Elvis in full Army dress uniform

[Julian Grant]

Nice pictures and other than the one where he is holding a cup they are new to me. Anyone have a date for these? Guessing he's on leave - Paris 1959?

[Joe Car]

Absolutely magnificent! Thanks Julian!

[javierTCB]

# 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8 January 12, 1960, at Club Lido de Paris, France.
# 4 looks like march 07, 1960, at Memphis, TN.

Thanks for sharing Julian

[Julian Grant]

# 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8 January 12, 1960, at Club Lido de Paris, France.
# 4 looks like march 07, 1960, at Memphis, TN.

Thanks for sharing Julian

Thank Joe, my pleasure - It's what we do right?

Hi Javier,

Looking at the pictures again, I'm wondering.
For me, the other guys look more blue eyed / blond hair so wondering if it's somewhere in Germany and not France but if you are pretty sure it's the Lido Club in Paris then you may be correct. I checked "Day By Day", "Private Presley" and "Private Presley - The Missing Years" this morning and couldn't find any of these pictures. The reason I thought 1959 also is that he has no stripes on his uniform.

Re: Picture # 4 upon first look I immediately thought on the train coming back in to Memphis but his uniform doesn't have the Sargent stripes he wears when he goes home.

[javierTCB]

Looking at the pictures again, I'm wondering.
For me, the other guys look more blue eyed / blond hair so wondering if it's somewhere in Germany and not France but if you are pretty sure it's the Lido Club in Paris then you may be correct. I checked "Day By Day", "Private Presley" and "Private Presley - The Missing Years" this morning and couldn't find any of these pictures. The reason I thought 1959 also is that he has no stripes on his uniform..

I think it´s an effect of lighter hair dye with the effect of the camera flash. The "Elvis-Vol.3 Files" shows these photos as jan 12, 1960.

Re: Picture # 4 upon first look I immediately thought on the train coming back in to Memphis but his uniform doesn't have the Sargent stripes he wears when he goes home.

I think is the angle of picture, but I see that his arm has something that cuts your silhouette against the background. Maybe it's just an optical illusion.

[Ito Eats]

#4 is definitive not in a train

here is another Pic's from the self day

14515.jpg

and this one

14515.2.JPG

[TONY.]

Very English - Elvis pouring himself a cuppa tea!!!

[javierTCB]

Re: Picture # 4 upon first look I immediately thought on the train coming back in to Memphis but his uniform doesn't have the Sargent stripes he wears when he goes home.

It is a mistery. Here another shot without Sargent stripes.

Is Elvis in Graceland? Someone has more information?

[latebloomer]

Julian Grant, javierTCB, and Ito Eats,

Hello, fellas. Just now spotted these beautiful photos while hunting for Army photos. They all are from Paris in 1959. What he has on his sleeves in every photo is E-4 insignia, Specialist Fourth Class, informally Spec4. (Corporals also are E-4s, but they are Non-commissioned Officers; Specials are not NCOs. The Specialist paygrades run -- or did in my long-ago day -- in tandem with the NCO paygrades up to E-7.) That insignia is how to tell Army service photos from those taken for GI Blues. In GI Blues he wore E-5/Sp5 insignia, which have a single gold rocker above the eagle. (Never have figured out why he wasn't allowed to wear Sergeant's stripes for GI Blues. Most people never would have noticed the difference, but I'd be willing to bet quite a lot that Elvis was not pleased.)

Wish I'd seen these sooner, but maybe you'll spot this note eventually.

[javierTCB]

Julian Grant, javierTCB, and Ito Eats,

Hello, fellas. Just now spotted these beautiful photos while hunting for Army photos. They all are from Paris in 1959.....

Many thanks for this new information latebloomer

[latebloomer]

You're welcome, javierTCB. That's a gorgeous set of photos Julian Grant, Ito Eats, and you put together.

Now I need help figuring out something, so I'm putting together a question of my own, also about Elvis uniforms. Keep watching new picture posts....

[drjohncarpenter]

Nice pictures and other than the one where he is holding a cup they are new to me. Anyone have a date for these? Guessing he's on leave - Paris 1959?

Elvis went to Paris three times:

June 13-27 1959
July 3-5 1959
January 12-18 1960

It's clear all of your images come from the last visit in 1960. The one of him sitting and drinking a cup of coffee is identified as January 16, 1960 in David English's Welcome Home Elvis 1960 (FTD, 2012).

Here are a few from the Hotel Prince de Galles (Prince Of Wales), Champs-Élysées, Paris, also in January 1960:

[latebloomer]

Well, russelfratz! I spent yesterday sifting through several hundred photos, about half of them Army, including many duplicates, and my brain must have given up and gone to bed without me.

