I’ll put my hands up, I’m a big Elvis fan. I have been since my mum took me to see him in Girl Happy in 1965 when I was six years old, the first of many. Admittedly, I became a bit more circumspect about the films Elvis had been compelled to make as I got older. But he was always on my mind. I’ve been to Elvis’s home, Graceland in Memphis. A friend and I go to every concert of Elvis music by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, hosted by Elvis’s wife Priscilla. It goes without saying that I am beyond excited about the new Baz Luhrmann film, Elvis, released on 24 June.
I’m not alone in my adoration. It is estimated that Elvis has sold more than one billion records worldwide. Stage events fill arenas today as much as any living rock star. His image, like that of Marilyn Monroe, has become iconic and adorns everything from tea towels to watches.
What is it though that makes a nice Jewish girl like me adore the king of rock and roll so much?
Let’s begin with the fact that Elvis was halachically Jewish. I can hear you with your suspicious minds doubting that fact. But genealogists have now confirmed Elvis’s maternal great-great-grandmother was a Jewish woman named Nancy Burdine. It’s believed her family immigrated to America from what is now Lithuania around the time of the American Revolution. Burdine was born in Mississippi in 1826 and died in 1887.
Burdine’s great-granddaughter was Gladys Love Smith, who married Vernon Presley in 1933. Two years later, Gladys gave birth to Elvis in Tupelo. The family moved to Memphis when Elvis was 13. So through the direct maternal line, Elvis is halachically Jewish.
In 2018 Elvis’s mother’s headstone was taken out of storage and put on display in Graceland. The headstone was designed by Elvis himself after his mother died in 1958. He included a Star of David in the top left-hand corner. A sign next to the gravestone now says that was to honour Gladys’s Jewish heritage.
Martyn Lopes Dias is one of the UK’s top Elvis tribute artists, working as Elvis Shmelvis. His work takes him all over the country, and abroad, performing on stage and TV; he also officiates at wedding celebrations. He has thoroughly researched Elvis’s Jewish background as part of a stage show he is currently writing; Elvis Was Jewish. Having spoken to friends and neighbours of the young Elvis, he confirms Gladys was fully aware of her heritage. “She did tell Elvis he was Jewish,” Lopes Dias says, “But in the 1930s in the Deep South, racism and antisemitism were rife, so she told him not to say anything. Gladys hadn’t even told Vernon she was Jewish.”
When the Presleys moved to Memphis they rented an apartment in a house. Their upstairs neighbours were Rabbi Alfred and Mrs Fruchter. Rabbi Fruchter was the principal of a Jewish school and rabbi of the Associated Orthodox congregation, and the family kept a kosher home. According to Roselle Kline Chartock in her book The Jewish World of Elvis Presley, Elvis was a regular visitor and became close to the family. “The Presleys were invited to Shabbat dinner once a month, leading Elvis to develop a fondness for challah, carrot tzimmes and matzo-ball soup,” states Chartock. After all, who can help falling in love with chicken soup?
According to both Chartock and Lopes Dias, Elvis acted as the “shabbas goy” for the Fruchters, the non-Jew to switch on lights and the like after Shabbat had begun; “Obviously,” says Lopes Dias, “they didn’t know he was Jewish otherwise of course they wouldn’t have asked him to do that.”
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Love me tender: Austin Butler plays Elvis alongside Olivia DeJonge as Priscilla (Photo: Warner Bros)
He also says young Elvis used to keep a kippah in his pocket in case he was going to visit the Fruchters.
Throughout his life, Elvis was surrounded by, and good friends with, many Jewish people. Memphis in the 1950s was heavily populated by Jewish-owned businesses, featuring shops with names such as B. Lowenstein and Brothers, A. Schwab’s, Julius Lewis, and Goldsmith’s, as well as Ruben Cherry’s record store and Lansky Brothers Clothiers. Presley established close relationships with Cherry and Bernard Lansky, the latter going on to make many of Elvis’s clothes.
When fame came along, Elvis surrounded himself with old friends nicknamed ‘The Memphis Mafia’, of whom several were Jewish, including his oldest friend, George “GK” Klein, a friend from eighth grade at school. Others included Marty Lacker, Alan Fortas and Larry Geller.
When he became rich, Elvis reportedly donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Memphis Jewish Welfare Fund and played racquetball late at night at the Memphis Jewish Community Centre.
During the last year of his life, Elvis was frequently photographed wearing a necklace with a chai. The chai necklace is kept in a cabinet at Graceland next to the keys to the singer’s famed 1955 pink Cadillac. Never one to be accused of subtlety, Elvis had the necklace designed with 17 diamonds.
Whether Elvis being Jewish gets you all shook up or not, the easiest answer as to why he is so perennially popular 45 years after his death can be summed up by Lopes Dias: “He was probably the greatest entertainer of all time”.
Ah Elvis, I’ll never get over the wonder of you.
More details about Elvis Shmelvis on shmelvis.com
Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis is in cinemas now
