The Tampa Times from Tampa, Florida • 13

Jtifr Thursday, June 151972 Section ELVIS In case you hadn't noticed that was no flash in the pan way back in 1956. Despite what the PRESLEY Vincent, Conway Twitty, Paul Anka, Fabian or Ricky Nelson) had his sales impact. "Ah'd like to be a movie actor," he told a reporter who delighted in recording his "hillbilly" dialect, "if 'n ah can hoi' still long enough for, the camera." He held still long enough to make his first film "Love Me Tender'7 -(produced by David Weisbart, who had also produced James Dean's "Rebel Without a and by his 27th film, "Speedway," he told a reporter who asked Elvis to describe the role: "I'm kindiiva singin' miK lionaire-playboy race driver, sir." Have you ever played such a part before? the reporter goaded "Only about 25 times, sir," Presley There was nothing like. Presley until 1964, when the Beatles emerged Women wore Presley hairdos (long Tftof $3,000 fcJe Within another year, bicycles may pass autps in -sales, if the current cycling boom in this country continues. In 197 bicycle sales hit 8.9 million, and are expected to reach 10.5 million this year roughly the same volume as autos.

What's more, half of the bicycles sold last year were full size ones, indicating that the teen-age and adult bike market has caught up with the two-wheel kiddie trade. Bicycle Manufacturers Association says adults have turned to cycling for a variety of reasons; It's good exercise, the bike is cheap to operate as it requires no fuel or liability insurance, and is easy to park. 1 The modern-multi-speed bike also is amazingly fast. In a series of tests held recently in Boston, cyclists won 7 of 10 races against motorists through rush-hour traffic, and another race resulted in a dead heat. This seems to be a healthy trend, what with the generally wretched physical state of both the environment and most motorists.

I'm just afraid the bike industry won't be able to stand the prosperity, and soon will fall into the same pitfalls of the auto industry. Imagine this transaction in the typical new bike showroom a few years from now, if the trend continues: "Yes sir, can I show you something in a new set of wheels?" was looking for an inexpensive little economy bicycle, just something I can ride to work." "We've got exactly what you're looking for, our 1974 Fireball Mach III 20-speed sport model with radio, heater and vinyl bucket seat." "It's nice, but I'm afraid it might be a little more expensive than what I had in mind." "Expensive? Just look at that sticker price on the handlebars, sir. This bike lists for a mere $79.95, less freight, dealer preparation and optional equipment." "That's not bad at all. How much is it with freight, dealer preparation and options?" "That's ridiculous. How can you charge, $3,000 for a bicycle?" "This is not just your run-of-the-mill, Stripped down model, sir.

This machine has every comfort and safety device, including factory "Factory air?" in both tires. Not only that, it has a genuine fake fur fox tail on the antenna, and you can get it with real air conditioning at a slight additional charge. Of course, you have to pedal pretty hard to keep that compressor moving, but it's worth working up a little sweat to keep cool." "Well, it's really a lot more bike than I wanted, but I suppose I'll take it." "You won't regret it sir. It's far more practical than a car, because it burns no fuel, causes ho pollution, and you can park it" any- where. What's more you don't have to worry, about it being recalled." "I don't?" "No, we just re-cycle them when they start falling apart." oft a tt tsa critics said.

old entrepreneur. had already reached mythic proportions. On the carnival runway in the Parker had operated a foot-long hot dog concession, but only the buns were a foot long. A few inches of wienie protruded from each end of the bun, and the center was stuffed with mustard, relish and onion. He painted sparrows yellow and sold them as As Elvis's manager on-; the a backroads circuit in the early '50s, before Presley entered a town, Parker once "rented elephants and advertised Elvis with posters hanging from their flanks," Hopkins reports.