Here are four I found, with the original captions written for them by the Associated Press: If these photos and their captions don't confuse you, you just don't understand the situation!

[latebloomer]

In the 20 and 30 January photos, he is pointing to sewn-on stripes, yet his rank is given as acting Sergeant. (His permanent rank remained Sp4.)

In the 11 February photos, he is wearing his Specialist badge, the little golden eagle, and, in the second photo is holding his new Sergeant's stripes over his Specialist badge, almost but not quite concealing it. Look closely.

So...either those photos were very erroneously captioned, or there's something going on that I definitely do not understand. Nobody is required to sew on and take off stripes in so short a time, it makes a terrible mess of a uniform sleeve. If he was not entitled to wear Sergeant's stripes when he was designated acting Sergeant, then the dates or the entire captions of the January photos are incorrect. (Yet, the photos of him with E-6 stripes seem to indicate that his promotin to acting Staff Sergeant entitled him to sew on those stripes, despite the fact that they were going to have to be removed before he could be detached from the command in Friedburg.)

Confused yet? No? Read on.

As I wrote earlier, on another topic, acting promotion generally is used for short-term duty, like the duration of a field exercise (maneuvers), for which Elvis wore the slip-on E-6 stripes of a senior Scout, or a "watch" type of duty, such as Sergeant-of-the-Guard or Charge-of-Quarters, both of which are eight- to twenty-four-hour watches. Because the responsibility and the authority necessary to carry out that responsibility, of such short-term billets generally are fixed by custom, usage, and/or official regulations, the commensurate rank is given -- by a slip-on set of stripes -- to the person assigned to carry out the duty. For example, if all there are on hand are E-3s and E-4s, an E-4 will be designated Sergeant-of-the-Guard and may be given a slip-on badge of rank to wear, even though he's not an E-5.

Now, look at his DD-214. The (T) after his rank, E-5, means that his promotion to E-5 was temporary, not permanent. The Army has used temporary promotions at least since the Civil War era, when many active-duty commissioned officers (and probably many NCOs, too) were temporarily promoted one or more grades to fill out the manning schedules required by full-scale mobilization. The bitter part came when the war ended, and most of those who held a temporary grade had to revert to their last permanent grade. Elvis could have been returned to active duty as a Sergeant, E-5, but still would have needed to make that promotion permanent before he could be promoted to E-6 permanently. If too many E-5s were already on duty when and if he had been recalled to active duty, he would have been brought back in at his permanent rank, which was Specialist Fourth Class.

(My retired Navy Chief and I have put our heads together to work out all of this, but, even though I was an Army brat and should have known all about both acting and temporary rank, since I recall asking Dad about both, in truth, our own knowledge of Army rank began about 1964, and is pretty sketchy.)

As I said, if you're not confused, then you just don't understand the situation.

E-Cat, can you help us out here? Or is there a retired ARMY NCO in the house who served during the '50s and '60s?

Nonetheless, Doc, I think you are correct and I am wrong: Elvis would have been in Paris on his second and third leaves there wearing the Specialist insignia of rank, and was never there wearing Sergeant's stripes. Mea culpa. Julian, javier, and Ito, my humblest apologies.

[jinjoe]

Pictures posted by Julian Grant can also be found in the book Elvis a Paris

[latebloomer]

Something else about the dress blue photos puzzles me:

Elvis wore two medals for marksmanship from the time he went home from Fort Hood on his first leave, in June, 1958, until he boarded the USS Randall in September, 1958. But he debarked in Bremerhaven wearing only one, centered on his left breast pocket. The next photo I have of him wearing two again is dated 29 February 1969, during the Hopkirk interview. He wears only one in the dress blue photos above, and none on the Class A green uniform shown above.

Also, he is not wearing a ribbon in any photo I have, including those above, until 1 March 1960, for the press conference at Ray Barracks. If that ribbon was for National Defense (or some other Army- or DOD-wide reason), I think he was entitled to wear it after 90 or 180 days on active duty. If it was for service in theater (in other words, in Germany), he should have been entitled to wear it after 90 or 180 days in Germany. (These time requirements vary according to what the ribbon is for, and they change periodically.) Yet he is not wearing the ribbon on 2 March 1960, as he leaves Bad Nauheim, but has it on when he boards the plane at Rhine-Main, and and all the photos thereafter.

