Saving Elvis’s Sideburns

Here’s another letter I wanted to share from the book Letters of Note.

And the background of this is that in 1957, it was announced that Elvis Presley would soon be drafted into the Army. You can imagine the reverberations across the country.

And this letter was sent to President Eisenhower by three female fans who’d resigned themselves to his induction, but they had a request. It goes, Dear President Eisenhower, my girlfriends and I are writing all the way from Montana. We think it’s bad enough to send Elvis Presley in the army. But if you cut his sideburns off, we will die. You don’t know how we fell about him. I don’t see why you have to send him in the army at all. But we beg you, please, please don’t give him a GI haircut. Oh, please, please don’t. If you do, we will just about die. Signed, Elvis Presley lovers. And then their names. And then at the end it says, Presley, Presley is our cry, P-R-E-S-L-E-Y.

That’s sweet, you know, on a certain level. They fell in love with him for his looks. Right. But I’ve got to say, even with his haircut, he was a pretty handsome man. Exactly. Yeah. I don’t think they knew exactly what they were going to get. Yeah, not bad, right? Elvis Presley dressed up as a soldier with the soldier’s haircut. It was like, all right. But this letter is just so soulful, right? And it’s handwritten. It’s in cursive, you know? And so different from an email. It’s so much more effective. No self-consciousness about what would become of this letter. Right. We will just die.

We’ll share some more from the book Letters of Note, compiled by Sean Usher, later on in the show. If you’ve got a question about language, give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.