Presley was “in “critical condition” with a liver ailment at the Memphis hospital. When Elvis entered his mother’s hospital room, the AP writer reported she said, “Oh, my son, oh, my son.” “Drafted rock ’n’ roll singer Elvis Presley flew into Memphis Wednesday night and went straight to the bedside of his ailing mother,” the article stated, adding that, at the urging of a Memphis physician, Elvis had been granted an emergency 7-day leave from his army station at Fort Hood. Presley to determine the cause of her illness.Īn AP article three days after her hospitalization revealed that Gladys’s condition was much worse. He explained, “It was during the automobile trip from Killeen to Fort Worth, where we were going to catch a train for Memphis, that she suddenly became worse.” Doctors were examining Mrs. Vernon Presley told the UPI writer that his wife had been feeling badly for some time. Vernon Presley, mother of rock and roll singer Elvis Presley, entered Methodist hospital here Saturday for a physical exam.” Elvis’s parents were returning to Memphis from Killeen, Texas, where their son was living while taking advanced tank training at Fort Hood. They provide a snapshot of how the American public shared the greatest tragedy in Elvis’s life day by day.ĭatelined “Memphis, Tenn.,” the short UPI article began, “Mrs. However, before it was over, the coverage helped to soften the tone of many of his harshest critics.īelow are summaries of the wire service articles concerning Gladys Presley’s illness, death, and burial that appeared in US newspapers in August 1958. Elvis publicly displayed great grief over his mother’s passing, and to some it seemed callous to have his sorrow put on display in the country’s newspapers. The most personal Presley news that AP and UPI dispensed to newspapers in the 1950s involved the events surrounding the death of Elvis’s mother, Gladys Presley, on August 14, 1958. Since by then almost everything about Elvis Presley was of interest everywhere, on most days the Associated Press (AP) and United Press International (UPI) kept the country's newspaper teletype machines clicking with articles about him. Local newspapers in the fifties depended on two large national news services to provide them with daily news reports on events of interest outside their regional areas. With equal composure, he accepted the praise and endured the criticism that flowed from columnists and pundits in the press. In those early days of his exploding fame, Presley embraced the power newspapers had to influence his career while tolerating their incursions into his private life.
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