Wearing medals and ribbons on Class A uniforms doesn't become optional until a person is entitled to wear so many that his entire left shoulder is covered, and even then there are very strict regulations about what must be worn and what may be left off. And young servicemen -- young in years of service, that is -- never have to be told to wear theirs, and would never risk having to be told, anyway. Even the most disenchanted young serviceman or woman wears those first few with a fierce pride. Elvis was both meticulous in his military bearing and undoubtedly good with all the fine details of military life. If he had not been, he never would have been promoted to even acting E-5, let alone acting E-6.

So, how to explain the missing ribbon and medals from the photos above, and many others.

Anybody?

[latebloomer]

Julian, I hate to be a pill, but many of the captions for the entire body of Elvis' photos are erroneous, even in published books, where you would think an editorial team would have checked and checked every detail, ad nauseum, and never more so than with the military photos. People who never have worn one have no idea (and no reason they should) of the significance of all the junk that gets pinned on and sewn on our uniforms, and even career military men can be found scratching their heads over the stuff on a uniform from one of their sister services. It's all there for a reason and every single item denotes something quite specific. The press is notoriously dense about rank, insignia, etc. People who really know their stuff can practically fill out a fellow's service record just by looking at his uniform.

I tend to be highly skeptical about all the information we're given about the miitary photos, and that's why the (way too) lengthly reasoning.

There's something very odd about those dress blue photos, and something decidedly peculiar about the sequence in which Elvis' marksmanship medals and his ribbon appear and disappear. If we can find explanations, I think all the pieces will fall into place for a solid identification to which we all can subscribe.

When on leave in Europe in 1958-1960, was it permissible to travel in civvies, or were uniforms mandatory, or perhaps merely required to qualify a traveler for a military discount? The reason I ask is because uniforms are a pain in the neck to travel in, must be dry-cleaned, and are very much heavier than comparable items of civilian clothing. I can't believe Elvis would have worn greens and lugged along dress blues -- blues weigh a ton! Also, uniforms require a wole lot of peripheral stuff, like those flying-saucer hats and uniform shoes and belts, etc., etc. All that takes up lots of baggage space. Elvis certainly could afford to pay for extra baggage and someone to haul it around for him, but he was human, and humans usually take the path of least resistance. That's one of the reasons why I think the blues photos and the greens photosposted above may be from different trips.

[Julian Grant]

It's clear all of your images come from the last visit in 1960. The one of him sitting and drinking a cup of coffee is identified as January 16, 1960 in David English's Welcome Home Elvis 1960 (FTD, 2012).

Indeed. My post of course is 15 months old and I did finally date my original thought of the pictures being taken in France when I bought and saw the 'coffee-cup' picture in David's book.

[drjohncarpenter]

It's clear all of your images come from the last visit in 1960. The one of him sitting and drinking a cup of coffee is identified as January 16, 1960 in David English's Welcome Home Elvis 1960 (FTD, 2012).

Indeed. My post of course is 15 months old and I did finally date my original thought of the pictures being taken in France when I bought and saw the 'coffee-cup' picture in David's book.

Of course I didn't notice the date of your post, or that latebloomer revived the topic. And since there was no update here from you since your discovery, we were operating on pure instinct.

[E-Cat]

The one of him sitting and drinking a cup of coffee is identified as January 16, 1960 in David English's Welcome Home Elvis 1960 (FTD, 2012).

David asked me about this date and I mentioned that January 16th is correct, because Elvis was interviewed just before Elvis visited the Lido later that night.
This interview was published in the Journal Du Dimanche the day after.

Here are a few from the Hotel Prince de Galles (Prince Of Wales), Champs-Élysées, Paris, also in January 1960:

The Prince the Galles is not located at the Champs-Élysées, it is located at Av George V (which is near the Champs- Elysee's)

# 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8 January 12, 1960, at Club Lido de Paris, France.
# 4 looks like march 07, 1960, at Memphis, TN.

I hope you don't mind some of my remarks:

# 1,2,3,5,6,7 - after the Lido dinner show Jan 16 (early morning Jan 17) with Harold Nicholas ( American tap dancer at the lido)
#4 Prince de Galles Hotelinterview with M. Schaefer before the evening show at the Lido (Jan 16)
# 8 taken at the entrance of the Prince de Galles hotel, see below to compare the iron works..it is the same...



I took this photo at the entrance 2 weeks ago (the iron work has changed) :

Julian, I hate to be a pill, but many of the captions for the entire body of Elvis' photos are erroneous, even in published books, where you would think an editorial team would have checked and checked every detail, ad nauseum, and never more so than with the military photos....I tend to be highly skeptical about all the information we're given about the miitary photos, and that's why the (way too) lengthly reasoning.

