sullivan marked the high spot of Elvis Presley's meteoric rise to fame. In a minute, I'll make a prediction as to where he will go in the future. Now, the chief reason for all the criticism of Elvis Presley is that he's become a sort of a sex symbol to teenage girls. They go wild over him. Presley doesn't smoke or drink, but he does like girls and they are prone literally to throw themselves at him. However, it seems to me important to remember that it's not exactly Elvis's fault that he has suddenly shot to fame, fortune, and influence over girls, but rather it's the fault of the big music companies, the TV MC's, and the business managers who were looking for profits and high ratings. You can hardly expect a youngster 21 to resist vigorously when money and women are thrown at him in such profusion. So here is my prediction regarding the future of this strange once shy young man who is zoomed to such meteoric fame in show business. If you look back you recall the famed matinea idols who preceded Presley worked hard for their success. Rudolph Valentino the silent movie idol of girls and older women worked for years before he achieved fame and he did it without resorting to vulgarity. Rudy Valet, the collegiate type of kuner, also worked for years before he won the worship of romantic girls and women in the late 20s and 30s. Frank Sinatra, also studied and worked hard before the teenagers swoomed over him in New York and Hollywood. He also reached fame without resorting to vulgarity. But Elvis Presley was a truck driver who still can't read music and whose main appeal appears to be frankly sex. But as I said, Elvis is a boy who came from a povertystricken background, and you can hardly expect him to resist the screeching girls and the fat pocketbooks being thrust upon him. In all fairness, it's also true that Elvis began his climb to fame before he ever appeared on television. His records were bestsellers in the South before he hit the big time. And following the violent criticism of his body movements on TV, he's become less objectionable. In his first movie, Elvis amazed the critics by doing a good job as an actor. Nobody ever thought he could act. So, here is my prediction. One secret of Presley's popularity with teenagers has been his lack of popularity with their parents. So if parents quit criticizing his singing, I predict the great Elvis Presley hysteria will diminish. And if Presley finally learns that vulgarity is not the way to permanent success, and if he works hard, which he's never done before, I further predict he'll find a less spectacular but steadier place in our entertainment world. If he does not, then I predict Elvis Presley star will fall as rapidly as it rose. I'll make a prediction about next week's program in just a minute. Next week, I'll report on some of the amazing cross currents behind the Iron Curtain and whether they mean peace or war to the United States. Heat. Heat. down.