"He wore shir ts that had Elvis' name stitched across the back and front. And in a stroke of bizarre genius, he hired all the midgets in Hollywood most of them Munchkins left over from 'The Wizard of Oz' to parade through town as the Elvis Presley Midget Fan Club." "We do not socialize," Parker said of his relationship with Elvis. "Our great social interest is money." Boosting, pushing, manipulating the media, Parker built the $41 a week truckdriver who, in 1954 had taken an hour off work and recorded two songs for $4 at Sam Phillips' Sun Record Co. in Memphis as a gift for his mother into a national phenomenon. A defiant boy who wore his hair long and liked the singing of Dean Martin, the Inkspots and a black singer named Arthur (Big Boy) Cru- dup, Elvis's home record for mom answered Sam Phillips' dream.

"If I could find a white man," Phillips is reported to have said, "who had the Negro sound and the Negro feeling, I could make a million dollars." He released Elvis' first record, Crudup's "That's All Right (Mama)," in August, 1954, and by 1956, With Parker then in complete control, Presley had a contract with RCA Victor Records, guest shots on TV with Steve Allen and Sullivan (both of whom used Elvis in their Sunday night ratings battle) and an unprecedented release of seven singles at once, saturating the market and selling at least 100,000 copies of each record. (One of the seven by the way, was "Blue a standard that Dylan later recorded in his nostalgic LP, "Self Why the popularity? Simple. He had tweaked America's repressed libido. No wearer of bermuda shorts, Elvis sported three-inch (three-inch!) sideburns and a leer, and he shook his hips in a manner that could cause Pat Boone to tremble. He was James Dean and Marlon Brando, with a guitar yet, he was a southern gentleman, oozing charm and loving mother.

"Has sex anything to do with your 'popularity?" a woman reporter asked him. "Ma'am," he replied, "I'm not trying' to be sexy. I didn't have any idear of trying to sell sex. It's just my way of expressin' how I feel when I move around. My movements, Ma'am are all leg movements I don't do nothin' with my body." Nevertheless, Hopkins reports that 78 different Elvis merchandise products were, being sold, with sales in the millions of dollars each month.

Those "leg movements, Ma'am" sold a lot of Elvis Presley pajamas and glow-in-the-dark picture. (And some women still preserve those framed Elvis pictures to this day.) By the end of 1956, Elvis had effectively replaced Johnny Ray as the American g'irl's no. 1 heartthrob. He was now the embodiment of Sinatra-Valentino-Vallee-Gable. RCA's com- petitors set out to find a Presley of their, own, but not one (not even Gene I nii i nBrrwnnai linniil By MARSHALL ROSENTHAL Chicago Daily News Service "Elvis Presley is a fad," a critic writes in 1956.

"a fellow a girl turns to for one of those mad, impetuous infatuations, whereas Perry Como and Eddie Fisher will still be around, the dependable types, when Presley is back driving his truck in Memphis." Real gone words, Pops! But. 16 years ago, while you' are collecting Green searching, 'Murphy and your little teen-age angel is up in her room, putting on Heartbreak. Hotel Pink Lipstick and listening to "Hound Dog" for the zillionth time. Perry who? Eddie what? Why, they're enough to make a girl upchuck! "He (Elvis) had a special sensual magic about him," recalls H. Kandy Rohde about those days in her book, "The Gold of Rock Roll, 1955-67" (Arbor House).

"He looked kind of 'hoody' not like the clean little boys we knew at school," writes Miss Rohde. "Adults and kids who were too sophisticated to be swept up. by our generation's first idol were so busy attacking his looks and lyrics that they failed to understand he was 1 saying more than: "You ain't nothing' but a hound dog cryin' all the time. You ain't never caught a rabr bit and you ain't no friend of mine." Now it's almost 16 years- after Elvis the Pelvis was viewed coast to coast from the waist up only on; Ed Sullivan's TV show, shaking up and separating Mom and Sis who desperately were practicing "togetherness" in the silent i0s. He is 37, and earning an estimated $5 million this year.

But that has not always been the case. In 1956, Elvis was only 21, and earned only $1 million. In the interim, he has sold more than 200 million records, made more than 32 films, turned white pop music into sexual body talk and become one of the most enduring and significant figures in popular culture. Bob Dylan set out to be a pop-star "bigger than Elvis Presley." John Lennon said, "Nothing really affected me until Elvis." And Alvin Lee's group, Ten Years After, was so named because it was formed 10 years after Elvis began. When Elvis appeared in Chicago in 1957, Roman Catholic high school students were ordered by a Catholic Action group to stay away lest their morals be corrupted.

