Ripping Off Elvis

While Elvis Presley lived, there was not a single store hawking Presleyana in Memphis. But since his death last month, the reclusive rock pioneer has been merchandised in a manner that would arouse the envy of the smoothest huckster. Outside his Graceland mansion, peddlers vend memorabilia, including dollar bills with Presley's portrait in place of George Washington's (price: $8). A package of 19 original Presley records is being offered for $9,500. A Columbus, Ga., used-car dealer is restoring the singer's first Cadiliac to take on a national tour. A Delaware outfit called Factors Etc., which has obtained exclusive merchandising rights from Presley's estate, plans to market posters, LOVE ME TENDER T shirts, jewelry, statuettes and Christmas-tree ornaments celebrating Elvis' life.

Rather than subside, adulation of Elvis seems to mount. Caroline Kennedy, writing as a freelance reporter for Rolling Stone about the scene at Graceland before the funeral, described a conversation with Charlie Hodge, Presley's guitarist; he tearfully told how he had "been with Elvis all day. Just this afternoon I shaved his sideburns. It was the least I could do." Even today, souvenir hunters pull blades of grass from the lawn around the mausoleum housing the coffins of Elvis and his mother, who died in 1958. One night police arrested three men for trespassing on cemetery grounds. Alarmed, Presley's lawyers and his father Vernon are seeking city permission to move the remains of Elvis and his mother for reburial behind the secure walls of the mansion in which Presley secluded himself--and finally died alone.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.