Unfortunately I have to agree that most books copied their information from unverified sources (like Guralnick and Ernst Jorgensen). Most books lack any degree of location research, which is very important to understand identifying a photo. You are not going to find something new without location research.

So we were a bit skeptical (before we went to Paris) when one of the Lido dancers who met Elvis informed us that he visited the Crazy Horse Club before he went to the Lido. So we called the house manager of the Crazy Horse who also stated stated that Elvis visited the club. It does make sense when you realize that it is only a minute away from his hotel. And when we arrived, the house manager showed us a list of honorary guests who visited the Crazy Horse Club, including Elvis - which seem to be a very strong indication that Elvis was at this club in Paris?

Another undiscovered fact from Elvis in the Army? Not yet...more info is needed ...to be continued...

[javierTCB]

# 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8 January 12, 1960, at Club Lido de Paris, France.
# 4 looks like march 07, 1960, at Memphis, TN.

I hope you don't mind some of my remarks:

# 1,2,3,5,6,7 - after the Lido dinner show Jan 16 (early morning Jan 17) with Harold Nicholas ( American tap dancer at the lido)
#4 Prince de Galles Hotelinterview with M. Schaefer before the evening show at the Lido (Jan 16)
# 8 taken at the entrance of the Prince de Galles hotel, see below to compare the iron works..it is the same...

Thanks E-Cat for this info

[drjohncarpenter]

Here are a few from the Hotel Prince de Galles (Prince Of Wales), Champs-Élysées, Paris, also in January 1960:

The Prince the Galles is not located at the Champs-Élysées, it is located at Av George V (which is near the Champs- Elysee's)

I never said it was "located at the Champs-Élysées." I have been to the Hotel Prince de Galles, and that is the major street near the hotel, just a block and a half away. Most people have never been to Paris, and never will, but may be aware of the general location of the Champs-Élysées.

Unfortunately I have to agree that most books copied their information from unverified sources (like Guralnick and Ernst Jorgensen).

"like Guralnick and Ernst Jorgensen"? This is a gross characterization of two of our most dedicated Presley advocates, and it is a slap in the face to link their work to the scores of undistinguished Presley publications through the years.

[E-Cat]

"like Guralnick and Ernst Jorgensen"? This is a gross characterization of two of our most dedicated Presley advocates, and it is a slap in the face to link their work to the scores of undistinguished Presley publications through the years.

Yes, both Guralnick and Ernst Jorgenson did not verify their sources and wrote a lot of errors about the Army days. There errors have been copied by many authors because they thought that Guralnick and EJ did their homework and considered these publications as the Bible, That is why their is room for better researched books and that is why dedicated researchers frequently find new information.

[latebloomer]

[Wrote this late yesterday, but could not even get it to send -- my server, not FECC's. My apologies for the tardy thanks.]

Geez, E-Cat, ask and ye shall receive! What a wonderful harvest of information, of course I don't mind the details. Now I can put all those photos into the proper sequence instead of just guessing. And a pair of beautiful photos to boot! You are THE MAN!!

[One of my neighbors who is a botany professor says that if I really want answers to my questions about ferns and asters, both of which are devilishly hard to identify, I need to learn who is THE MAN for those two groups of plants, that is, the guy who has really gotten into the nitty-gritty and knows much, much more than whoever's in second place. For Elvis' Army years, you're THE MAN.]

Thank you very much.

P.S. I've already send David my humble apologies for my skepticism. I hadn't realized he had already dated these photos -- after consulting you!

[drjohncarpenter]

"like Guralnick and Ernst Jorgensen"? This is a gross characterization of two of our most dedicated Presley advocates, and it is a slap in the face to link their work to the scores of undistinguished Presley publications through the years.

Yes, both Guralnick and Ernst Jorgenson did not verify their sources and wrote a lot of errors about the Army days.

Ah. OK. It seems your comments are in error as well.

Your admonishment speaks primarily to a collaboration between authors and historians Peter Guralnick and Ernst Jorgensen, Elvis Day by Day: The Definitive Record of His Life and Music (New York: Ballantine Books, October 5, 1999). Although there are errors within its 400 pages, there are far more insights, and heretofore unknown facts, which still make it an essential read.

Your general lament did not specify this, which seems pretty rich for someone so dedicated to detailing the minutia of the Army years, and correcting any perceived mistake by anyone else. And separately Peter and Ernst have published other books about Elvis which boast very good track records, among them Last Train To Memphis, Careless Love and Elvis Presley: A Life In Music.

Each of these examples has allowed the serious fan to get far closer to the man and his music than anyone could have dreamed possible twenty or thirty years ago.