Presley was spreading national juvenile mania," 'a reporter noted, "called rock and roll." So, back back back, down memory lane we go, to recapture' those wonderful days of rock and roll. 1956. The golden oldie is merely a tin toddler and the Carpenters is the name of a bowling team. i A On the front page of the newspaper, Hungary is surrounded by Soviet tanks and Israel has cut off the Gaza Strip. A Negro minister, The Rev, Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr. has led a boycott of the segregated bus system in Montgomery, Ala. Dwight D. Eisenhower has been re-elected President of the United States," and, on the surface, there is peace and prosperity, Bill Haley and the Chuck i Berry, Ray Charles and Fats Domino, are "last year's record (along with Perez Prado; Teresa Brewer, the Chordettes and the McGuire Sisters), and all America is in love with Lucy. Americans tune their TV sets in on Saturday night, Jan.

28, 1956 to warm them up for Jackie Gleason's Honeymooners. Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey's stage show program is on (produced by Gleason) and there was Elvis, "standing center stage, gazing into the camera with his dark lidded eyes," Jerry Hopkins writes in his biography, "Elvis" (Simon Schuster). "He moved his shoulders slightly, adjusting the draped sport jacket he was wearing, relaxed his widespread legs, snapping his right knee almost imperceptibly, 'wellll, since man beh-bee left me ah've found a new place to dwell it's down at the end of lonely street it's Heartbreak "Elvis's legs jerked and twisted. He thumped his own guitar on the af-terbeat, using it as a prop and almost never played it now. He bumped his hips he sneered, dropped his eye-.

lids and smiled out of the left side of his mouth the television audience had never seen anything like it Elvis Presley was 'doing it' on television. Coast to coast. "Elvis Presley yells, a song Heartbreak Hotel'. with great vigor and seems to have some sort of St. Vitus dance," a TV critic writes at the time, "This sort of entertainment, I thought, had gone out of fashion when bedlam ceased to be a great source of entertainment "(Presley is unspeakably un-talented and vulgar entertainer where do you go from Elvis Presley, short of obscenity which againt the law?" Well, where do you go? You package the product' and peddle it quickly Enter Elvis's manager, ex-car- neyman Col.

Tom Parker, a master packager and peddler. In 1955, Parker was managing the careers of singers Eddy, Arnold and ilank Snb Flamboyant C. Fields-'esqiie, the 45-yea'r-- ji.iiui a iMimuu wi.in null ij.iiium.mjiuL lit sideburns and bangs) which moved a Chicago Newspaper to note in an editorial we are not unmindful of the fact that there may be some method in all ths seeming madness. If enough women succumb to the fad, few teen-age males would want to be caught dead with an Elvis haircut lest they be considered effeminate." Presley turned down an offer for his $100,000 Memphis mansion by a candy manufacturer who wanted to tear it down, chop it up and give souvenir pieces to fans who sent in gum wrappers. And in May, 1957, singer Giselle MacKenzie quit the "Your Hit Parade show after four years of singing America's top tunes.

"When I first arrived on the show," she said, "They were singing; things like 'Strange in Rouge' and 'Ebb Tide' songs with taste and melody, singer's songs. "But now we're in a real rut which is one reason, I suppose, why I'm not too unhappy about leaving the show. You know, in our Easter show, they had me as a sleeping princess. The prince woke me with a kiss and I started singing 'All Shook-Up." See PRESLEY, page 2-B Staff photos by. Rick Norcross I'l PX How much is a few lines of sentiment worth, anyway? Bob Martin, page 3-B.

Student news tops today's social news. Nancy Turner's column, page 4-B. What's on top hats, that is for fall? Fashion, page 5-B. TV addict? Check out our listings, highlights. Page 6-B.

Does a husband owe his wife an allowance? Dear Abby has the answer. Page 7-B. Answers to your consumer problems. Page 12-B. "I can't believe I ate that whole thing!" 6-is- XT.